The idea sounds perfect and delicious and ironic in theory: Participation and interest in football is growing beyond America, supported in some cases by the NFL, just in time to replenish a domestic player supply threatened by fears about concussions.
So went the overwhelming reaction to our examination of international football last week. From comments posted on ESPN.com to Twitter mentions, many readers concluded that the NFL must be up to something.
I understand the thought process. In recent years, we've seen players retire early and healthy, from Chris Borland to Husain Abdullah to A.J. Tarpley, citing concerns about brain trauma if they continued playing. It feels like a trend, one the NFL should be concerned about from a business standpoint if not a human one. So why not import foreign-born players, the thinking goes, who might be less aware of (or concerned by) the risks?
Statistically, the NFL is nowhere close to a shortage of domestic players. It would require a rapid and massive acceleration of recent micro-trends at the youth and high school level for it to become a realistic issue of this generation. For now, the NFL's interest in international football is best viewed through the prism of marketing -- generating fresh customers -- rather than recruiting new employees.
Let's consider the raw numbers.
The NFL has room for at least 2,016 players during its regular season: 53 on each team's active roster and 10 on every practice squad.
It's true that participation in Pop Warner, the country's largest youth football program, dropped 9.5 percent from 2010 to 2012, as reported by ESPN's Outside the Lines. But in 2015, there were still 2.169 million children ages 6-14 playing tackle football, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association. That was up slightly (1.9 percent) from 2014 numbers. Another 1.669 million played flag football in 2015, an increase of 8.7 percent from 2014.
Those youth programs funnel into an American high school system that counted 1.114 million participants in 11-, nine- and eight-man leagues during the 2015 season, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. That represents a 1.5 percent decrease since 2010.
Participation in college football, meanwhile, has continued to grow in each year the NCAA has published numbers. In the most recent data available, 71,291 played at some level in 2013.
So in other words, the U.S. football supply system could absorb a big drop in youth football participation and still feed its high schools at current levels. The same goes for high schools into college. That funnel effect, at the very least, provides the NFL a substantial cushion if lower-level participation drops over time. If you divide the total number of college players into five equal classes (accounting for a redshirt year), the league would have its choice from among 14,258 draft-eligible players each year -- enough to fill seven leagues of 32 teams.
This is not to say the NFL should feel permanently insulated from player supply issues. Nor should it feel comfortable that concussion fears will have limited impact. The long-term issue is not the current numbers or trends, but instead what might happen if there is a large-scale event -- say, a pullback by the insurance industry -- that prompts a rapid abandonment of the game by youth and school organizers.
There are other concerns for the NFL to consider as well. Even if participation levels provide an ample supply of raw numbers, there is a question of talent. If enough of the country's top youth athletes drop the sport, especially those who are capable of developing into NFL quarterbacks, the league's quality of play would diminish even if there are plenty of bodies remaining to fill rosters.
Some within the NFL believe the most significant consequence of concussion fears will not be a shortage of players but rather a shift in demographics. The economic reward of an NFL roster spot might justify the risk for those of less means, while players from more economically secure backgrounds might not feel that pull.
Author Malcolm Gladwell, among others, has posited that theory, one that Green Bay Packers president Mark Murphy acknowledged might already be underway.
Let's be clear. Concussions are a real and dangerous threat to every football player at all levels. And research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) suggests an equally dangerous consequence for players who suffer an accumulation of subconcussive hits.
At the moment, however, there is no evidence to suggest that these real concerns have threatened the NFL player supply. There might be a day when international players help populate rosters in meaningful numbers, but it's more likely to be the result of merit than need. So it goes.