Lebanon, TN – With the excitement of Basketball’s Final Four approaching this weekend, it’s about time to jump into the excitement of showing the top players we’ve seen entering the NFL draft before the opportunity escapes us. It all starts on April 23-25. Because of more travel opportunities in recent years, not only based on more time due to retirement, but also because of wide-open transfer portals to allow players to move to new schools every year (we’ll take that as a “good” for our purpose along with a lot of “bad” we see regarding the current NIL/transfer portal status). We still love, however, the competitiveness displayed on the playing fields of games to retain our obsession. That keeps us coming back despite recent, disliked changes with college football leadership!
Too Mobile, Agile, and Flexible?
The past few seasons, we’ve seen players not only make moves to more and different schools, but in many cases also forgo four years of college to enter the pros. Luckily for our exposure to see more players perform than ever before, our timing is impeccable in many cases. We select games before the course of each season, and in some cases, we see the best of the best players without that goal in mind.
For instance, in 2025, we knew Indiana improved, but did we expect to see eventual Heisman winner, Fernado Mendoza, a transfer from Cal, play in three significant, historical Hoosier victories? No. We envisioned their game at home against Illinois to be a worthy trip to see a game at Memorial Stadium for the first time. And not only did they dominate the Illini, but they also ended up in the CFP where we had already intended to get tickets for the Peach Bowl semi-final game and the Championship game in Miami. Talk about seeing the best of the best.
Serendipitous shooting gives us Top Players in action
Slating regular season games at Oregon, Notre Dame, Penn State, Arkansas and Vanderbilt boded well for us. And perusing mock drafts, we find many underclassmen from previous seasons in action that our plan provided us with much of the top talent entering the draft this season. It really makes our planning, traveling and photo-taking worth our entire, unique adventure.
Our only regrets come from running into camera issues whether technical or self-inflicted that preclude us from getting pictures of some players who deserve to be on these pages. We just couldn’t get them – especially when it comes to Ohio State games. We’ve missed many good shoots of key draftees because of a malfunctioning camera. On the other hand, we never know that that we may have captured a star of the future in a game we never expected to see such talent to display. Or, it’s great to capture the right offensive lineman at the right place and right time putting in a key block for another sure-fire draftee.
Just getting started here
Today’s edition features ten of the best top players from all positions predicted to possibly go in the first round. Subsequent updates will be added with some of the best talent available for key positions throughout the draft. We include notes regarding awards, stats and the particular games we watched them perform in. Enjoy our experiences and peruse our game reviews of when we saw them play. We’ll reference the reference month and year of each so you can link to the dates of games played on the right side of the page.
Right from the Top
Some of the Top Players by Position
Top Players up front on both sides offer potential value early
Next up: Best quarterbacks
Mendoza starts the wheels in motion for his position, but here may be some outstanding value on the rounds ahead as well. Not all provide assurances to any team at the next level, but It will be interesting to see what who the pros show us they think may be worth a gamble.
Speaking of Certainty, you’ll enjoy reading about our fun and interesting adventure!
Click on the title about this life-long adventure: Fifty Years of Tailgate Tales: The Good, the Fun, and the Ugly on Amazon.com. Among 740 college games attended to date now, we’ve seen all 136 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams play in person at least once. This tells our story! Read the reviews on the book page and get your copy today. If you’re trying to follow NILs and transfer portals, read what we predicted in 2023 and more. You’ll see we know what we’re talking about. In addition, we offered solutions to issues occurring that we anticipated when we wrote this book. Get it, enjoy it, and read about the many great memories captured. Maybe these will bring back some memories you encountered when we did!
- Edited and written by Stephen J. Koreivo, member of Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) and Author of “Fifty Years of Tailgate Tales: The Good, the Fun and the Ugly.”
