evaluation

The NFL Draft finished recently. I'm always amazed at how much time is spent analyzing, evaluating and determining an athlete's value and whether or not they will be successful. Grades are given for players and for teams on how well they evaluated the athletes being evaluated. 

Years later, they'll determine whether they were "correct" or not. There's pretty much a 50/50 chance. 

But, very rarely, do we talk about the setting to which the players will go. The team. The culture. The training. The encouragement or lack thereof. 

Isn't it possible that it's not the grade of the player as much as it's the grade of the place they are going? 

When the player fails, we blame the seed. But if there's no soil, water, and sunlight, the seed is doomed to fail. 

Obviously, this is much bigger than football.