Undrafted sportsperson
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In North American sports, an undrafted sportsperson or undrafted free agent is specific type of sportsperson who plays, or attempts to play, in a professional sports league without first being selected in a draft.
In most professional sports players are drafted by sequentially aligning each team from worst to best (sometimes with a draft lottery factor to avoid having teams intentionally lose their last games to gain higher draft position) and allowing said teams to claim rights to the top players entering the league that year. Players that pass through an entire draft (usually several rounds) without being selected by any of the league's teams become unrestricted free agents, and these players are sometimes identified simply as an "undrafted free agent" and are free to sign with any team they choose. The term is most common in the National Football League, where rookies enter directly into the NFL and do not play in a minor league system. In the National Hockey League, where players are drafted out of junior ice hockey while still in their teen years and will often play several more years in the juniors or in minor league hockey, the league allows anyone over the age of 24 years who seeks to play pro hockey for the first time to bypass the draft and join any team willing to sign them as an undrafted free agent; this is generally very rare.
