The first player ever picked in the NFL Draft didn’t play a minute as a professional: “There was no money in pro football”
Ahead of the 2025 NFL Draft, we take a look back at the event’s first ever No. 1 pick - a player who promptly walked away from the game.
The top pick in this year’s NFL Draft is in line for a four-year contract worth a projected $43 million-plus. Yet nine decades ago, when the first player ever to be drafted asked for just a fraction of that amount, he was given short shrift - and walked away from professional football.
Who was the first player ever selected in the Draft?
In February 1936, Chicago Maroons halfback Jay Berwanger became the Draft’s maiden No. 1 pick, when he was chosen by the Philadelphia Eagles.
Berwanger had just been crowned as the first ever recipient of the Heisman Trophy, college football’s most prestigious individual award, after an amateur career that saw him come up against future U.S. president Gerald Ford, a one-time Michigan Wolverines center.
“Jay was most deserving of his Heisman Trophy,” Ford once said, according to a University of Chicago profile of Berwanger. “He could do it all. He was an outstanding runner as well a passer and kicker. I remember him fondly as one of the greatest athletes I’ve known.”
Jay Berwanger is the only Heisman winner ever tackled by a future U.S. president.
— Mark Schipper - 5th Down CFB (@5thDownCFB) July 7, 2023
In the 1934 game between Michigan and Chicago, the Wolverines' Gerald Ford wrapped up Berwanger and dragged him down.
"Jay was most deserving of his Heisman Trophy. He could do it all," Ford said. pic.twitter.com/dW4TkbBdba
“Nice to have met you; have a nice time tonight”
Although Berwanger was drafted by the Eagles, it was the Chicago Bears that ended up sitting down to negotiate terms with the then-21-year-old, after Bears coach George Halas acquired the player’s signing rights from Philadelphia.
However, contract talks with Halas were swift - and unsuccessful.
“I told him, [I wanted] $25,000 for two years,” Berwanger recalled in 1994, in an interview with the Hartford Courant. “He looked at my date and said, ‘Nice to have met you; have a nice time tonight.’ And that was the end of it.”
In today’s money, the two-season deal that Berwanger sought would be worth a little over $570,000, according to Amortization.org’s inflation calculator.
What did Berwanger do instead of pro football?
Having priced himself out of joining the Bears, Berwanger became a foam-rubber salesman, notes an obituary in the University of Chicago Chronicle, before he served as a naval officer during the Second World War.
In 1949, Berwanger then founded Jay Berwanger, Inc., a manufacturing company that remains in operation today, producing “rubber, plastic, and other elastomeric materials”, per its website.
“There was no money in pro football” at the time of the inaugural Draft, Berwanger is quoted as saying by the Los Angeles Times (via CNN). “That was during the Great Depression. I thought I’d have a better future by using my education rather than my football skills.”
Inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1954, Berwanger died at the age of 88 in June 2002.
When and where is the 2025 NFL Draft?
The 90th edition of the NFL Draft, the 2025 event is to take place at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, from Thursday, April 24, to Saturday, April 26, 2025. The opening round is scheduled to get going at 8:00 p.m. ET on Thursday.
Viewers in the U.S. can watch the Draft live on NFL Network, NFL+, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN Deportes.
You can stream NFL Network and ESPN channels on the online platform fubo, which offers new users a free introductory trial. You’ll also have the option of following live-text coverage of the Draft right here at AS USA.
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