Rising and Plummeting Stock

Being an avid NFL fan, I always pay very close attention to the annual NFL Draft, a process which the college players are being selected by the NFL teams in the reverse order of the teams' finishing positions the previous season.

Believe it or not, I have once done a thesis on the NFL Draft as part of my Master of Science in Sports Science course and earned a very good grade for it. But that's another story and I won't bore you to death with its history or stuff like that.

In short, eligible college players will try to perform to their very best during the season or at the scouting combine in order to showcase their potential to the teams. With high first-round draft picks netting contracts worth up to tens of millions of dollars, prospects will try everything to keep their stock rising.

But sometimes a player's stock would plummet through no fault of his own. Brady Quinn, the quarterback of Notre Dame, had been projected as the number one overall pick before the season started. He responded by leading the Fighting Irish to the Sugar Bowl, and was named the winner of the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award (best senior quarterback) and the Maxwell Award (best collegiate football player), among other accolades. His future couldn't have looked brighter.

But during the period between his final game as a collegiate player and the NFL Draft, something strange happened. When the pundits reviewed the game tapes of this and previous seasons, they started criticizing his play, especially during big games. In this year's Sugar Bowl against Louisiana State for example, he had the worst passing performance against the Tigers quarterbacked by JaMarcus Russell, another highly-touted prospect. Ironically, Russell has now shot up to the very top of most teams' draft board and is now likely to be chosen first overall by the Oakland Raiders, thanks mostly to his great performance in THAT game.

Quinn himself was perplexed by his fallen stock. Given that most of the teams drafting in the top ten do not need a quarterback, he is now likely to fall down to around the tenth pick, a plunge that will cost him millions of dollars.

Quinn's next shot to go back to the top of the draft board is the school's pro day on March 4. Given the unexpected nature of the NFL Draft, don't be surprised to find Quinn's stock fluctuate greatly up to the draft.