The NFL Draft started for just about the reason you’d expect: teams had grown tired of bidding against each other for the best players college players.
In 1935, Bert Bell — then co-owner of the Philadelphia Eagles — was having difficulty competing with the strongest franchises of the period, and he had seen too many top college players signed to contracts by more successful teams like the Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, New York Giants and Washington Redskins.