Donny Loved Bowling said:
What's stopping a stud college freshman from dropping out of school and signing with the AAF for one season, then jumping to the NFL as a marquee free agent? Can't see how he'd be draft eligible, since he's clearly not an amateur anymore.
Stud or no stud, the system is the system. To the best of my knowledge, there are only three ways to get into the NFL . . . traditional draft, supplemental draft, or as an UDFA. Each of those have a structure, an associated pay scale, limits on how much you can make, and multi-year rights for the acquiring team. As already discussed, it doesn't really help players to avoid getting drafted and usually involves a player losing tons of money.
Cameron Wake is a pretty decent comparison to your example. He played at Penn State for 2 years (2002 and 2003). He didn't get drafted in either the 2004 or 2005 NFL drafts. He then played in the CFL for 2 seasons (2007 and 2008) and did very well. Already well established as a pass rushing edge player, the Dolphins signed him to a 3-year, $2 million contract with only $500,000 guaranteed in 2009 at age 27.
IIRC, players that were UDFA's are allowed to sign an extension a year sooner than drafted players can. In Wake's case, MIA gave him a 5-year extension worth $33.8M including a $7 million signing bonus after three seasons instead of four (at age 30).
I don't know . . . is having to get paid on the extreme low side of the pay spectrum for 3 years worth the ability to sign wherever you want to start your career? In Wake's case, it took him 6 years since he played in college to make it to the NFL and didn't make any substantially amount of money until he was 30.
As for your question, your stud freshman joining the league after a year in the AAF would fall under the same guidelines. He could only make a very limited amount for 3 years no matter what, and his NFL team could still use other rights to force him to stay.