Defending the draft

The NFL Draft is a profound waste of time, which, if you’ll forgive the double negative, isn’t a reason not to enjoy it. There’s always somebody trying to make the case against the draft around this time every year, an anti-glacier argument if ever there was one. Their deductive argument is generally built on two premises:

Premise No. 1: Nothing really happens at the NFL Draft — This is true. While the networks covering the draft increasingly view the event as an ideal place to unveil the latest designs in arbitrary, distracting on-screen graphics, the fact remains that this is essentially just two days of calling out the names of people you’ve never heard of.

Premise No. 2: The lead-up to the draft is over-hyped — Again, true. Back in the old all-or-nothing days, we just had SI’s word that Kelley Washington was a first-round talent. Now, every joker with a DSL line and an ESPN Insider account can spend four months vacillating over whether Alex Mack or Max Unger is the top center on the board. It’s exhausting.

As any English major who took a logic course to fulfill an undergraduate math requirement will tell you, two truths don’t guarantee a valid conclusion. Such is the essence of the deductive fallacy. Running through all the spiritually fulfilling alternatives to 16 hours of NFL Draft coverage (golf, housework, genuine human contact, etc.) is like chiding the American film-going public for making “17 Again” the No. 1 movie in the country. Nobody expects anything from a movie where Matthew Perry and Zac Efron switch bodies. Nobody expects greatness from an event where fat guys shake hands with a man in a nice suit. And that’s sort of OK.

Unless Mike Tice is in charge of the war room, there’s nothing inherently compelling in the minute-to-minute minutiae of the draft. If everybody tuning in did not tacitly accept and promote this fact, it would be a major bummer. It’s like something directed by Jim Jarmusch or David Lynch, except with more Mel Kiper Jr.

I don’t understand why the NFL sells the draft with this notion that every pick matters. It seems to me that very few picks matter, at least in the sense of providing “I remember where I was when ___ got drafted” moments. Really, how do you know who __ is going to be? I have much clearer recollections of the players I thought were going to be good, or at least significant.

In 1993, a terrible mistake was made and my father was misidentified as a Miami Dolphins front office executive and interviewed for several awkward minutes on local television about the team’s draft. It greatly confused my father as to why a Miami news station would chase an out-of-town businessman for three blocks to get his reaction to the Dolphins draft, but, feeling generous, he sang the praises of every player he was asked about, until the conversation turned to first-round pick O.J. McDuffie, a player my father famously and mysteriously despised. This harsh rebuke of the 25^th overall pick in the draft, coupled with his repeated inquiries during the interview about whether Dan Marino was still the Dolphins’ quarterback, prompted the newsman to turn off the camera and ask this odd man whether he was in fact the head of an NFL personnel department. Genuinely surprised that random citizens are not cornered for five-minute discourses on the intricacies of college scouting, dad admitted, no, he did not work for the Miami Dolphins, but if he did, he wouldn’t have cut Mark Clayton. I always took this incident as a sign that McDuffie was in line for a great pro career. It didn’t really happen, and my dad has always been happy that his stillborn post-draft interview proved so trenchant.

The 1999 draft was supposed to be the Year of the Quarterback, only it wasn’t, and we all had a big laugh about it. Overlooked is the talent that was available at running back — the Colts grabbed Edgerrin James at No. 4 and the Saints traded up with Washington to take Ricky Williams at No. 5. Nobody remembers why Indy took James in the first place — the night before the draft, they traded 26-six-year-old Marshall Faulk to St. Louis for a second- and fifth-round pick. A two and a five for Faulk — how does that never show up on the rundowns of the all-time worst trades? Yes, James was great, but allow me to suggest an alternative — keep Faulk and draft Champ Bailey at four. Or Torry Holt. Or Chris McAlister. Not exactly a dearth of viable alternatives.

Everybody likes to rip on Mike Ditka in retrospect for giving away his entire draft to get Ricky Williams, but what we forget is how inconceivable it seemed at the time that Williams would be available at No. 5. It was like a miniature version of the Brady Quinn saga that played out nearly a decade later. The Eagles hooligans have had booing Donovan McNabb thrown back in their faces for a decade, but it’s easy to forget how apoplectic everyone got over James coming off the board before Williams. I stupidly believed the Redskins would take Williams at five, to the point that I sprinted 12 blocks to my best friend’s house so we could watch the pick together. This was a year before Daniel Snyder took over, and the franchise was not yet completely under the spell of bright shiny things, so Charley Casserly accepted Ditka’s offer. The deal is considered one of the greatest hauls ever, but if memory serves, public opinion in D.C. was split pretty much 50-50.

(The lesson, as always: People are idiots.)

Over the past several years, I’ve been caught up in a curious cycle of being stranded without a television during the most pivotal moments of the draft. In 2002, I was driving through Rat’s Ass, Va., listening to the draft on the radio when Mike Tice screwed up the clock in the Vikings’ war room for the first time. I almost drove into a cable barrier when the Chiefs sprinted up to select Ryan Sims. It was like listening to a dispatch from the Blitz — nobody had any idea what was going on. Eventually, I just had to pull over and collect myself. The next year, a girl I was pursuing had two lines in a full-length production of “The Crucible,” so I spent four hours on a metal folding-chair listening to tone-deaf Arthur Miller dialogue instead of being able to see the Redskins draft Taylor Jacobs.

In 2006, I was at school in Madison, where I’d spent the better part of six months over-hyping Laurence Maroney to anyone who would listen (this was before the University of Minnesota gave up football). I wasn’t alone — the half-dozen of us on the floor who followed football were hawking the former Golden Gopher like he was unfiltered and we were Philip Morris. By the time it hit home that the draft overlapped with Madison’s Mifflin Street block party, I gave serious consideration to just bailing and watching the telecast. As usual, I was peer-pressured into sacking up for some heavy-duty day drinking. I immediately regretted my decision — it was 40 degrees and drizzly, weather that’s less than ideal for standing around in a strange backyard with a bunch of hippies and sorority girls. By late afternoon, three of my friends plied me with the promise of a friend’s house party where we could catch up on the draft. By the time New England got on the clock, two things were abundantly clear: 1) the Patriots were going to take Maroney; 2) we were at the wrong house.

This is one of those situations every college kid finds himself in at some point or another over the course of four years. We probably could have bluffed our way through were it not for another uninvited guest, a scrawny Long Island kid in a Jeremy Shockey jersey, puking all over the white area rug in the foyer. The lone roommate tasked to stand guard over the house — a severe Connecticut blonde with complicated eyebrows — began a purge of all the obvious stragglers. The pick was in. She stepped in front of the TV, remote in hand.

“This television set,” she began, “is reserved for girls who live in this apartment and boys who have slept with girls in this apartment.” The screen went black. We cleared out. It was two years before we realized that they meant to say Joe Addai.

I dunno what the moral to all of this is. I guess to enjoy the draft if you’re watching, and to enjoy something else if you’re not. Either way, we’re all on the clock.

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