It’s almost impossible to predict NFL draft busts. While not a perfect indicator of future success, the school a prospect attends seems to be one of the more significant factors. With that in mind, we took a look back at the last 15 years of NFL draft busts and broke them down by school. Here are the results…

(Note: The 2015 draft class is not included in these numbers.)

We start with the schools that produce the riskiest draft prospects:



Every Power-5 conference is represented here except for the Pac-12. USC and Cal are the only schools from the conference that have produced a significant number of first-round picks, which is the main reason the Pac-12 avoided the list.

Here are the schools that produce safer picks.



Here we have a school from every Power-5 conference, so it’s apparent that conference affiliation has little to do with the success of a given draft pick. The common denominator with these schools is each has won a national title since 1999, while only two of the schools with the most busts have in that time. Make of that what you will.

Some teams may be scared off by small school prospects, but the numbers show drafting a player from a bigger school is not much safer.



The sample size isn’t very large for small-school first-rounders, so the 2002 draft throws off the numbers a bit. The four small-school guys taken in that first round — David Carr (Fresno State), Ashley Lelie (Hawaii), Bryan Thomas (UAB) and Patrick Ramsey (Tulane) — ended up as busts. Take that class out of the equation, and the small-school bust percentage drops to 30.5%, which is right in line with the Power-5 schools.

A couple lessons to take away from this: Teams shouldn’t write off a player who went to a small school, avoid players from Florida colleges located outside of Miami and do not draft Penn State pass rushers — we’re looking at you, Carl Nassib.