Rationalizing one's love for the NFL Draft is trying to explain the inexplicable. Some random Tuesday morning you will find SportScenter going through the top cornerback prospects and your eyes will be opened to how much we desperately need this event, at this time of year. I can't wait for Saturday, and I know I am surrounded by others who are foaming at the mouth for a football fix.
That's part of what puts this draft on its own playing field. It comes at a time where the Super Bowl is a vague memory (okay, maybe you can blame that on the booze) and training camp is still a couple months away. The NBA Draft? Please. While entertaining, it comes not more than a couple weeks after the Finals. We are hardly starving for basketball at that point.
And even if the NBA did have its draft in say, August, we still wouldn't yearn for it the same way we yearn for this April Day, live from the Marriott Marquis.
But what sets the NFL's yearly Youth Movement apart from the NBA's is that the former isn't taking its talent from the local sandboxes and jungle gyms.
In the NFL, we know the players, have watched them perform, and while we may not be fully in tune with how each guy will pan out on the pro level, we at least have some semblance of an idea. The same can't be said after, say, last year, when I saw the Celtics take Al Jefferson, let out a "huh?" and then was greeted with clips of him playing against the cast of "Little Rascals." Good stuff. Hey, we got lucky and Big Al has panned out, but for every one of him there's a Kedrick Brown. You see where I'm going with this.
Whereas NBA teams develop their depth, they can't rely on the draft to supplement depth. If you aren't in the lottery, great chances are your dude ain't panning out. And as far as the second round goes, off the top of my head I can only think of one pick who ever made something of himself, Nick Van Exel.
Then take a look at how many guys picked from lower rounds are scattered around the NFL, and you see what a crapshoot it can be. There's the entertainment factor. Matt Jones, the superfreak quarterback-turned-receiver from Arkansas who runs a 4.37 40 will be drafted towards the end of the first. Are you ever excited about a late first round pick in the NBA? Of course not. I don't think even the GM's know who they're drafting at that point.
That's where the entertainment is. It's a science, but even the scientists see their experiments blow up in their faces from time to time. Just ask the Bengals' front office.
But like an archaeological dig, you can strike a prize if you just dig enough. ESPN has put together a great campaign to get us to watch this year, where they give us the career paths of late round steals like Zach Thomas, Tom Brady and Hines Ward. They hit the nail on the head with this one; anything can happen, although you don't know it at the time. And that is why my residence is having a Draft party and will stay in tune through that fourth round on the first day, and will at least check in periodically on Sunday.
Professional football's version of a playground kickball game (You got him, okay, I'll take that guy then) is the essence of building your program from the ground up. The talking heads have spouted a great deal of info to me over the past month, enough so that I think I am well versed in the ways of what team is in the greatest need for offensive line depth and have had "tweener" defined for me more times than Mel Kiper, Jr. has said "mechanics."
I would use this space to acknowledge the much anticipated arrival of Chris Berman back on our screens, but he preempted such a return and is now using "Baseball Tonight" as his forum for '70s jam band references and creating new hand gestures to get his point across. (The man invented the style, I'm pretty sure.)
Here is an NFL Draft moment that stands out for me.
In 2003, Drew Rosenhaus, slick haired agent/pretend best friend to two hopefuls from the U, Jerome McDougal and Willis McGahee, is sitting in a room with the two young men for all of us to see. I remember McDougal in a Celtics jersey, but obviously I would. If you recall, McGahee's getting drafted in the first round was fully up in the air after his horrific knee injury in the Fiesta Bowl.
So what is the best way to make people interested in your client? What is the best way to make teams jealous? "A fake phone call should do the trick," the manipulative yet resourceful Rosenhaus must have thought. So there, on not only mine, but more importantly on the screens of coaches and GM's everywhere, was McGahee, talking on his cell midway through the first round as if it had been "blowin' up" all day
But on the other end was actually Rosenhaus, only 15 feet away but out of view of the camera lens, calling his client to make him appear busy. And the Bills, probably thinking someone else might grab him first, snagged McGahee with the 23rd pick, to the shock of Berman and everyone else watching. Just a goofy moment I thought you guys would appreciate. ...
But Saturday will be full of them.
