In this chapter, we focus on athlete selection in North American professional sports, which are Systems with unique constraints surrounding talent selection. For instance, the collective bargaining agreements that govern each of the four major leagues of Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football Association (NFL), and National Hockey League (NHL), do not permit the recruitment and development of youth players through affiliate academies, nor the acquisition of young athletes by purchasing their rights on the transfer market as seen in European soccer. Instead, athletes can only be selected once they have met the minimum league-specific age requirement (see Table 10.1) through an annual event known as the "entry draft." 1 One by one, teams take turns selecting (drafting) from a pool of high school, collegiate, junior, and international athletes based on their past, current, and projected future performance. By drafting a player, the team earns the exclusive rights to sign them to a professional contract. Typically, however, drafted athletes are temporarily sent back to the teams from which they were drafted, or are assigned to other developmental leagues until they reach a sufficient level of experience and physical/cognitive maturity to be able to compete in the four major leagues. Consequently, the entry draft system inhibits the monopolisation of talent by preventing the wealthiest teams from recruiting and signing players to contracts that other teams could not match.
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