8 Reasons the NFL Draft Sucks

Patrick here, and in this my first post, I thought I'd expose the blog-o-sphere to my rambling, drunken, incoherent, Irish cynicism by sharing with y'all 8 reasons the NFL Draft sucks buttery monkey nuts, and a few ways to make it better.

8. Everything before the draft

During the lead up to the NFL Draft, the average football fan is forced to suffer through hundreds of hours and thousands of pages of coverage of the lead up to the NFL draft, including hours upon hours of live coverage of the draft combine, which has to be the most boring thing ever shown on TV. I'd rather watch some freakish amalgamation of Kathy Lee Gifford, Ted Turner, and Eugene Levy re-enact Two Girls, One Cup (sorry, no link) than watch a bunch of college students perform a series of activities that may or may not be minimally indicative of their potentials for success in an altogether different activity. Watching the NFL combine is like watching NBA players stretch before the tip, only if there were no game afterwards and the stretching lasted for 3 days.

7. Mock Drafts

Allow me to offer my theory on mock drafts. There is one real mock draft. It is the combined brain product of Roger Goodell, Sean Salisbury, Bill Parcells and the previous year's Oscar winner for best supporting actor (this year: This guy). They leak their final draft to Peter King, who publishes it, claiming it to be the product of months of determined investigative reporting. Todd McShay takes it, switches two picks, and publishes his own version, and then everyone else slides one or two picks around to make it seem like they did their own research. The general managers get a gander at the mocks, say things like "hmmm, Sean Salisbury really liked this guy?" and instantly decide to draft him. Matt Millen is not allowed to look at them.

6. Mel Kiper's Hair

We all know Mel Kiper has no more NFL expertise or experience than anyone reading this sentence right now, right?

5. "Busts"

I'm tired of everyone constantly grousing over busts. Consistently, around one-third of first round draft picks every year can be quantified as busts, more if you work under the assumption that a first round draft pick should be, at the very least, an above-average NFL player. To prove my point, let's go back to the 2003 NFL Draft. Four years seems a fair amount of time for evaluation, yes?

Good Picks: Carson Palmer (1), Andre Johnson (3), Terence Newman (5), Jordan Gross (8), Kevin Williams (9), Terrell Suggs (10), Marcus Trufant (11), Ty Warren (13), Troy Polamalu (16), George Foster (20), Jeff Faine (21), Willis McGahee (23), Dallas Clark (24), Larry Johnson (27), Nick Barnett (29), Nnamdi Asomugha (31)

Jury's still out: Calvin Pace (18), Rex Grossman (22), Kwame Harris (26)

Busts: Charles Rogers (2), Dewayne Robertson (4), Johnathan Sullivan (6), Byron Leftwich (7), Jimmy Kennedy (12), Michael Haynes (14), Jerome McDougle (15), Bryant Johnson (17), Kyle Boller (19), William Joseph (25), Andre Woolfork (28), Sammy Davis (30), Tyler Brayton (32)

Let's look at the totals: 16 "good picks" (and I'm being generous here; it took Carolina three years to find Jordan Gross a position, Terence Newman gets beat in coverage more than Jason Kidd's wife, George Foster was traded with Tatum Bell for Dre Bly, and McGahee demanded out of Buffalo as quickly as he could) and 13 bad picks (and that's without counting Rex Grossman, who "led" his team to the Super Bowl the same way Brian Scalabrine "led" the Celtics to 66 wins). The first round is a coin flip as to whether you'll get a solid player or a coat rack. So stop all your grousing about this bust or that bust and get over it. (As an aside, yes I know Calvin Pace had double digit sacks last year, but before then he was a complete bust, and the Jets were morons to give him the contract they did. Speak of the devil: )

4. The New York Jets

Living in New York, there are two kinds of fans: Giants fans tend to be older (with obvious exceptions, Fooxy), are devoted, enthusiastic, and impressively civil, especially for New Yorkers. Jets fans, on the other hand, are boorish, juvenile, capricious and basically intolerable. They boo at every opportunity, generally to show how much more about football they know than do the Jets front office personnel. They always sound like idiots. Fortunately, we have links like this one to entertain ourselves with. Schadenfreude is a marvelous thing.

3. The 2nd Round

I don't know what to think about the second round. I guess there are supposed to be good players left, but for every Anquan Boldin and Osi Umeniyora, there are eleven Tyrone Calicos and Alonzo Jacksons. They should just skip it and go right to the third round.

2. The 6th round

If I have to be reminded one more time about how the Patriots took Tom Brady in the 6th round, I'm gonna rip Stuart Scott's glass eye right out of its socket and feed the shards to Suzy Kolber (oh wait, sorry). IT WAS LUCK! PURE, BLIND, STUPID LUCK!! If the Patriots had the slightest inkling that Tom Brady was going to turn into one of the top three Quarterbacks of all time, do you really think they would have been sitting there, biting their nails for 197 picks, heaving huge sighs of relief as guys like Leif Larsen and Mareno Philyaw came off the board? You know who else was picked in the sixth round that year? Adalius Thomas! He's a Pro Bowler! Let's talk about him! Wait, fuck, he's still a Patriot. Spergon Wynn it is.

1. The Length

Last year the first round (the first round!) of the NFL draft lasted six hours and eight minutes. To put that in perspective, I could drive from my house in Ossining, NY to Richmond, Virginia, leaving when the Fins announce their Jake long pick, and arrive right around the time the Giants wrap up the first round. This is a travesty. No sporting event should last this long. The NFL is taking steps to rectify it - this year they've changed the time allotted per first round pick from 15 minutes to 10. Nevertheless, this isn't nearly enough to fix what could, under the right circumstances, be a very entertaining program. If I ran the NFL, here's how I would fix it:

How to fix it:

1. 5 minutes per first round pick, 3 minutes per second round pick, 1 minute 30 seconds for every pick after. That maxes out at 2:40 for the first round, 1:36 for the 2nd round, and depending on supplemental picks, some where around 4:00 for the last five rounds. That's 8 hours, only about 4 of which count. I know this doesn't leave much time to complete trades, but 5 minutes should be enough for the first round, and who gives a damn if the KC Chiefs don't have time to complete their franchise altering move of swapping 6th rounders with Jacksonville for a conditional 7th rounder in 2012?

2. Live coin flips. You know every once in a while you hear a story in late March or early April about how the Raiders won their coin flip with the Browns and will pick fourth? PUT THIS ON TV!!! Better yet, put it on the day of the draft. Make it a mystery who gets that all important 4th pick until half an hour before the draft starts anyway. It's great theater. I'd even take this a step further. Instead of coin flips, make it arm wrestling. Make all the GM's arm wrestle each other, and whoever wins gets the highest pick. In fact, I'm pretty sure the NFL is going to implement this soon, because that's the only explanation for Matt Millen still having a job.

3. Switch up the announcers. Every year, we are forced to watch the incredibly awkward commissioner of football (whoever he is) trudge on stage and monotonously utter name after name after name. I say we need some spice. Have each team trot out their own representative to make the announcement. If possible, make it a player who plays the same position as the pick. So, if the Green Bay Packers (my favorite team) take a QB like Chad Henne late in round one this year, we can watch Aaron Rodgers pretend to look excited, while secretly wanting to kill Henne and everyone in a 500 foot radius.

4. Forbid the following teams from having picks in the first three rounds: The New York Jets, The Philadelphia Eagles, and the New England Patriots.

The NFL Draft should be fun, and if the bigwigs at Goodell's office would listen to me, it would be. Of course, the NFL will never listen to me. It only listens to men of great depth and insight, with years of experience and know-how. You know, like Matt Millen.