College football players, beware. Anything you do before entering the NFL could result in punishment from the NFL.
The 2023 version of the Personal Conduct Policy includes language that opens the door to the possibility of imposing discipline on a player for conduct that happened before he joined the NFL. That amounts to a dramatic change to the prior Personal Conduct Policy.
“Nothing in this Policy should be read to limit the league’s authority to investigate or discipline potential Policy violations alleged to have occurred before a player is under contract or Draft-eligible,” the new version of the policy declares.
Although the policy continues to state that it applies “to players under contract; all rookie players selected in the NFL College Draft; all undrafted rookie players following the NFL College Draft; all Draft-eligible players who attend a Scouting Combine or Pro Day or otherwise make themselves available for employment in the NFL; all unsigned veterans who were under contract in the prior League Year; and all other prospective players once they commence negotiations with a club concerning employment or otherwise make themselves available for employment in the NFL,” the exception potentially swallows the rule. If nothing in the policy “limit[s] the league’s authority to investigate or discipline potential Policy violations alleged to have occurred before a player is under contract or Draft-eligible,” then the NFL can do it.
For example, this provision could have allowed the NFL to investigate and to discipline Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill upon entering the NFL, given his pre-NFL guilty plea for choking and punching his then-pregnant girlfriend. The next player who arrives at the NFL with specific off-field misconduct could indeed be suspended, even if the behavior pre-dates the moment he becomes an NFL employee.
The revised policy also includes a new clause that accelerates the official date of NFL entry — “all Draft-eligible players who attend a Scouting Combine or Pro Day or otherwise make themselves available for employment in the NFL.” The 2021 version does not include that language.
Of course, that expanded definition doesn’t matter, if the NFL has now reserved the right to apply the policy to conduct occurring before a player is under contract or draft-eligible.
This express addition to the policy was not an accident. It marks a deliberate effort by the league to keep the door open to potential punishment if the circumstances warrant it.
That seems to be the broader goal of this latest revision of the policy. It’s about making it easier for the league to do whatever it wants to do in any given case, with limited constraints from the language of the policy itself.
And so, if there’s a player who engages in particularly reprehensible conduct long before becoming draft-eligible, the league now has the ability, if it chooses, to suspend him on the way in — even if nothing he did happened while he was part of the NFL.