The XFL won’t be the NFL, in one very important way: The XFL won’t rule out signing players who are less than three years removed from high school.
Appearing on Monday’s #PFTPM podcast, XFL Commissioner Oliver Luck was asked whether the XFL has heard from college players who’d like to leap to the XFL in 2020, even if they can’t be drafted by NFL teams until 2021.
“I would say this there has been as you know a number of guys who’ve sort of talking about it,” Luck said. (Indeed they have.) “I think our launching point, February of 2020, is still down the way a little bit. We’re not actively talking to anybody at this point, but it is something that we are looking at. As I have said many times before I would only do that if I believe and our coaches believe [that] a young man who is not eligible enough for the NFL but nonetheless has the physical, the emotional, the mental sort of maturity to play professional football, because we’re gonna have 26-, 27-, who knows, 28-, 30-year-olds playing in our league. . . . It’s something that’s certainly in our playbook. At this point we really haven’t spent much time thinking about it.”
They’ll surely be thinking about it in time, especially if true sophomores or redshirt freshmen decide after the 2019 college season to leave school and enter the XFL. The question then becomes whether the XFL would structure their contracts to allow them to leave after the 2021 season, for the NFL draft.
