I never paid any attention to the event. I would see the owner and the new guys smiling at a conference table on the news. I figured all the owners just got together in a big room and picked. But now that it is in Cleveland I can see it is 3 or 4 days of the draft itself plus parties, dinners, parades, tours, cookouts, etc. Has it always been this big of a spectacle?
No, it hasn’t. It wasn’t even really televised until the late '70s or early '80s. Before then, it was, indeed, a rep or two from each team in a conference room, with phones to let them call their draft rooms back home. (And, back then, it was one day.)
The NFL draft as a media event took off in the '80s and '90s, when ESPN started to televise it live. The league eventually moved it to Radio City Music Hall, and for the past few years, they’ve been holding it in different cities each year, and building other fan events around the draft.
BTW, here’s a picture from the 1975 draft, which was held in a ballroom at the Hilton Hotel at Rockefeller Center in New York:
Yeah, in the 70s and early 80s, I’d just check the paper the next day.
The multi day format is fairly new. It used to be on a Saturday, you’d throw on a jersey of your favorite team and head to the local bar that afternoon and watch it, a nice back to football afternoon.
Heck, it used to be on weekdays! The 1975 draft, in the picture above, was (a) 17 rounds long (the last year it was that long), (b) held on Tuesday and Wednesday, and (c) held just two weeks after the Super Bowl.
I remember being a freshman in high school in 1980, and my group of friends were all crazed Packer fans – one of my friends had smuggled a transistor radio and an earplug speaker into algebra class, so he could hear the news updates of who the Packers had drafted in the first round. (It was a defensive lineman named Bruce Clark, who didn’t want to play in Green Bay, held out, and never actually played for the team.)
ESPN started televising the draft in 1980 (and the league was a little skeptical that anyone would actually watch it); shortly after that, the league moved the draft to the weekend.
It was typically on Saturday, or on Saturday and Sunday, for a long time, but a few years ago, the league decided to make the first round into a prime time event (much as the NBA has), and they moved the first round to its own day (which also meant they moved it to a weekday evening).
Having followed the whole hypeapalooza to varying levels during the 90’s, I’m convinced that it’s a football thing. The NBA draft is a second-tier event at best, I barely hear anything about the NHL, MLS, or WNBA drafts, and baseball uses an elaborate minor league system and barely looks at college players at all. That’s just how we roll, I guess.
The thing I have trouble wrapping my head around is how so many people get so passionate about what’s essentially a formality. Remember the old saying, the wedding is the least important day of the marriage? Same deal with the draft and NFL careers. Remember, unless the team actually puts him on the roster and signs him to a contract, the fact that they had first crack at him means nothing.
If I were to hazard a guess, it would be that NFL careers are so short, the ownership, coaches, and fans need someone who’s going to make an impact now. Miss out on the Shaquille O’Neal sweepstakes, Lakers? No problem, just wait until he gets tired of Disney World and kickstart your next dynasty then. NFL brass doesn’t have that kind of time, so the impact of every bust and bargain gets magnified a hundredfold. Even if they don’t even know which ones are going to be busts and which are going to be bargains. Hey, reality just gets in the way of a good hypeapalooza.
I’m not entirely sure I understand your point. In the NFL, 99+% of the guys who get drafted by a team sign a contract with that team within a few weeks to a few months after the draft, and the vast majority of players who get drafted in the first 3 or 4 rounds will make their teams’ rosters at the start of the season.
A very small number of draftees will hold out during the spring, and even into training camp, but the deck is stacked against a draftee who decides to not sign with the team that drafted him – playing in the CFL isn’t lucrative (and that league is on life support right now, after having to cancel last season entirely), and going back to play in college isn’t allowed. They can try to force a trade (and a very few, like Eli Manning, have been able to do so), or they can hold out for a year, and re-enter the draft the following year, but that rarely, if ever, actually happens.
I think that part of the passion behind following the draft is that fans get to play “amateur GM,” and second-guess their team’s picks. And, part of it is also hopes that your team will draft the next superstar. I’d also not discount the fact that the league has managed to manufacture fan interest in offseason things that used to, indeed, be formalities – the amount of coverage over the NFL Combine (basically, a bunch of workouts and drills for players who will be in the draft), and the amount of fan excitement over it, just astonishes me, and I’m a lifelong football fan.
I’d also say it’s the popularity of college football that helps.
My broader point is that even if the team does sign up everyone (preferably without getting financially pulverized), it doesn’t make much sense to invest so much energy and get so worked up about these players when no one has the slightest idea how good they’ll be, in some cases for years. Can’t-miss standouts crash and burn; afterthoughts turn into solid role players or even stars. All. The. Time. And even if the draft darling does live up to the hype, that doesn’t mean that he’ll stay with the team long enough to turn it around (see: O’Neal, Shaquille). Things change, fortune is fickle, crap happens. Cautious optimism or nagging unease is as far as anyone should go on Day One. (Curiously, in hindsight both would’ve been appropriate for Ryan Leaf.)
As for playing amateur GM and the college game, I see that, but then why isn’t the NBA draft in the same galaxy in terms of media coverage, fan participation, or general pop culture presence? I still think it’s because football is so much “richer”…more players (and more payroll to go with it), more positions, fewer games, shorter seasons, shorter careers, greater depth required due to so many injuries. And if the team wants to stay competitive, it has to keep replenishing.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the latter part of this – the hype and excitement is all speculation, and the “hit rate” for draft choices, particularly quarterbacks, isn’t particularly wonderful.
Also, just to note that, since 2011, the collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and the Players Association places a lot of restrictions on rookie contracts – everyone gets a four-year contract (first-round picks might get a fifth year), and there are specific ranges for salary and bonuses. It’s in managing what they pay for re-signing veterans, or signing free agents, where a team can really fall into a hole versus the salary cap.
Plus, outside of maybe a few guys at the top, there’s just no guys in the NBA draft that are likely to really help your team. It’s such a superstar driven league.
There was a pretty good recent article on Yahoo Sports that explained why fans go all gaga over the draft:
The key takeaway from that article is:
and later, the article expands on that point:
I’m not an expert on the NBA, or its draft, but I’ve often heard much the same – in any given NBA draft, there are only a handful of players who are going to make a signficant difference on the team that drafts them, and so, after the first few picks, there’s just not much excitement.
I also know that the NBA’s draft lottery, in which the league determines which teams get the top few picks in the draft, is a media event, though it’s relatively short, compared to the draft itself – it’s more like watching the Powerball drawing.
As a fan I like the draft because you can get invested in players early.
I liked what Golden Tate brought to the Seahawks. He was a fast receiver and great kick returner. He got lured away by more money after Seattle won the SB which left a gap, especially in the return game. The 2014 season after his departure showed that hole.
In the 2015 draft, Seattle picked Tyler Lockett, and I was excited because he seemed like a perfect fit to fill that hole. I picked him as “my guy” during the draft and let friends know it. In 2015 he was the only rookie to be an All-American, and he even made the Pro Bowl. And his receiver skills got better until he and Russell Wilson started breaking records, and he became the team’s #1 receiver when Doug Baldwin had to retire due to injuries.
It just adds an extra layer to fandom when you latch onto a guy from the draft and watch him succeed. That’s why I like it. It even gives a reason to watch preseason games, since you get to see “your guy” suit up in the team uniform and play against other NFL players for the first time.