Owns your brain; courtesy nfl.com
The draft has to be the second most useless thing the NFL does after the combine, but only narrowly ahead of the preseason games. Watching the draft means you watch hours and hours of some jackass (Mel Kiper Jr.) blow hot air out of his ass about how great college player X is or how dumb front office person Y is. You know what Mel? Most of the time you have no idea what you are talking about. The NFL and the college games are just plain different. The elite level of talent in the NFL blows away what most of these players played against in college. In a college game there are two, three NFL caliber players, six tops. Guess what? In the NFL they are all NFL caliber.
Blow-hard with bad hair; courtesy espn.com
The draft is kind of like Christmas. For months beforehand we get bombarded with a media blitz celebrating one event. Except its like a terrible Christmas. Instead of Santa, who shows up a couple months before Christmas, talks about Christmas, is seen everywhere, makes children happy, etc., we get the aforementioned Kiper. He also shows up months beforehand, but like I said blathers on with ridiculous predictions. He also doesn't make children happy, he might even make them cry with that hair helmet. Also, Christmas is great because there are parties in the proceeding weeks. No one throws a draft party on the day of the draft much less two weeks before. Finally, Christmas day arrives, things move quickly. You get the presents knocked out in thirty minutes, maybe you do it in the morning, the evening, or both, but it's efficient. The draft you sit for hours, and hours, and hours. You listen to these so-called experts who make wild speculation for mere entertainment purposes, then the Commissioner steps to the microphone, says a name, and for the next 15 minutes the draft-niks go back to wild speculation of why that was a good pick, bad pick, how many Super Bowls the team will win now.
There are two reasons why this lacks any excitement in my opinion. First, we have been bombarded with so many opinions on who will pick whom, that no scenario is really a surprise. Everyone and their mom does a mock draft. ESPN has been talking about who should go where since the last draft. It is entirely over-analyzed. The best mock draft I read was this one because it mocks the over-coverage of this non-event. The second reason this is a non-event is that this is not the NBA. This is football. The most influential player on the field is the QB, but he can't be effective if he doesn't have a line (see Campbell, Jason) or someone to throw to or hand off to, or a defense that can keep the other team off the field. In other words, one player cannot make a mediocre team a great one like Lebron did for the Cavs, or Durant does for the team in OKC. Football is such a team game that 90% of the names called on draft day are irreplaceable, that's why there are no stats like VORP or plus/minus for football; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
You don't get players like this in the NFL; courtesy zimbio.com
So to sum things up: just tell me who picked where, I don't need to watch. In fact the reason the draft is even on TV is all marketing. It puts the NFL name out there in the middle of the offseason, just in case we've forgotten about it. This is a throwback to a bygone era. When baseball ruled the NFL needed to stay relevant, especially as the excitement of the start of baseball was still going. Then there was the NBA and NHL playoffs. It made sense at the time to have a big televised event for the NFL. But the NFL's place is pretty secure since all of these things get pushed to the side for this event that in the long run rarely means anything (Tom Brady was a 6th round pick, for example). It is now simply a chance for the NFL to flex it's muscles and say "look how much everyone loves us." That and sell some more hats and jerseys.
