The Big Ten may have passed the SEC on the football field — at least when it comes to recent College Football Playoff results — but the SEC remains the premier conference in churning out professional football players.
For the 20th straight season, the SEC outpaced its fellow conferences with the most NFL Draft picks. The 16-team league set a record with 87 selections, dwarfing the previous record the SEC set last year with 79. For the seventh time in the last eight years, the Big Ten finished second with 68 draft picks. The ACC and Big 12 each had 38 selections this year.
“It’s different,” said Missouri tackle Keagan Trost, a Los Angeles Rams third-round pick who also competed at Wake Forest and two Football Championship Subdivision programs during his college career. “In the SEC, every week, it was somebody on that scouting report. If we looked over the top guys, it’s the defensive ends, it’s the defensive tackles. In the ACC, you have Clemson and Miami, but every single week, you may not have a guy that’s the same as the SEC.”
The SEC had more picks than any other league in six of the seven rounds; the Big Ten had 10 first-round selections to the SEC’s seven. Collectively, the Big Ten and SEC continue to dominate the draft, combining for 60.3 percent of the 257 NFL Draft picks, which is up from 58.4 percent (three more picks combined) in 2025. The four power conferences combined for 231 of the selections, or 89.9 percent of the draft.
Before the leagues’ recent expansions prior to the 2024 season, the SEC was merely the top conference among equals in producing NFL talent. That spring, the SEC led with 59 draft picks, while the Pac-12 (43) edged the Big Ten (42) and ACC (41) for second and the Big 12 had 31 selections.
For the second consecutive season, Ohio State had the most players chosen with 11. Texas and Alabama each had 10, while Miami, Clemson and Texas Tech had nine apiece. The Buckeyes’ output broke a six-year streak in which the reigning national champion also produced the most draft picks. Indiana, which finished 16-0 and had the No. 1 overall pick in quarterback Fernando Mendoza, sent eight players to the NFL, which was by far its program-high for a single draft.
Below, some other standout notes from the final NFL Draft leaderboard.
Texas Tech’s banner year shows up in draft
Texas Tech obliterated its school record for picks in a single draft, producing nine selections. The program’s previous high was six, which it set in 1956. Five Red Raiders were drafted in the first three rounds, which by itself would have ranked second in school history.
With his No. 2 overall selection by the New York Jets, defensive end David Bailey became the highest-drafted Texas Tech player since Dave Parks went No. 1 overall in 1964. All four of the 2025 team’s starting defensive linemen were selected, including defensive end Romello Height in the third round by San Francisco.
“I don’t know if I’ve had so much fun in a draft process as turning on Texas Tech’s defense,” 49ers general manager John Lynch told NFL Network on Saturday. “I know they pay for it, but they’re doing a good job of evaluating, too. I’m just a little hot that David Bailey somehow got out of Stanford. Andrew Luck will fix that in the future here.”
Lynch, a Stanford graduate, laughed while offering the jab at the Red Raiders’ robust spending that brought in several transfers last offseason. But it also led Texas Tech to its first Big 12 title and a College Football Playoff appearance.
“I think it starts with Joey McGuire,” Bailey said at the NFL combine. “He was a great coach, just in terms of the way he carried himself, in the way he led us.”
Ferentz notches milestone
No currently employed head coach has produced more NFL Draft picks than Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz, and the longest-tenured coach in the Football Bowl Subdivision notched a significant milestone this weekend.
Ferentz became only the third coach in Big Ten history to surpass 100 draft picks, and he did so with a record haul. The Hawkeyes had seven draft picks, the program’s most since 1958, when the NFL draft lasted 30 rounds.
“I’m always very clear about this: (The NFL draft) is not a program goal of ours at all,” Ferentz said Saturday. “But that being said, a lot of our guys want to be NFL players, and we want to recruit guys that want to be NFL players, because then you make the assumption they’re willing to do the work, and at least we’ll give them a chance.”
At Iowa’s spring scrimmage on Saturday morning, play stopped briefly as All-America kick returner Kaden Wetjen’s draft selection was announced over the loudspeaker.
Ferentz now has 101 draft selections dating back to 2000. Not counting AFL selections, Ohio State’s Woody Hayes had 163 NFL Draft picks during his tenure from 1951 to 1978. Michigan’s Bo Schembechler had 123 draft picks from 1969 to 1989. The draft never had less than 12 rounds during their eras.
Penn State’s Joe Paterno produced 251 NFL Draft selections, with 77 coming while the Nittany Lions were in the Big Ten. Former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer had 85 draft picks during his seven-year career with the Buckeyes.
Other notable numbers
Of the 69 players with eligibility remaining who declared early for the 2026 draft, 60 were selected (87 percent), including 40 in the first three rounds. The percentage improved from last year, when 49 of 58 underclassmen in the draft were selected (84.5 percent).
After four Buckeyes were picked in the first round, Ohio State bolstered its lead in that category to 86. With two first-rounders, Alabama (77) broke out of a second-place tie with USC (76), which had one.
USC and Michigan extended its streak to 88 years with a drafted player, which dates to 1939. Florida (1952), Miami (1975) and Notre Dame/Iowa (1978) round out the top five longest streaks. For the first time since 1978, Wisconsin did not have a selection.
From 2017 through last spring, North Carolina had 29 draft picks, including first-round selections in each of the last two drafts. Following the first year of the Bill Belichick/Mike Lombardi regime, the Tar Heels were shut out of the draft for the first time since 2016.
In addition to North Carolina and Wisconsin, the Power 4 programs without a selection are Colorado, Oklahoma State, West Virginia, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Purdue and UCLA. Every SEC school had at least one player picked.
The American produced just four draft picks, the lowest total since the conference formed in 2013. Before it lost Cincinnati, Houston and UCF to the Big 12, the AAC had 19 selections in both the 2021 and 2022 drafts.
Only 15 draft selections came from outside the Power 4 (and Notre Dame). Navy and North Dakota State were the only two non-P4 programs to record more than one draft pick.
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