SEC considering ways to help underclassmen investigate NFL Draft

The current system for giving feedback to college football underclassmen who are considering early entry into the NFL Draft is broken.

“There’s been five or six guys two years in a row that were given ‘come back to school’ grades that actually got drafted in the first round,” Alabama head coach Nick Saban said. “Then there was a significant number of players who got first round or second round grades who never got drafted until the fourth round or the seventh round. If you ask the NFL, ‘How can we maintain trust with our players when you’re giving us inaccurate information?’ their response is, ‘We don’t know enough about the guys to really give you the information because all we can really go on is film evaluation.’”

So the SEC is thinking about making a change to its rules to allow rising juniors an opportunity to work out for NFL scouts following spring practice, which would allow those scouts to know which juniors they should be evaluating during their junior season.

“Anything we can do to give them better information I am for obviously, but we’re giving these guys pretty good information,” South Carolina head coach Will Muschamp said. “There are some young men, some don’t like school, they are going to go out for the draft no matter what. Let’s be real. At the end of the day, it’s one of the most frustrating things I have had over the years as coach, as an assistant and a head coach, is when you recruit a young man for two or three years of high school and you coached him for three years in college and he’s making that decision and he’s listening to somebody on the street rather than me. At the end of the day, I do feel like we are getting them decent information.”

Muschamp called the number of players who leave college early only to go undrafted “staggering” but pointed out the difficulties of making significant changes because of the college football calendar and the timing of the NFL Combine and NFL Draft.

“It’s going to be very difficult to do,” he said.

East vs. West.

Florida coach Jim McElwain, whose team lost 29-15 to Alabama in last year’s SEC Championship Game, isn’t ready to predict the conference’s Eastern Division is catching up to its Western Division. A Western Division team has won the last seven overall conference titles.

“I don’t know, time will tell,” McElwain said. “Obviously, those programs have done a heck of a job on the other side. And yet, I don’t think there is anybody on our side who is going to sit there and say, ‘We don’t belong.’ Obviously, (new South Carolina coach Will Muschamp and new Georgia coach Kirby Smart) are great ball coaches and will get those programs going.”

Rules Changes

Steve Shaw, the SEC’s coordinator of football officials, updated media members Wednesday on several rules changes, including a new rule that states any coach called for two unsportsmanlike penalties in one game will be ejected from the game. The most significant change across the country appears to be the fact that replay officials can now stop a game to call a targeting penalty that was not called by the on-field officials. Under the previous targeting rules, the replay official could only review calls made by the on-field officials.

This story was originally published June 2, 2016 at 9:25 PM with the headline "SEC considering ways to help underclassmen investigate NFL Draft."