Each year, the NFL invites a handful of college football’s hottest prospects to join it at the annual draft. These select few aren’t just near-certain first round locks — they’re also the select few that get to hug, chest bump or generally torture Roger Goodell, all as the commissioner attempts to smile through it (for more ideas, please see Jon Bois’ thorough, and fictional, oral history on the storied draft tradition of punching Goodell).
Players have long been a presence at the draft in hopes of capturing the perfect raw emotion of seeing their dreams come true in real time. Prospects and their families/friends were first kept in the back, sequestered like late night talk show guests in a cushy, catered room where they could be tracked by cameras. While they’d later move to big tables in front of the stage and now to a more nebulous setup thanks to the NFL’s traveling draft road show, the “last man in the green room” has since become shorthand for the final invitee to hear his name called.
