Too Much of an Already Soporific Thing
0 Comments Published by Jason on Friday, April 28, 2006 at 4/28/2006 11:39:00 PM.
Is there a more over-hyped, mind-numbingly dull sports-related event than the NFL draft? It'd be bad enough if the only coverage of it consisted of the 86 day-long draft itself (okay, maybe it's only four or five and they only cover Day One), but every Sportscenter for the past three weeks has had a breakdown of a particular team's perceived draft needs by ESPN's "expert analysts," including Mel "If This Gig Ever Falls Through I Have the Hair to be a Televangelist" Kiper, Jr. On top of that, ESPN aired a two-hour "Draft Preview Special"! March Madness receives a similar glut of pre-event coverage, but that leads into coverage of actual games. It's only a few weeks into the baseball season, the NBA playoffs are underway--heck, even the NHL playoffs are underway--yet ESPN has spent more time with NFL draft predictions than covering any of those things.
So what makes the draft coverage so dreadfully painful? Well, for starters, to quote the Bard of Avon, it's "full of sound and fury signifying nothing"--or next to nothing anyway. It wouldn't take long to make quite a lengthy list of "draft busts." A lot of guys who are superb players at the collegiate level never achieve stardom in the professional ranks. Conversely, some guys who go overlooked until later in the draft wind up being great in the NFL--Favre and Brady come to mind. Certainly, by watching a lot of game tape, researching stats, hosting combines in which players run, lift, throw, catch, burp the ABC's, cross a highway blinfolded, etc., a team's coaching staff can reasonably assess a player's ability. But hardly any player is a surefire bet. As for ESPN's experts, I'm fairly certain an avid college football fan could provide equally "insightful analysis." Furthermore, I don't derive any excitement by seeing if I can correctly predict which team will pick which player. It's not March Madness. No one is printing up draft brackets and starting up office pools to see who predicts the most picks correctly. If someone somewhere actually does do such things, then I can say without hesitation he is a loser.
This is where I'd normally try to craft some sort of mildly insightful conclusion, but I've begun to drift into boredom just from pondering the NFL Draft for more than three minutes.
So what makes the draft coverage so dreadfully painful? Well, for starters, to quote the Bard of Avon, it's "full of sound and fury signifying nothing"--or next to nothing anyway. It wouldn't take long to make quite a lengthy list of "draft busts." A lot of guys who are superb players at the collegiate level never achieve stardom in the professional ranks. Conversely, some guys who go overlooked until later in the draft wind up being great in the NFL--Favre and Brady come to mind. Certainly, by watching a lot of game tape, researching stats, hosting combines in which players run, lift, throw, catch, burp the ABC's, cross a highway blinfolded, etc., a team's coaching staff can reasonably assess a player's ability. But hardly any player is a surefire bet. As for ESPN's experts, I'm fairly certain an avid college football fan could provide equally "insightful analysis." Furthermore, I don't derive any excitement by seeing if I can correctly predict which team will pick which player. It's not March Madness. No one is printing up draft brackets and starting up office pools to see who predicts the most picks correctly. If someone somewhere actually does do such things, then I can say without hesitation he is a loser.
This is where I'd normally try to craft some sort of mildly insightful conclusion, but I've begun to drift into boredom just from pondering the NFL Draft for more than three minutes.
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