Non American here but big sports fan and I hear about D1 athletes and people playing college sports and the NFL draft and was just wanting to know how they all tie in together.
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High school is grade 9-12, the end of secondary school prior to college. Students attend public high schools based on where their house is located or they pay to attend private high schools.
Top high school athletes will move to get to better sports programs or be recruited and given scholarships to play for private high schools. High school sports are broken down by conferences within each state and play up to a state championship. (I’m honestly foggy on high school sports beyond state championships towards a national level).
High school athletes are scouted and top athletes are rated up to a 5 star recruit. Then these kids are offered scholarships by different colleges and universities to play. D1 refers to division 1, the most competitive tier for college sports. But there’s also D2 and D3 schools as well.
After typically 4-5 years of college play, players will elect for the draft. They can elect sooner, but most students play for the full time that they’re eligible to play in college. Some people would elect early to get paid earlier, but not as much now that they can be paid in college for their name, image, and likeness.
So most of the athletes that you see getting drafted are from D1 schools since they play against the highest level of competition and they have film of how they play against other D1 athletes.
That said, it’s not uncommon for D2 athletes seen as freaks of nature or developmental talent to get drafted as well, but it’s typically seen as more of a gamble. As a result, they’re usually drafted in later rounds or picked up after the draft as an undrafted free agent (UDFA). That just means that no NFL team selected them in the draft, but they’re eligible to be signed.
Typically later round draft picks and UDFAs will be on the practice squad or play special teams, with any serious time on offense or defense seen as a great and largely unlikely success. That’s why someone like Brock Purdy (252nd overall pick of the draft) succeeding on the same team that Trey Lance (3rd overall pick of the same draft) failed on was such a fantastical media story. Interestingly, Brock Purdy was on a middle of the road D1-A (FBS) college team while Trey Lance was on arguably the best D1-AA (FCS) team in the country.
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