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A sports draft is the process by which professional sports teams select players not contracted to any team, often from colleges or amateur ranks. Baseball, American football, basketball, ice hockey, and some other predominantly North American sports utilize a draft system. The system is virtually unknown to international Football (soccer) and many other professional sports outside North America, where most professional clubs obtain players through purchase or developing youth players through their own academies.

The National Football League's draft, which began in 1936, is perhaps the best known draft. Draft order in the NFL is determined in a reverse-record order (the previous season's worst team picking first, the Super Bowl winner picking last). There are seven rounds of the draft, so each team can have seven selections each. But trading draft choices between teams is common practice, so many teams may have more or less than seven selections. Major League Soccer's draft is run in a very similar manner.

The National Basketball Association and National Hockey League use draft systems similar to that of the NFL; however, these leagues conduct a draft lottery whereby the first several draft positions are ordered by semi-random selection. This is designed to deter teams from deliberately playing poorly toward the end of a season in order to obtain a higher draft position. The NBA has a very short draft, lasting only two rounds.

The Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft is held every year in June by conference call among the 30 Major League clubs. The clubs take turns selecting players in reverse order of their win-loss records at the close of the previous regular season. In 2005, the order of selection was, for the first time, arranged without regard to league. [1] MLB has the longest draft, with a total of 50 rounds.

The baseball draft is not nearly as reliable in terms of predicting player skill or prominence at the major league level as the other drafts. Players are drafted young, in comparison to the actual major leaguers. Unlike basketball or hockey, very few teenagers or twenty year-olds play in the majors. Instead, baseball utilizes a complex minor league system for their young draftees. Teams have four levels of minor league teams (Rookie, A, AA, and AAA, in ascending order of skill) into which a draftee arrives and is evaluated for promotion to the majors based on his performance in the minors, as well as other factors such as "signability" and other intangibles. Since players are often picked on potential and less on current ability, the first pick of the draft is not guaranteed to ever make the majors. In basketball and football, the top pick is all but assured a roster spot, and may at times be penciled in as a starter for that season or the next. This is not to say that the top pick of the baseball draft will not blossom into a star; Alex Rodriguez, Chipper Jones and Ken Griffey, Jr. were all top picks and each has won an MVP award.

In the sport Australian rules football, the AFL Draft was introduced in 1986 (when the competition was then known as the VFL). This was in response to the increasing transfer fees and player salaries at the time, which in combination with declining attendances, threatened to derail the league. In the AFL Draft, clubs receive picks based on the position in which they finish on the ladder during the season. The draft is held in November, with a pre-season draft in December.

Fans often pay close attention to the draft selections made by teams they support, sometimes conducting their own mock drafts.

Other related forms of drafts are the expansion draft, in which a new team is allowed to pick a certain number of players from those of teams already in the league, and the dispersal draft, in which players contracted to a now-defunct team are allocated among the remaining ones.

In the United States, a professional draft is, per se, illegal under federal anti-trust law. At its core, a professional draft limits free trade among competing teams. Without delving too far into the legal implications of a professional draft (as even most sports lawyers are confused on this issue, particularly with baseball), a professional sports draft is legal only if owners and a players association have negotiated one in good faith as part of a collective bargaining agreement.

The NHL and NBA draft lotteries have been criticized by some fans for their lack of transparency, which has led to questions regarding just how honest the "lotteries" actually are. The actual draws in both leagues are held "behind closed doors" - although the participating teams are apparently allowed to send observers, neither league has allowed the draws to be filmed by the media. This has resulted in some observers accusing the leagues of manipulating the draws, as it has become increasingly obvious that the teams that almost always "win" the lotteries are either teams in large markets or, less often, a team in financial difficulty that the league wishes to keep stable. Thus, critics contend that the real purpose of the draft lottery is not to discourage "tanking" at the end of the season, but to steer the best young players to wherever the league believes to be the most advantageous place for them to play.

• NBA Draft
• NFL Draft
• NHL Entry Draft
• Major League Baseball Draft
• MLS draft
• AFL Draft
• CFL Draft
• WNBA Draft
• WWE Draft
• Philippine Basketball Association Draft
• Mock draft
• Salary cap
• National Pro Fastpitch Draft