Mike, Dinwiddie/VT player, Cory Marshall signed a free agent contract with New Orleans. He wasn't drafted, but Bleeding Navy was telling me that that this free agent contract status gives him a little better chance of hanging around in camp a little longer. He also explains that Cory is an "in-between" positions type player, as far as pro ball goes.
Navy, can you please add some explanations that help explain what I mentioned above, please?
One more request for the members. I have heard the breakdown of the odds of a high school player making an NFL roster several times, but I can't remember the chances. It started with how many kids play high school ball, then how many play at the college level, how many ever get to go to an NFL training camp, and finally, how absurdly few ever make a roster. If anyone has this information, please post it for us. Like you said Mike, the chances are minuscule. A kid probably has a better chance of being hit by lightning while being eaten by a shark, while having the winning lottery ticket in his pocket!
Boy, it is really odd that I stumbled across your post mentioning the odds of being attacked by a shark today, of all days. I'll explain why after I answer the football question.
Simply googling turned up several websites purporting to show the percentages of high school players that play in college, and college players that go on to play in the NFL. I've linked to NCAA.org, which has one of the clearest graphic depictions. You can see all the stats for yourself, but the bottom line is, the chances of any given high school player making it to the NFL are way,
way beyond remote. This source says it's 0.08%, out of 1,086,627 youth playing high school ball. The statistics they used are almost three years old, but I imagine the current percentages are very close to the same. Also, that's the percentage that made it to "professional" ball, which is not necessarily the NFL.
https://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/Probability-of-going-pro-methodology_Update2013.pdf
I also found an image of what appears to be a framed poster, probably in a locker room somewhere, extolling the virtues of obtaining an education, in light of the
slim-and-none chances of having a lucrative NFL career. It has a more detailed listing of each step, but doesn't list the actual percentage making it from high school to the NFL. Interestingly enough, it begins with that same number of 1,086,627.
Now.....the shark attack thing. This is
extremely off-topic from football, and pretty lengthy, so disinterested parties be warned. This daggone device I have in my hand makes it much too easy to sit around and Google a lot of the weird, esoteric things that cross my mind. Well, I came across something about sharks on Thursday, which reminded me of a question I've had about shark attack odds. More specifically, how the experts come up with those. As we all know, the chances of any one of us being attacked by a shark are probably along the same chances as one of those high school kids making it to The Show. In other words - almost nonexistent.
But wait! I've wondered recently, aren't those numbers massively skewed? After all, those shark attack calculations must be based on the entire populace. For the vast majority of the populace, which spends 100% of its time on dry land, the percentage chance of being nailed by Jaws or one of his brothers is 0.0, no other integers after the decimal necessary. However - what about the bloke in southern Australia who makes his living diving for abalone? Or the righteous dude who spends six hours a day surfing off the SoCal beaches? I wouldn't imagine the odds for those subsets of humanity are too favorable.
So, Friday afternoon, I was trying to find out how shark attack odds are calculated. Which is why, DP, finding your post that mentions that very same thing, rarely mentioned on VaPreps, struck me as such an odd coincidence. And the really funny thing is, although I didn't find an answer (I didn't look all that long), I did find posts from guys on both scuba and surfing boards wondering the very same thing! That is, they were concerned that their odds of a very unpleasant encounter were much higher than the figures we normally hear.
From what I read, the consensus response was, "Chill out, bro. The chances of it happening are still so low, it's not worth worrying about." Which for me, would be
much easier said than done. There is no way on Earth I would ever stick a toe in the ocean in Florida, California, or especially
anywhere in Australia. I know it's silly, but I've looked at too many books, and watched too much "Shark Week."
