The NFL Draft: Lame as shit

By Patrick Daugherty

Published April 25, 2008

So here we are. Only a day away from the world’s most boring sports spectacle, the National Football League Draft. Yes, the NFL Draft. Boring. Devoid of entertainment. Vapid. Dumb. Not made for television. Who knew?

Even though it is touted as the NFL’s second biggest event of the year after the Super Bowl, I can think of three more right off the top of my head that are bigger: any preseason game, any regular season game and any playoff game — you know, the times when things actually happen?

But because of the ESPN hype machine, many of us find ourselves believing that we are actually interested in watching a bunch of old white guys huddled around a table talking about another bunch of old white guys huddled around a different table off-screen.

And then we convince ourselves it is even more awesome when they ridicule teams for not drafting the Joe Blow linebacker from Nowhere University that their 30-something “draft expert” swore should be chosen ahead of some dude from a power conference.

And both sides — the NFL experts and the sports media “experts” — are wrong so often that draft day is forgotten quicker than who finished fourth on American Idol. How many “draft moments” do you actually remember five — hell, even two — years later?

Lending even more to the absurdity is that any dumb old draft pundit, as Sports Illustrated’s Frank DeFord pointed out in a column this week, is only graded on how well they predict the draft, not prospects’ future NFL success. It’s like winning an NCAA tournament pool by picking which teams are going to get in the tournament instead of which ones will win it.

But since it is the NFL and ESPN (and the NFL Network, too), we get talked into thinking we are watching the second coming of the Ice Bowl or something. Wow! I can’t believe they picked a strong safety instead of a free safety!

All the while, a bunch of nitwits sit in the crowd wearing New York Jets jerseys, and one quarterback from the Big Ten sits at a table looking anguished because he’s fallen 20 spots further than Todd McShay thought he would.

The only other league with the audacity to turn its draft into an event, the NBA, at least gives us a star-studded affair where it is possible to have actually heard of most of the people being drafted. (I know Major League Baseball started televising its draft last year; it was on ESPN2, big whoop.) Charles Barkley is the commentator, and it’s over in less than two hours.

Recently, even the NFL acknowledged the draft is long in the tooth after it cut the times teams have to pick in the first two rounds from 15 minutes to 10 minutes. Huh?

But let me get this straight: We are told this event is as important as any game and can change the future of a franchise, but hey, slowpoke, you can’t take longer than 10 minutes to decide who you want? By Jesus, it takes half that long to choose a bombardment team in high school gym. Give teams time to make the right choice and remove this abomination from the air.

All you sadists can sit and watch for 125 hours this weekend. I’ll be watching the NBA playoffs.