NEW YORK — As the long, gray winter finally thaws, the American sports calendar does the same. After dreary months with nothing but the MLB hot stove and half of the NBA playing out the string, life for the sports couch potato gets good again.
NBA games get intense again; baseball games are there again. (That’s not a knock on baseball. The very best thing a baseball game can be is there.) For those whose tastes run a little freakier, there are a bunch of glorious one-off carnivals to gawk at. The Boston Marathon. The Kentucky Derby. The Penn Relays! There is even, I am told, something called hockey.
And yet, expanding every year like a star that will eventually engulf its solar system, there is one springtime ritual that towers over them all: The NFL draft, a sleepy allocation of largely unknowable prospects that drives about as much fan interest as the rest combined.
For as long as I’ve been a sports fan — that puts my earliest draft memories at a Philadelphia radio station arranging a bus to Madison Square Garden to boo the Eagles for drafting Donovan McNabb over Ricky Williams — I’ve hated the draft.
I’m not even talking about the moral disgrace of drafts in general, and the ickiness of the NFL draft in particular, though I do share those views. That ground has been well-trod by writers like Albert Burneko and Bomani Jones, and the case against sports drafts is so airtight that I don’t need to expand on it at length here. (Briefly, though: Any red-blooded American should be disgusted by talented superstars not being able to pick their workplace and negotiate in a free market for their wages, and by half-assed losers having their failures rewarded with exclusive rights to incandescent talent.)
I disagree with Jones’ assertion, though, that the draft would be exciting if only the players were free to choose their own teams. The stone-boring heart of the NFL draft is that we have no idea if any of these players are good. The GM of the team picking No. 3 on Thursday night openly admits the draft is a “crapshoot.”
All this was annoying, but tolerable when the draft was a background event for a hungover Saturday afternoon. By moving the draft to prime time on a weeknight, the league is saying: Ignore those real games of immediate consequence. You know you’d rather slop up whatever we have to offer, whenever we have to offer it.
A pompous, unbearable broadcast is the price sports fans are willing to pay to watch from home. But the draft doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain: moments that make all of the fluff and wasted time definitively worth it. Will this pick make my favorite team any better? Who knows, check back in a year or three.
That’s the worst part of the draft: When the teams themselves clearly don’t know anything, the fans have to admit that they don’t either. In reality, this is always true. Think of the Yankees trading for Clay Holmes, the then-obscure Pirates reliever. Holmes was horrendous in Pittsburgh, racking up an ERA north of five over from 2018 to 2021. Since donning pinstripes he’s been one of the best relievers in baseball. The Yankees’ dreaded analytics department saw something in Holmes, and took a flier on him that has paid off tremendously. But it sure was fun to rip the Yankees for not making a bigger move at the trade deadline last summer.
The draft robs that fun by slamming the gas pedal of the worst trend in sports, every fan looking down their nose at the braying jackals who actually want to win ballgames now. Want the Jets to trade a pick for Deebo Samuel, a player we are pretty sure is actually good? That’s the mindset of a casual. The enlightened fan knows that Jets GM Joe Douglas is a genius for having won the Sam Darnold and Jamal Adams trades by racking up draft picks; only an idiot has questions about his 6-27 record.
The drafthead, if they’ve made it this far, is rolling their eyes. Don’t yuck my yum; let people enjoy things. I promise, though, given where the draft falls on the calendar, that there is a better way to spend your Thursday night. Read a book. Call your parents. Anything — and that includes watching the miserable Sixers-Raptors series, so truly anything — is better than watching the draft. That includes gambling, by the way. If you’re a degenerate who just wants to bet on who the Giants will take at No. 5, knock yourself out. But betting on the draft is playing slot machines; truly degenerate behavior, without even the illusion of skill on offer.
Luckily, there is a better way. The Rams just won a Super Bowl by trading away every pick they had for in-their-prime superstars, and GM Les Snead showed up at the parade wearing a shirt with “F--- them picks” on it. Embrace your inner Snead.
F--- them picks. Every last one.
