The NFL Draft

As a boy, I watched the Cincinnati Bengals select Dan Wilkinson with the first pick of the 1994 NFL Draft. I was enthralled, and listened to the commentators first speculate about who might be picked, and then breathlessly hail Wilkinson as the finest defensive lineman conceivable once he had been announced. I then remained engaged as the telecast proceeded to present the same thing over and over for the better part of that day. It went on even through most of the next day. It seemed thrilling and important. In retrospect, I was displaying all the maturity one would expect of an eleven year old by deeming the exercise worth my time.

The NFL's player draft goes back to 1936, for most of the intervening years was of interest to no one except the teams themselves. It wasn't long before my first experience that the draft was handled by conference call. Who would ever have guessed that people would actually sit still and watch it?  The bulk of the broadcast consists of "experts" make baseless guesses about what moves teams will make. This is punctuated every fifteen minutes by some middle aged man coming out and reading a name into a microphone. Some college player in a blazer and striped tie comes out grinning, and poses for a picture with the middle-aged man while holding a jersey and wearing an unpleasant-looking ballcap.

Why the hype which comes closer and closer every year to that of the Super Bowl itself? I'm told that people are suffering from withdrawal after roughly three months after the last game of the previous season. I guess I'm not that hard up for the things that pro football offers, or I'm more imaginative about substitutes. Just within the area of sports content, each of the other three sports fill some or all of that time. For an addiction to football itself, a fix lies with the return of arena football, which I've always been a fan of. Of course, the truly adventurous could find non-athletic endeavors to fill the time, many of which are even more productive than living vicariously through people you don't know.

Of course, I'm not that adventurous much of the time. I enjoy football as much as any reasonable person, and have long been a support of my own hometown squad. Maybe because of how bad they have been until recently, I never had any expectations that any college players could come in and turn things around. That sets me apart, because others see the new additions as saviors. Before they play a down, they're granted adulation and playing contracts bigger than most of the veteran players on the teams they are drafted by.

Life is very, very short. There's only time for the very most important things in this lifetime. I count athletics among those things. Strength, endurance and speed remain of paramount importance to humanity, and there's no better way than sports to test and expand their limits. I don't count the Draft as part of that. To get so worked up about it makes no more sense than than it would to get all excited about new cast members on Saturday Night Live. I love that show equally well, but would see no purpose in celebrating people I know nothing about yet, and wasting hours in the bargain. I propose that next time, we all just wait for the thing to be over, and then read the same information in five minutes the day after.