The NFL Player Selection Meeting, better known as the NFL Draft, is held annually in April. It is the primary vehicle by which National Football League teams select newly-eligible players (primarily from college football) for their rosters. The 2009 NFL Draft took place on April 25–26 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

Venue

The draft has taken place since 1937 and has had to move into larger venues as the event has gained in popularity, drawing fans from across the world. The 2006 draft was held at Radio City Music Hall, the first time this venue has hosted the gala, and it has been held there ever since. Madison Square Garden had hosted the event for a number of years, but the NFL moved it to the Javits Convention Center in 2005 following a dispute with the Cablevision-owned arena, who were opposing a new New York Jets/2012 Olympic Stadium which would compete with the Garden for events.

Tickets to the NFL Draft are free and made available to fans on a first-come first-served basis. The tickets are distributed at the box office the morning of the draft, one ticket per person. Long waits in line can be expected for fans hoping to get a live glimpse of their team's high-profile picks. Fans must arrive early in order to attend the draft.Fact: date=September 2008 However, those fans who stay for the duration of Day 2 of the NFL Draft are eligible to receive free NFL Draft Day 1 tickets for the following year which are mailed to the fans' house.

2009 Draft

see: 2009 NFL Draft

Eligibility

The draft is the first chance teams get to make contract negotiations with players who have been out of high school for three years. Most drafted players come directly out of NCAA programs as seniors or juniors, while some players are selected from other professional leagues like the Arena Football League. A player who is drafted but does not sign a contract can sit out that season, which is referred to as a "holdout", and can re-enter the draft the following year unless they were told differently by the NFL commissioner.Fact: date=November 2008

Selection format

The Draft currently lasts seven rounds.

Rules for determining draft order

The draft order is determined by first generating the order for the first round. That order is based generally on each team's regular season record, with the exception of the two Super Bowl contestants, who are placed at the end of the draft order. Tiebreakers and specifics are as follows:

1. Any expansion team automatically gets the first pick; if there are two expansion teams, a coin toss determines who picks first; the other team will pick first in the expansion draft.
2. The winners of the Super Bowl are given the last selection, and the losers the second to last selection.
3. Teams that made the playoffs are then ordered by how they performed in the playoffs. The conference championship losers receive the third and fourth to last selections. Next are the four teams who lost in the divisional round, followed by the four teams who lost in the wild card round. Each team is ordered within this primary order by their regular-season record.
4. Teams that did not make the playoffs are ordered by their regular-season record.
5. Remaining ties are broken by strength of schedule. For draft order, a lower strength of schedule results in an earlier pick. If strength of schedule does not resolve a tie, division and/or conference tiebreakers may be used. If the tie still cannot be broken, a coin toss at the NFL Combine is used to determine draft order. (Note: Strength of schedule is the combined records of a team's 16 opponents, including games played against the team in question, and counting divisional opponents twice. Because of this, each team's opponents' combined wins and losses—counting a tie as a half-win, half-loss—will add up to 256, so a team whose opponents had more combined wins has a better strength of schedule.)