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Post being replied to

No. by KeoughCharles05

From Clarett's court case:

The current collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and its players union was negotiated between the NFL Management Council (“NFLMC”), which is the NFL member clubs' multi-employer bargaining unit, and the NFL Players Association (“NFLPA”), the NFL players' exclusive bargaining representative.   This agreement became effective in 1993 and governs through 2007.   Despite the collective bargaining agreement's comprehensiveness with respect to, inter alia, the manner in which the NFL clubs select rookies through the draft and the scheme by which rookie compensation is determined, the eligibility rules for the draft do not appear in the agreement.

At the time the collective bargaining agreement became effective, the eligibility rules appeared in the NFL Constitution and Bylaws, which had last been amended in 1992.7  Specifically, Article XII of the Bylaws (“Article XII”), entitled “Eligibility of Players,” prohibited member clubs from selecting any college football player through the draft process who had not first exhausted all college football eligibility, graduated from college, or been out of high school for five football seasons.   Clubs were further barred from drafting any person who either did not attend college, or attended college but did not play football, unless that person had been out of high school for four football seasons.   Article XII, however, also included an exception that permitted clubs to draft players who had received “Special Eligibility” from the NFL Commissioner.   In order to qualify for such special eligibility, a player was required to submit an application before January 6 of the year that he wished to enter the draft and “at least three NFL seasons must have elapsed since the player was graduated from high school.”   The Commissioner's practice apparently was, and still is, to grant such an application so long as three full football seasons have passed since a player's high school graduation