Passing on the Draft?

 

Finally, the hour is nigh. For months, the airwaves have been filled with speculation and prognostication from an assortment of talking heads. Gallons upon gallons of ink have been spilled. Candidates have been proclaimed the chosen one on one day, and then dismissed the next. The future hangs in the balance. 

That paragraph would seem bombastic if I were writing on the eve of a presidential election. Of course, I'm not. I'm writing about the NFL Draft, which begins in a few hours.

If anyone had any doubts that football is the king of sports in this country, they need only look at how the NFL has turned its annual draft into one of the biggest sporting events of the year. Yes, I just wrote that. Despite the fact that the baseball season is in full swing, and the NBA and NHL are in the midst of their respective playoffs, there will be no bigger sporting event today than the NFL Draft. An event where a guy in a suit announces the names of players selected by each NFL Team, then shakes hands with each player and poses for a photographs while fans in the audience cheer (except for the Jets fans, who boo everything).

It's really quite a phenomena how popular the draft has become. Since the clock ticked to :00 in the Super Bowl, football fans and those who cover the game have been immersed in creating mock drafts, dissecting game film, and evaluating scouting combines and pro days. "Draft Experts" Mel Kiper Jr. and Todd McShay have been on ESPN nearly every single day and probably haven't seen a bed in months. And yes, there's even a movie about the draft (which I was convinced was an April Fool's joke until I actually saw it on a theater marquee).

How exactly did we get here? How did a sporting event that involves no physical action become one of the most watched sporting events of the year? The simple answer is marketing and television. NFL officials decided at some point that it wasn't acceptable for people not to be thinking about football in the months between the Super Bowl (February) and the beginning of training camp (August). No, people had to be thinking about football all year round. And what better way to do that than by turning the annual selection of college players in May into a three-day extravaganza, hosted and promoted by ESPN (and the insufferable Chris Berman). And the fans are eating it up.

As a sports fan, I'm not immune to the fervor surrounding this event. In baseball they say that hope springs eternal very opening day. For football fans, hope springs eternal every draft day. It's the day when every fan can dream that their team has picked the next star, or stars, who will take them to the promise land. And it's always interesting to see the machinations that team executives go through to disguise their true intentions and maneuver their way to a higher (or lower) draft pick. Still, sometimes I have to step back and wonder how an event that is so meaningless in a cosmic scale can accrue so much attention. And that's the dilemma I've always had as a sports fan. Why do I care so much about this stuff?

But, in the end, I'll likely be tuning in for some of the draft tonight, watching to see what teams Johnny Football and Teddy Bridgewater and Jadeveon Clowney will play for. But I won't feel good about it.