The NFL Draft

I hate the NFL draft. There I said it. Now you may be thinking to yourself, "He must not watch the NFL," actually your probably thinking "Why am I reading this random jerk's blog, his opinion doesn't matter." Well your wrong about the NFL, I am an avid fan who follows the NFL from July to February. I follow not only my team, the Philadelphia Eagles (who now look like the Denver Nuggets with the new retros), but also the league as a whole watching every game that is on television during the season. You may notice that I do not include April since I think the NFL draft is the most overblown event on the sports calendar. We all know its ESPN's way to force out a relevant sporting event in April since the first round NBA playoffs are hit or miss and April baseball sucks. They are able to spend two months talking about who will be picked where and by what team even though it does not matter as much as they make you think. Since I care so little about this event I refuse to look up statistics but my guess is only 20 percent of first round picks and 5 percent of draft picks make any kind of impact on their team in the first year and only about 50 percent of first round picks and 25 percent of all draft picks make an impact in the league at all. The NBA definitely has a much higher rate of draft pick impact, the NHL is also probably higher (if I care about the NHL), and its probably a little higher than MLB. The issue at hand is the power the NFL has on sports media so I am forced to listen to the same things about each player over and over while insignificant rumors make players jump up and down draft boards. The fact is each team evaluates each position and waits for other teams to draft and pick the best player left at whatever position needs to be filled. We can talk all we want but it resolves absolutely nothing about the draft. The fact that there is 20 minutes between each team ESPN should scale back the coverage before and cover teams actually playing the sport and save the idol chatter for between picks instead of filling time with redundant idol chatter and feel good stories about the lineman who worked on a farm or the cornerback who used to run from bullies as a kid.