Antwaan Randle El's remarks not helping Roger Goodell's case against early draft entry

In 2010, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was alarmed by what felt like a flood of underclassmen declaring early for the NFL draft.

"I think what we've learned from experience is that very few individuals are ready, whether emotionally, physically or from a maturity level to [jump early to the NFL]," Goodell said at the time. "We don't benefit by having them come out early.”

Goodell implemented a rookie salary scale that he believed would protect franchises from sizeable and risky (for them) contracts to unproven draft picks, and motivate players to return to school.

Goodell was completely wrong. Predictably football players followed the same pattern that basketball players did a decade before when the NBA tried the same strategy. With no big money payday looming, they chose to turn pro as soon as possible to get the clock ticking toward a lucrative second contract.

Number of underclassmen who declared for the NFL in 2010: 53.

Number of underclassmen who declared for the NFL this year: 103.

The 103 (at least) will break the record for the fourth time in the past five years.

Both college football and the NFL want to reverse this trend. The colleges want the best players who excite the most fans to play at that level as long as possible. The NFL wants the most mature and prepared prospects it can get. This is especially true at the critical quarterback position, where the league is concerned about development.

The challenge is that this is no longer as easy as just reworking or eliminating the salary scale and financially incentivizing it so players will return for one more year – and thus try to improve from projected fifth-rounder to third-rounder, or projected third-rounder to first-rounder, or projected late first-rounder to top 10 pick.

Right now the money isn't good enough to delay entry, which is why even players who may not get drafted (but are likely getting picked up and play as undrafted free agents) are turning pro.

"The team that drafts you [in the first round] can keep you locked up for five years," agent C.J. LaBoy of Relativity Sports told Yahoo Sports last year. "Then you're 27 or 28 and you're literally near the tail end of you career by the time you get to your second contract. If you get to a second contract."

It's better to get into the league and get that clock ticking as soon as possible.

The bigger hurdle now, however, can be found in the mentality of football players who have become acutely aware of not just the short-term dangers of their sport, such as blowing a knee as a college senior and harming earning power. They also see the long-term and the idea that they may have only so many snaps in them. They might as well get paid for as many as possible.

Former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver and Indiana University quarterback Antwaan Randle El said in Tuesday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that at age 36 he struggles to get up and down stairs, suffers from memory loss and despite his love of the game wishes he never played it.

"If I could go back, I wouldn't [play football],” said Randle El, who was also a professional baseball prospect.

It comes at a time when Calvin Johnson, the star receiver for the Detroit Lions, is contemplating early retirement despite, at age 30, being in his prime. Johnson just recorded his sixth consecutive season with at least 1,000 receiving yards. Future health concerns are believed to be the major reason he might walk away.

While some like to rant that there is a "war on football” in this country, especially in the media, the biggest blows aren't coming from the New York Times or even a Hollywood movie, but firsthand words and actions from guys such as Randle El and Johnson.

That's what young people are seeing.

Additionally, this is an era of exploding revenue in college sports. Also on Tuesday, the Southeastern Conference announced its in-house cable television network and share of playoff revenue, totaled $527.4 million for the 2014-15 academic year. Neither existed just a few years ago.

Football players can declare for the NFL draft three years after they graduate from high school though there are innumerable reasons for someone to return and exhaust eligibility, most notably to earn a degree.

Yet many big, emotional factors are working against the concept. There are short and long-term financial interests, short and long-term health concerns and even the sense that they are being used by a billion-dollar industry – tuition and stipend notwithstanding.

How does anyone combat that?

Of late the plan has been for the NFL to limit the number of underclassmen on each team who can receive feedback from the league on their projected draft status, but less information is rarely a winning strategy.

Finding a way to present a financial carrot to players to stay and move up in the draft is about the only way to make them consider returning though. Right now the system does the opposite.

Meanwhile college football could adopt the so-called Olympic model that allows players to profit off their own likeness and fame. It would allow a star, say Heisman Trophy winner Derrick Henry of Alabama, to appear in commercials, paid autograph sessions or local appearances.

It might close the gap between college stipend and pro salary and ease the realization of how those half-billion dollar revenue streams are made to at least make it more palpable to at least consider another year in school.

This would be a sea change however for college administrators who have shown no interest in sharing additional revenue with players unless under federal court order.

Even still, the awareness of players that football is a great, but dangerous game, is difficult to combat. College sports could do more to mandate free time for players, as has been recently proposed, but its difficult to keep a great, hungry player from putting in extra work.

It would be more effective to limit contact in practice, not to mention the endless conditioning, spring practice and preseason camps. College players endure more full contact sessions than NFL players who have been able to curb those down to once a week in season via their union. And the days of two-a-days, in-pad training camps are long gone.

Control-freak college coaches have been loath to follow that path, preferring the old-school system.

But old school may mean no school for the best upperclassmen. At the start of the decade, 53 players declaring early was considered an epidemic. It's already nearly doubled.

There is no finger-snap solutions anymore, but if this is something football on both levels really wants to address, the old system has to be changed somehow, in some way.