This is a really, really cool idea. I think the danger with BPA is that if you're hiring them way too early (like... a year before they'd be firing on all cylinders), then you risk them disengaging and churning out. NFL teams have a constant amount and kind of work that's predictable every season that prevents them from misallocating investments like this - and prevents players from misallocating their labour. Software teams, on the other hand, risk building the wrong thing, and hiring people for problems that won't come about until they build the right thing. Which usually means that those people get antsy (I definitely had this experience, but in a marketing role, which is even more stage-dependent than working dev positions, so I'm probably a little more sensitive to the chance and impact of being hired too early).