The NFL is one of the most highly competitive professions in the world. Today, it would be virtually impossible for an NFL athlete to go through the draft process without this kind of specialized training. Just to give you a perspective on the numbers…there are only 32 NFL teams, with just 55 roster spots each year. So if you do the math, there are roughly 1,800 guys involved in the league at any one time when you take practice squads and injury lists into consideration. The average career of any NFL player is less than 3 years, which means that about 1/3 of the league turns over each year. That’s why you will hear guys around our facility referring to “NFL” as meaning “Not For Long!” as a player’s career goes. So saying that the NFL is “highly competitive” is really an understatement.
There are 238 NCAA Division 1A and 1AA Football Programs in colleges and universities across America. Each one of those schools has about 100 kids in each program, so that’s 23,800 guys all dreaming about having a career in the NFL one day. So the odds are that only 7.5% of all college players will ever see the inside of an NFL locker room. And when you take the millions and millions of high school kids playing football across the country into consideration, the odds of ever making it to the NFL for a young player are extremely small. So today, specialized training like we provide at CES is really mandatory…not only for the small group of players going through the draft process, but ANY player trying to climb that ladder at any level.
It is well known that CES has prepared more NFL talent than anyone else in the world…over 20% of the league has been through our doors, but we also train dozens of major league baseball players, and pro athletes in numerous sports. The real growth in the industry is coming from the amateur market. Last year alone at CES, we trained more than a dozen high school All-Americans, and hundreds of high school players transitioning into college ranks in numerous different sports. From soccer to lacrosse, to women’s softball, tennis and golf, we are seeing tremendous growth in amateur training.
Until next time, keep training hard,
Coach Smith
