Why Not NFL Draft Month? » Brats & Beer

May 22, 2007
posted under: NFL Draft, Peter King

Okay, I know I said I wasn’t going to write anything else about the NFL Draft, but this is more about the Draft as an institution, the Draft as entertainment, the Draft as a product.

I made the mistake yesterday of reading Peter King’s “Monday Morning Quarterback” column (shame on me) which was 75% slobbering praise on NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. Yeah, in his first year — not even — the guy has managed to not screw up the league, cause a labor dispute, or otherwise destroy the sport we so desperately love, but let’s wait until he’s been in office for a significant amount of time before we pronounce him the next Pete Rozell or anything.

But King can’t help his man love and ticks off a list of attributes Goodell has displayed that will cause future generations to erect monuments of ivory and marble to the great commish, no doubt with a lapdog Peter King curled at his feet.

One of the things King lists is Goodell’s never ending search for ways to profiteer enhance the league, including the idea of starting the NFL Draft on a Friday night in prime time. Now I think this is a crazy idea, but I’m all for it because it would make that Friday a defacto holiday and give us all a reason to cut out of work early, or not go in at all. Hallelujah!

But a friend and I were talking about this and it seemed to us that Goodell isn’t thinking big enough. Instead of starting the Draft on a Friday, condensing the action to a few hours of prime time TV, and then drawing the rest of it out over three days, why not make the whole first round last an entire month?

Here’s how it’d work: Each day there would be a live, two-hour prime time special featuring singers and dancers and all other kinds of entertainments, culminating in the announcement of one team’s Draft pick.

That would give ESPN and everyone else 22 hours to ruminate over that pick and to try and guess what would happen the next night. Maybe they could work a little American Idol element into it where fans would vote and teams would have to pick from the top five or ten favorites. And with days and days to work out his plans, just think how creative Ted Thompson could be with his pick (or trade thereof).

I seriously think the NFL needs to look into this idea.