In this column, I’m going to blaspheme the football gods. Even though I block off my Sunday every week in the fall and juggle three to four fantasy football leagues every year, I really don’t follow the NFL draft, the latest iteration taking place this past weekend. It’s not like I have an ignorance of the players being selected — I love college football too. I just can’t buy into the months-long hype that the draft has become.
As a primer for the uninformed, the 32 NFL teams get together in Radio City Music Hall in New York and try to build up their squads from a crop of college players. Teams pick in reverse order of their finish the previous season, so the Steelers pick last this season, but the order can change due to trades over seven rounds.
Northwestern usually doesn’t have a great presence at the draft, and this year was no different. Not a single Wildcat was selected, not even our star running back, Tyrell Sutton. He is a good pass-catching running back though, and was picked up as a free agent by the Packers. He’s got an uphill climb to make a splash in the NFL but it’s not unheard of. Of course, with very few of our players appearing, the interest for the student body is lessened. Sutton wasn’t the only Wildcat to sign as a free agent, however: Defensive tackle John Gill signed with the Lions and wide receiver Eric Peterman signed with the Bears.
Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a lifelong Chicago Bears fan, which may be the source of my bitterness when it comes to the draft. When your team’s history of first round picks in the past 20 years includes Rashaan Salaam, Curtis Enis, Cade McNown, David Terrell, Marc Colombo, Rex Grossman, Michael Haynes and Cedric Benson, it is pretty easy to get bitter about the draft. Luckily, the Bears traded this year’s first-round pick, a 2010 first-round pick, a 2009 third-round pick, and a nubile, fresh virgin to the Denver Broncos for the coolest diabetic since Wilford Brimley: stud quarterback Jay Cutler. It took 70 years between Sid Luckman and Cutler, but the Bears finally got their quarterback. The Bears decided (wisely) to get out of the first day of the draft, and picked up a lot of nice pieces for their team on Sunday. No one really watches the second day anyways though.
The significant problem with the draft is that the first round lasts an eternity for no good reason. In 2007, the first round of the draft lasted over six hours — for only 32 picks. The teams have had since the end of the season three months ago to prepare for this, and all they have to do is take a player they have decided they wanted. Why do they even need 10 minutes? Once the first round ends, the whole process magically becomes faster, since they can finish five rounds on Sunday and yet only churn through two rounds on Saturday. This year the draft got moved into the late afternoon, so it was on during primetime. I liked it better in the morning so I could sleep through it.
In between the commercials and the actual picks, we have the manufactured drama created by inviting various players to the draft. I had enough of this shoved down my throat with the whole Brady Quinn (former Notre Dame star quarterback who now plays for the Browns) fiasco in 2007. Quinn was expected to go high in the first round, but he kept falling. As each team that “needed” a quarterback passed on him, the cameras would cut back to Quinn. Eventually, he was taking by the hapless Cleveland Browns, who had traded for a second first round pick to grab him. Something like this happens every year, and the dramatic moments are forced and tiring.
And then there is Chris Berman. Listening to his tired catchphrases and weak analysis is the mental equivalent of sticking your hand into a garbage disposal. It just detracts from the analysis of some of their better experts like Mel Kiper Jr. or Todd McShay to have a brutish oaf like Berman talking about how a player “IS GOING ALL…THE…WAY!” Berman is there for “personality,” and it’s a personality that got tired before I was even born.
While not directly related to the draft, the NFL scouting combine is a week-long crap factory that kicks off the draft season in February (three weeks after the Super Bowl, the off-season is basically over). Basically, NFL teams have the prospects come in, and then they are studied and analyzed like race horses. We see players who under perform at the combine become stars in the NFL (Anquan Boldin), and players that tear the combine up become absolute busts (Ki-Jana Carter? Mike Mamula?). Scouts and general managers may have learned by now not to put too much stock in how fast a guy runs a 40-yard dash in spandex, but plenty of analysts haven’t. Horrifically, the 40-yard dash this year gave us footage of Alabama offensive tackle Andre Smith running at the Alabama pro day without a shirt, and it was as horrible as you would imagine it to be.
I still watched the NFL draft because I really love the NFL. Also, watching the Oakland Raiders make seven horrible draft picks was pretty entertaining. But I muted Chris Berman.