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It's a conspiracy, the whole thing, and it reaches the highest level of bloodless corporate America. By that, obviously, I mean the NFL and ESPN -- but this conspiracy goes much deeper than that.
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| Mel Kiper: The patron saint of draftniks. (US Presswire) |
The NFL Draft.
For three months, it's all you hear about. The Super Bowl ends, and the sports world goes daft for the draft. Part of it, I understand. The final few months of an NBA regular season are terminally painful. Spring training interests only the goobers. Hockey sucks. So if you're a fan of professional sports, the NFL is all you've got -- and the draft is dead ahead.
Three months ahead. Long months.
So as a nation we shift our eyes from David Tyree to Jake Long. We bone up on Glenn Dorsey's tibia and Darren McFadden's children. We actually look forward to seeing the smug condescension of Mel Kiper. We break down tape with Merril Hoge. We wonder who in the hell is Todd McShay.
When the whole thing is a joke. The NFL Draft, I mean. It's a fraud. I'm not going to say it's a waste of time, because I'll be tuned in myself. Mainly I want to watch the beady-eyed Kiper, who I'm fairly certain hates McShay, spend eight hours on national television with his eventual replacement. Kiper might finally crack. He might just kill McShay.
That would give the NFL Draft something it has come to lack: a sense of reality. Right now the NFL Draft is as real as reality television, which is to say, distorted beyond recognition. Once upon a time the draft was an inexpensive version of free agency, a way for teams to pick up gobs of cheap young talent to plug into their system. Maybe some of them panned out. Maybe some didn't. Sure the draft mattered, but it was kept in perspective. It was part of the process, but only one part.
Now it's a con, a ruse, a waste of time and money. The draft cripples as many teams as it cures, maybe more, because the cost of drafting these crapshoots has skied so high. The worst spot to have is the No. 1 overall draft pick, because unless you're picking a quarterback who will win multiple Super Bowls, like Tom Brady, it's not worth the cost. And in 2000 Tom Brady was picked not No. 1, but No. 6. I mean, in the sixth round -- No. 199 overall. Apparently every NFL executive used those three months between Super Bowl XXXIV and the 2000 draft to play Parcheesi. They sure weren't studying film of Tom Brady.
But then, it's not easy separating the wheat from the chaff on draft day. It never has been -- only now, if a team winds up with the chaff, its future is chafed. The Raiders spent $68 million on last year's top overall pick, JaMarcus Russell, who might ultimately be to the NFL what Glenn "Big Dog" Robinson was to the NBA. It was Robinson's insane $68 million contract for being the No. 1 overall pick in the 1994 draft that triggered the NBA's rookie salary scale.
Russell could trigger a similar revolution in the NFL, especially if he continues to stink as badly as he stunk in limited appearances last season. You want to give a young quarterback the benefit of the doubt in his rookie season, but no rational person has that much benefit to give Russell. Only doubt. The Raiders will pay for that mistake, literally and figuratively, for years.
Kind of like the 49ers are paying right now for Alex Smith. He went No. 1 overall in 2005. He signed for nearly $50 million, then proved to be a product of Urban Meyer's system at Utah.
At that price tag, nothing less than a Super Bowl will do. And the price tag keeps rising. The No. 1 overall pick just two years ago, Mario Williams, signed for six years and $54 million -- or a large fortune less than the No. 5 overall pick just one year later. Arizona signed 2007 No. 5 pick Levi Brown for six years and $62 million, and Levi Brown is an offensive lineman.
Even if the Cardinals do win a Super Bowl during his career, which is the minimum justification for such a splurge, Levi Brown won't be the biggest reason. He will be a piece to the puzzle, but just one, just as the Dolphins have made 2008 top overall pick Long an insanely expensive supporting cast member -- $57.75 million over five years -- to whatever muck Miami has in store for its fleeced season-ticket holders.
But for eight hours Saturday, we'll watch the first two rounds of the draft like we're getting presidential election results. We'll forget that the majority of the players picked in the first and second round never, as in ever, reach the Pro Bowl. Hell, barely half the players picked among the top 10 overall selections will make the Pro Bowl. The Baltimore Sun studied the drafts from 1996-2003, a legitimately large eight-year sample size, and found that just 41 of the 80 players picked in the top 10 have played in the Pro Bowl. In that time span, Arizona picked more eventual Pro Bowl players out of the top 10 -- four -- than 30 NFL teams. And Arizona is lousy.
The real reward of the draft will come in September, when we don't have to listen to Kiper or McShay or Chris Berman but we can look with our own eyes. Reggie Bush went No. 2 overall in 2006 to New Orleans, and the Saints went from 3-13 in 2005 to 10-6 and the 2006 NFC title game -- but not because of Reggie Bush. Their best rookie that year was receiver Marques Colston, who was picked near the bottom of the seventh round, or at the end of nearly 20 hours of televised draft coverage. Three months of buildup and 20 hours of draft coverage in 2006, and nobody knew about Marques Colston -- possibly the most productive player to come out of that whole draft.
If you're still watching when this year's Marques Colston is picked in the seventh round, you've got problems. Unless you're holding out hope that Mel Kiper will lunge for Todd McShay's neck. In that event, I salute you.
