This College Has Sent the Most Players to the NFL

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated May 9, 10:39AM EDT · Published May 9, 9:30AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

This College Has Sent the Most Players to the NFL — © Mike Powell / Allsport / Getty Images

There are generally two paths people take to become professional sports athletes. Some are recruited before they make it to college. Basketball great Kobe Bryant is an example. However, most pro athletes played in college. This gave them several years to show off their talents and for pro sports teams to evaluate their skills.

Each of the major sports has a system to draft college players into the pros. In football, this is called the NFL Draft, and it is a media spectacle that lasts several days.

To determine the college that produced the most NFL players, 24/7 Tempo reviewed data from the Draft Finder tool on Pro Football Reference. Colleges were ranked based on the number of players drafted since 1970, when the AFL and NFL merged.

The colleges that produce the most NFL players are located all across the country. The top 30 schools we considered are in 23 states from coast to coast. Most are larger state schools, though a handful of private institutions also made the list.
[nativounit]
It should come as no surprise that the colleges that produce the most NFL players also tend to be among the most successful in college football. Nearly all the teams near the top of the list have won at least one national championship recently. These teams, buoyed by success, have passionate fan bases and have built up considerable financial resources through TV deals, ticket sales and donations.

The college that produced the most NFL players is University of Southern California. Here are the details:

Draftees since 1970: 325
Best player drafted: Tackle Anthony Munoz
Total first overall picks: 3
First picks: Quarterback Carson Palmer: Cincinnati Bengals, 2003; Wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson: New York Jets, 1996; Running back Ricky Bell: Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 1977

[wallst_email_signup]
Click here to see all the colleges sending the most players to the NFL.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.