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).
This sounds reasonable, though if you hire the Best-Programmer-Available regardless of the presence of a specific technical skill, I'd be surprised if they really take a year to get firing on all cylinders. Maybe a month or two at most would be what I would expect in the sorts of places I've worked.
Sure, some places (especially in startup land) can't even afford to wait even a month, but that doesn't make the dynamic any less of an antipattern. Instead it's just one of the painful tradeoffs people make while they need to manage their runway extra closely.
