Have you turned on ESPN and noticed how your room suddenly smells of hair pomade? Or maybe you've noticed that Sean Salisbury, Woody Paige and Skip Bayless have seemed especially obnoxious recently. Maybe you've seen commercials explaining why you would be failing as a person if you forgot the name of some 315- pound punter/defensive tackle from Northwestern Nebraska A&M. There is a reason for this.
No, the pressure of midterm week has not driven you crazy. It's NFL Draft season.
All genuflect before the intricately crafted coif of Mel Kiper Jr.! Seriously though, ESPN has been hyping the NFL draft to a level I can hardly believe. At any point during the last two weeks, you had a 50 percent chance of seeing an extremely out of shape Mike Golic or Mark Schlereth and Ron Jaworski running "post" patterns at half speed on the ESPN studio field in a lame attempt to explain why some Ohio State wide receiver with a ridiculous name should be the 16th pick.
If you listened close enough, you probably heard their suit buttons screaming at the strain of trying to contain all of that post-athletic girth. I shouldn't begrudge these men their silly and self-aggrandizing draft analysis specials; this is pretty much their only chance for TV time during this part of the year. Next week, it's back into exposure-less exile until the football season.
Really, for all the crap I give these guys, Mel Kiper is the one who really milks this draft thing for all its worth. During the month of April, he is the high priest, the mullah of potential.
Mel has been doing draft analysis (and draft analysis exclusively) for 22 years. His web profile states that he does research year-round, but I prefer to think that he's like some sort of android computer.
The folks at ESPN plug him in early in April, feed him the names, stats and workout performances of the latest college stars and he spits out statements like, "A.J. Hawk is a super-talented hitting machine with superior athleticism, but I'm concerned about his lateral motion to close on elusive NFL running backs."
Then, they have him fire off a completely made up "Here's what next year's draft will look like" column, power him down, incase his hair in protective wax and throw him in the ESPN storage room for another eleven months.
The real problem with the draft is its total lack of suspense. Whatever the talking heads may say, everyone has known the top thirty best players in college since the NFL combine in February, and probably since the end of the college season.
Barring some freak injury, which by its very definition is unpredictable, those thirty guys will be picked in the first round. Kiper and Peter King can do as many mock drafts as they want, but they can't really inject any suspense into the selection process.
The real suspense comes after the draft. The big question isn't what the picks will be, but whether the players picked will become good pros, which is touched on by draft pundits much less frequently.
Remember Ryan Leaf? Well, Kiper once described him as a "real physical specimen with all the tools." Now Kiper and other draftniks discuss who will be the "next Ryan Leaf," the biggest bust in the history of the draft. Some drafts, like the one in 1997 which produced only nine serviceable pros in its first round, are notorious for turning out busts.
So the draft is largely a crapshoot. ESPN's own commercials underline this truism; Steve Smith was a third-round selection, Tom Brady was picked in the sixth round and so was Matt Hasselbeck. ESPN uses these players to show that the draft "matters" but couldn't those picks be used to show that the draft doesn't really matter?
Nobody except for NFL executives is paying attention to the last few rounds. Kiper has yet to have his "NFL Draft Seventh Round Preview Spectacular." So why turn the draft into a month-long media extravaganza when for every Peyton Manning there's an Akili Smith or a Tim Couch? I don't know.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to buy some pomade, grease my hair up like Mel's and pray to the draft gods that my Vikings make smart picks. I feel like that's just as effective as anything.
