Quote Originally Posted by Chinook
It's true that having so many distinctions makes it less necessary for NFL to be great all-around athletes. But by the same token, the NFL requires VERY specialized skills, and a lot of generalists wouldn't be able to make it. Add in the fact that it pretty much has a pool of one country, and I still think it's impressive that so many professional players come can be found. Basketball is the second- or third-most popular sport in the world. No one is wondering if there are 2,000 professional-quality athletes to play soccer world-wide, let alone 450.
You see I disagree with half your point. Aside for the QB, Wide Receiver, Punter the rest are positions that don't really require much skills. Heck a rugby player was drafted to the NFL and way to many players who started late played in the NFL. Not to mention there's way too many players in one team to begin with.

Basketball is most likely the second most popular sport in the world but It's nowhere, and not even close to Soccer's popularity. American's don't realize that even though soccer has been the most popular sport in the world, it has experienced massive booms in East Asia, South East Asia and Africa the last 20 years. Japan did not have a soccer league untill 1993 and now the J-league is competing against the dying sport of Baseball.

The quality of soccer in these nations are perhaps even better than those of nations like Jordan, Philippines and Lithuanian who are probably the only countries in the world that has basketball as their main sport..

Just to give you an Idea of how bad the quality of basketball is in other nations, there's no one in the world that can beat the USA dream team if they're serious enough. In soccer even a lowly team like Costa Rica, Uzbekistan can pull of an upset. These countries beating Spain is like Lithuania beating the US.