NFL Draft Changing To Fix Underclassmen Issue; Moving to LA Or Chicago

College football and the NFL realize there's a problem with too many underclassmen declaring for the NFL Draft every year. Last year, a record 107 underclassman declared for the 2014 NFL Draft

Of those, 45 went undrafted, and a majority of those 45 remain unsigned by NFL teams as undrafted free agents. The NFL doesn't want that, and they're altering their advisory board to prevent players at risk of going undrafted.

Per NFL.com's albert Breer, here's a summary of the alteration made to the advisory committee.

In the past, there were five categories: As high as the first round; as high as the second round; as high as the third round; no potential to go in the first three rounds; And no potential to be drafted.

The league has cut that down to three categories -- first round, second round, and neither, which will equal the board advising the player to stay in school.

The reason for the adjustment there is based on the board's own struggle in categorizing players. Over the three-year period from 2012-14, the board was accurate on 73.7 percent of its first-round grades and 85.4 percent of its second-round grades, with most of the misses being slight ones. Conversely, the accuracy rate dropped to 52.9 percent on third-round grades, and nearly 53 percent of those receiving a third-round grade or below went undrafted.

In 2014, the board assigned 35 players with an "as high as the third round" grade, and 21 of them entered the draft. Nine of the 21 went later than the third round, and three weren't drafted at all.

The location of the NFL Draft is also changing. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Thursday that the league has narrowed down its 2015 NFL Draft options to Los Angeles and Chicago.

"We're focusing solely on Los Angeles and Chicago now," Goodell said. "We had 12 cities that were interested. We felt the best thing to do was to focus on the three cities, because they had such a tremendous interest. There are very attractive aspects to each of those cities. Because we don't have the appropriate dates in May our focus is completely on Los Angeles and Chicago."

The event has been held in New York City every year since 1965 and has been at Radio City Music Hall since 2006. The McCormick Place and the Chicago Theater have been floated as possible venues in Chicago to host the draft.

This year's draft was held May 8-10, a couple of weeks later than it had been traditionally in the past. Goodell wouldn't reveal when the 2015 draft will be held, but it will likely be the final weekend of April or the first weekend of May.