Out of Control: The NFL Draft

The NFL Draft: Not your ordinary lottery!

Last week, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was quoted as saying that, “We have not found a saturation point for pro football.”  While I completely agree with this statement over here in Europe, I’m not so sure that is true in the United States.  Case in point: this past weekend’s NFL Draft.

 The NFL Draft, for those of you who don’t know, is where the 32 clubs that make up the National Football League select among the top amateur players from college football to join their teams in the hope that one day they will lead them to the Super Bowl.  Since I have been playing in Europe, I had not seen the Draft in a few years.  But I was back home in the United States visiting family over the weekend when I got completely blind-sided by how much this modern phenomenon has grown.  Every direction I turned, it was there: every article in the local newspaper, every hour of the day on ESPN (and ESPN2), and every other person I passed on the street was focused on this seemingly “boring” event (I could tell about the people because they were wearing jerseys and had their faces painted in team colors, even though it was the middle of April). 

It got me thinking that this annual ritual is probably completely foreign to European fans, and something that to the outside observer might find a little odd.  Let me explain a few peculiarities, just in the first few selections:

 #1 Pick Matt Stafford: More Bucks than Brady

The first pick of the draft, quarterback Matt Stafford from the University of Georgia, was rewarded by his new club, the Detroit Lions, with an NFL record $71 million USD contract.  THIS IS ALMOST $30 MILLION USD MORE THAN 3-TIME SUPER BOWL CHAMPION QUARTERBACK TOM BRADY IS PAID!  (Brady was drafted in the sixth round back in 2000.)  Is this fair?

 

The most peculiar thing about the draft, above and beyond the media coverage or dollars involved, is that NFL teams base their selections (for the most part) on the physical testing of athletes in just a few standardized tests, such as the 40-yard dash and the bench press.  A few hundredths of a second might mean the difference of millions of dollars to a potential draft pick.  Michael Crabtree, the best receiver to come out of college football in the last few years, slipped all the way to #10 because an injured foot kept him from running a 40 yard dash.  It will be interesting to see how Oakland will feel about this in a few years, having passed on him with the 7^th pick to select Darrius Heyward-Bey (who?) out of Maryland.  As one website suggested, “He is the king of ‘measurables’ – big, strong, and fast – but wasn’t even a dominant player in college.”  One would expect the 7^th player in the draft taken to have at least dominated in college!  He didn’t have the best quarterback throwing to him, but there were games where he didn’t even have a catch! And the Raiders justify taking him over Crabtree because of a tenth of a second in the 40?  I hope they are right!

 

I still remember back to when I was coming out of college and had my own turn as a piece of “fleish.”  (I would have used the German word had I known it then!)  I was paraded in front of 150 NFL Scouts at an all-star game, commanded to take off my shirt, and turn circles while they all jotted notes.  I imagined they were writing things like, “Amazing biceps,” “Shaped like a Greek God,” or perhaps, “Should be a male model.”  But instead, they were probably jotted down, “How did this guy break all the records at the University of Arizona?”  You see, I wasn’t an “on-paper” superstar such as a guy like Matt Stafford, and that probably explains my short stint in the NFL, and why I am playing over here in Europe.

 

Over here in Europe, things are a little different.  I signed with my first European club based on a few emails and two phone-calls (mostly centered on whether or not I would receive free pasta in Italy).  SWARCO Raiders receiver Matt Epperson needed a sponsorship for free donuts from a local donut shop in Finland during his first European season just to get by on his meager salary.  Things are just on a different scale here.  But I think that’s what makes the game more ‘PURE’ – because we are doing it for the love of the game, not for the fame or money coming our way.  (Although a few donuts are always nice!)