All these guys who are talking about guys who are talking about good high school football players who ran under 10 minutes are missing the point. The point is that what makes an exceptional football player, a player who can make it in the NFL (not just as a starter on the local high school team in some podunk town), are exactly the things that make for a TERRIBLE distance runner.
Here are some of the things an NFL player will have:
1. High muscle mass and body weight.
2. High proportion of fast twitch muscle fibre
3. Optimised performance of energy production from ATP-CP
4. Big, strong, durable upper body
All of these things will make him a crappy distance runner, and unlikely to go under 10 minutes. A high school kid who is good at football and can go under 10 minutes is simply a compromise athlete - probably not good enough to make it in the NFL partly BECAUSE he is able to do things like run under 10 minutes. That's not to say that he won't be able to develop into an NFL player, but by that time HE PROBABLY WON'T BE RUNNING UNDER 10 MINUTES ANY MORE.
Now, if a smaller NFL player (DB, receiver) deliberately lost a bunch of weight (and along with it, a fair bit of strength), and trained his cardiovascular system intensively, then yes he might be able to do 10 minutes. BUT THEN HE WOULDN'T BE AS GOOD AT FOOTBALL ANYMORE. He would be smaller, slower and weaker.
There is no single "general athleticism" attribute. The requirements of each sport are specific. Athletes don't have "athleticism", they have strength, or power, or cardiovascular endurance, or kinesthetic awareness, or speed. Or they have some combination of these attributes that matches well with the requirements of their sport and allows them to excel.
Training adaptations are SPECIFIC. Optimising strength, size and speed over short distances (10-40m) only happens by DETRAINING cardiovascular endurance. This is why sprinters and NFL players don't run distance - it would make them worse at what they do.
Sport scientists everywhere are reading this thread and cringing.