--- title: NFL Draft Picks 2016: How the NFL Draft Started description: This year's draft will mark 80 years since the league's owners gathered in Philadelphia to pick their players in 1936 canonical: https://time.com/4300953/nfl-draft-1936-history/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-04-27T16:00:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:00:05.859Z article:section: History og:title: NFL Draft Picks 2016: How the NFL Draft Started og:description: It's been 80 years since the league's owners first gathered to pick players og:url: https://time.com/4300953/nfl-draft-1936-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6cc5a86355c226e3/69888ff0196cf4f17e03b455/berwanger.jpeg?branch=production&width=1440&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Berwanger og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: NFL Draft Picks 2016: How the NFL Draft Started twitter:description: It's been 80 years since the league's owners first gathered to pick players twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6cc5a86355c226e3/69888ff0196cf4f17e03b455/berwanger.jpeg?branch=production&width=1440&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How the NFL Draft Was Invented  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 27, 2016 4:00 PM UTC  University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger is shown in 1934 in the action pose that served as the model for the Heisman Trophy. Berwanger was the first winner of college football's Downtown Athletic Club Award, renamed the Heisman Trophy in 1936, and was the number one pick in the first National Football League (NFL) draft. University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger is shown in 1934 in the action pose that served as the model for the Heisman Trophy. Berwanger was the first winner of college football's Downtown Athletic Club Award, renamed the Heisman Trophy in 1936, and was the number one pick in the first National Football League (NFL) draft.AP  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 27, 2016 4:00 PM UTC When this year’s [NFL Draft](http://www.nfl.com/draft/2016) begins on Thursday, it will be the kind of hyper-produced spectacle that can [inspire movies](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2223990/) and pull in [millions](http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2015/05/01/espns-nfl-draft-round-1-scores-7-million-viewers/) of TV viewers. When the first-ever NFL Draft happened 80 years ago, things were _very_ different. There were only nine owners who met in February of 1936 in Philadelphia. (In fact, the event wasn’t referred to as the draft until 1937, [according](https://books.google.com/books?id=GCvNoVqXOmUC&dq=1936+berwanger+draft&source=gbs%5Fnavlinks%5Fs) to Chris Willis’ biography of early NFL president Joe F. Carr; instead, it went by the unwieldy if accurate moniker “selection of players.”) [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](http://time.com/newsletter) At the time, no major professional sports league used a draft to acquire new players, as [Pete Williams’ explains in his book _The Draft: A Year Inside the NFL’s Search for Talent._](https://books.google.com/books?id=TLtgmvtOcjAC&dq=1936+berwanger+draft&source=gbs%5Fnavlinks%5Fs) But the NFL—or, rather, one particular NFL owner—had a good reason to suggest one in 1935\. The still-young league, which had been founded 15 years earlier, was growing. But the Philadelphia Eagles were doing terribly. They closed out the 1934 season with a 2-9 record. And the current system offered little hope for their improvement. After all, the best players in the country wanted to play for the best teams and to make more money. And the teams that played better made more money and could thus pay those players even more, which only increased the incentive. That meant the best teams (like the Bears and the Giants) got better as the worst teams got worse. So, Eagles owner Bert Bell suggested in early 1935, why not hold a draft? The team with the lowest win percentage would pick first, and they’d go around in that order. ### The NFL on the Cover of TIME  Nov. 29, 1954: Bobby Layne, Detroit Lions TIME  Nov. 30, 1959: Sam Huff, New York Giants TIME  Nov. 26, 1965: Jimmy Brown, Cleveland Browns TIME  Jan. 17, 1972: Roger Staubach, Dallas Cowboys, and Bob Griese, Miami Dolphins TIME  Oct. 16, 1972: Joe Namath, New York Jets TIME  Dec. 8, 1975: Ernie Holmes, Joe Green, L.C. Greenwood and Dwight White, Pittsburgh Steelers TIME  Jan. 25, 1982: Joe Montana, San Francisco 49ers TIME  Jan. 27, 1986: "Refrigerator" Perry and Walter Payton, Chicago Bears TIME With an eye to a future where the competitive balance might be different—or to keeping salaries down—the other owners agreed. That year, there were a little under 100 eligible college players to choose from. Moving in turn from worst to best by their 1935 win percentages, each team picked nine of them. The number-one pick went to Bell and the Eagles, who selected the University of Chicago’s Jay Berwanger, who is still famous as the first winner of the Heisman Trophy—and the inspiration for its shape. Berwanger also appeared on the [cover of TIME in 1933](http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19331113,00.html?iid=sr-link1) but was not identified (that’s him in the white jersey with the noseguard). Berwanger didn’t end up signing, though—and in fact only a couple dozen of [those drafted that year](http://www.nfl.com/draft/history/fulldraft?season=1936) actually played in the NFL that season. But even if they didn’t make much of an impact on the field, that draft class of 1936 would still go down in league history. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4300953/nfl-draft-1936-history/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4300953/nfl-draft-1936-history/"},"headline":"How the NFL Draft Was Invented","datePublished":"2016-04-27T16:00:34.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:00:05.859Z","description":"This year's draft will mark 80 years since the league's owners first gathered to pick players","url":"https://time.com/4300953/nfl-draft-1936-history/","keywords":["Sports topic","Football","NFL"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6cc5a86355c226e3/69888ff0196cf4f17e03b455/berwanger.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6cc5a86355c226e3/69888ff0196cf4f17e03b455/berwanger.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Berwanger","caption":"Berwanger","creditText":"AP","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4300953/nfl-draft-1936-history/","name":"How the NFL Draft Was Invented"}}]}] ```