Information Cascade – NFL Draft
It happens every year. A college football player that is considered to be a lock to go in the top few picks or at least the first round of the NFL draft will fall to the second round or even further. The reasoning is often unclear – some players have potential injury concerns, questions about their character, or they just slide for really no particular reason. This drop is very embarrassing for these guys who often attend the draft in person with their family and friends expecting to be selected in the first round. While some of the prospects that have fallen in recent drafts have not panned out, the vast majority end up having extremely successful careers, clearly using their draft day fall as motivation.
While some of these draft falls are due to valid concerns such as poor physical testing or medical analysis revealing a potential injury, many of the players slide for no other reason than information cascades and wisdom of the crowd. After a certain number of teams have passed on a player, other teams’ decision to draft that player or not quickly become influenced heavily by the other teams passing on the player so much so that even if they have no negative reports on the player and value him highly, they will still pass on him as they assume that the other teams must have some other concerning information and do not want to be the team that looks foolish by drafting the player. They assume that the wisdom of the crowd, many other teams not drafting the player, must be correct and end up also not selecting the player who will then slide down in the draft, often for no reason at all.
Article (April 26, 2019): https://www.courier-journal.com/story/sports/nfl/2019/04/26/nfl-draft-hopefuls-green-room-slide-can-cruel/3592826002/