During the draft, they can’t even endorse snacks that the league hasn’t approved.
When the National Football League drafts its next crop of players this weekend, those draftees will have to be careful about what’s showing on their in-home camera. Don’t drink anything but Pepsi products, don’t snack on anything but Frito-Lay brands, and don’t do any video interviews using Apple AirPods. And definitely don’t try to make a few bucks by hawking a motor oil other than Castrol or a mattress company other than Sleep Number. The league has threatened to keep any player off-camera if an NFL sponsor’s competitor would otherwise be onscreen. It’s just one of the ways NFL rules keep young players from realizing their true market value, thanks to the league’s take-it-or-leave-it system. Consider the path of Trevor Lawrence, the Clemson quarterback who’s likely to be the first overall draft pick. In his freshman year, Lawrence led Clemson to an undefeated championship season. If he wasn’t good enough then to enter the NFL draft, he certainly was after his second season, where his team suffered only one loss and Lawrence came seventh in the Heisman Trophy vote. But Lawrence couldn’t enter the draft until after his third collegiate season, because the NFL won’t allow players to enter the draft until three years after they’ve left high school. Lawrence probably wouldn’t have been the number one pick if he’d entered the draft sooner, but he still would have been earning millions of dollars in the NFL instead of playing for virtually nothing at Clemson, where NCAA rules barred him even from signing endorsement deals. The rule doesn’t just hurt stars like Lawrence: Even an unknown player who just wanted to provide for his family couldn’t try to get a low-salary job playing in the NFL.
