Fuck the Draft

This shit has gotten out of hand. Once upon a time, the draft was an opportunity to restock after in-season steroid abuse and off-season alcohol abuse depleted your roster. The draft was something like 20 rounds long and BAC was taken as an important measurement for scouting.

Look what they did to poor golden boy! Ill bet he had a big smile on his face after the anal probe portion of the combine.

Now, however, the draft resembles a stock show or a slave auction, except everyone picked in the first 3 rounds becomes a millionaire, admittedly a considerably better deal for the participants. All potential draftees are poked, prodded, quizzed, examined, analyzed, objectified, and anally probed(probably). Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent on scouts to watch tape, watch games live, interview players friends and families, examine the tire pressure in their cars and do paternity tests on all potential bastard children. And what do you get for all that? Theres still a 50% shot your 1st-3rd round pick will suck donkey balls and it only gets worse the lower the picks go.

But its understandable for the teams to go crazy, theres gonna be probably 2-3 guys getting $30mil in guaranteed money next week and a whole lot of other guys who are gonna be making more than Devo can get you in court for a slip-and-fall in front of the deli counter at Pathmark. Theres a lot invested in these guys. What doesn't make sense is why we fans go crazy for the draft. Listening to the hype about these guys, you would think every first rounder will be the biggest star on their team come September. But really, these guys will be carrying Gus Frerotte's and Terry Cousin's luggage and getting duct taped to goalposts all summer. We spend so much time ingesting hype, we lose all perspective about these rookies. Rare is the Matt Ryan or Ben Roethlisberger story. Much more often, guys have trouble adjusting to the NFL, get panned, everyone forgets about them then something clicks or they get traded and they make their way back up to starter status.

Sucking the blood out of our brains, where we need it most.

So we go crazy over an event which we will not really know the results of for at least a couple of years, BUT WE DO IT EVERY YEAR! Because the hype must be maintained year round, there is a whole industry supporting the draft now. I used to think it was ridiculous that this one event could support Mel Kiper Jr. year round. Now, in addition, theres Todd McShay and any number of other self described experts who are pretty much terrible at their jobs. But they don't let that stop them, and why should they? Their cousins in the news industry, the professional Hardball and O'Reilly guests, have made inane bloviation a supposedly admirable art form. Those people are actually doing real harm to the country with their retarded opinions. At least the football guys are only hurting the (mostly) already mentally challenged.

The infamous 2007 Kiper/McShay Draft Day Hair Trade.

"So BH, what set off this messianic truth-telling rant?"
Good question. The world is so chock full of mock drafts, previous year draft analysis and debates about how the Lions will screw up this draft, you'd think the well was dry. Enter Thomas Neumann with what even he admits is a stupid idea: the mock draft of past draftees by current teams. It essentially boils down to "Which Hall-of-Famer would your team pick based on their current needs?". This has to be one of the stupidest things I have ever read. There is not even a tenuous connection to reality here. This mock draft attempts to tear a hole in the time-space continuum. I used to be a little self-conscious about not having cable anymore. Sure, I miss out from time to time on sporting events, but 95% of what I miss is this verbal diarrhea that unceasingly spews from the mouths of these half-wits.

The hype must be stopped. ESPN must be stopped. The NFL must be stopped. I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE DRAFT ANYMORE. Ill be watching baseball.

Call me when the real football starts.