One has to be a sucker to care that much about the NFL draft

Tuesday 4/29/25

I feel like you have to be a sucker to care that much about the NFL draft. P.T. Barnum would see you coming from a mile away.

The draft means next to nothing. The players who are successful in the NFL come from all different parts of the draft and free agency. The draft isn't some gauge. The NFL and college football might as well be separate sports. Many first rounders won't be in the league in five years. That four time All-Pro? He'll have come from the fourth round.

Anyone who acts like they know is doing just that, because they have no clue. No one does really. And it's not just a physical thing with these players. It's a mindset, it's about work ethic, it's about how these young men are going to react to having money. It's putting the time in, humility, openness. A mess of stuff that doesn't show up on anyone's game tape. And it's not in their college stats or their All-American status.

But it always plays out the same. There's all this hype in advance of the draft, with people who know nothing about how good a player will be at the next level talking with utter certainty, as if they've come from the future where they watched that player put together a first-ballot Hall of Fame career.

Then, after the draft, the fans of each team--and the beat writers and the local sports media boobs--go on and on about how this is the team's best draft since...then they pick a pick a year from twelve or fifteen years ago...without being smart enough to remember--or honorable enough to care--that they said the same thing last year. And it's not like the people they're saying it to are smart enough to remember either. They couldn't tell you what they did that morning if it's after lunchtime.

You don't know and you're not going to know, so why care? Because it's entertaining? How? Hearing a name? Thinking about what names you might hear? Being led astray? It's a waste of your time to concern yourself with the draft, and the people who do so only do so because there is nothing else happening in their heads, and it's a case of, well, at least this thing can be in my head.

People are easily brainwashed. The NFL is brainwashing. That's what it's most in the business of. It's like hypnotizing a simpleton. You get their time, their money, the combined and near-total energy of their two brain cells.

My nephew was staying over my mother's on Friday, because his sister was having a sleepover party--which was also a "sleepunder" party for two of her friends (I get all of these details)--and he wanted to watch the draft so they did and my mother was telling me the next day about these ridiculous middle-aged men who flew to Green Bay and were wearing their team's jerseys. Adults.

I think about my dad and if he had been this way. "Boy, I'll see you on Monday, going to the draft in my Patriots jersey, gotta help hype up our team's selections."

I'd be like, "What is wrong with you? Grow up."

But that would never have happened, with my father being an adult and intelligent person. And he was well into football. Before I came along, and then in the first few years of my life, he had season tickets to the Patriots. Those were some lean years. (Though they were better by the time he stopped renewing those tickets.)

He pulled for them, I pulled for them, and of course I still do. This journal is full of Patriots-related entries that not only are reasonable and learned in a way that nothing else out there is, but many of them say correctly what is going to happen with a given player or coach in advance of that thing happening. Look at the Mac Jones commentary from the start, for instance, or with Jerod Mayo last year.

My dad and I attended the 1996 AFC Championship Game together. He flew out from Illinois. I was in school at the time. I know that there are people who follow a team and care about a team and aren't bozos. There are many. But I think with football fans, a greater percentage are bozos than with, say, baseball fans, who on average are more intelligent. Baseball is a smarter person's game than football is.

Some of the best football-related writing you'll see in fiction is in the early portion of William Sloane's To Walk the Night, when the two friends return to their alma mater for the big homecoming game against their school's rival. One of these guys is a brilliant mathematician and the other guy is a the narrator of this story. It's the best novel I've ever read, and though we don't think of a first person narrator as an amazing writer--because that's not how it works; there's this subconscious transference of credit that defaults to the actual author--he's a very smart guy himself.

Anyway, these friends go the football game on a chilly November day, first time back at their school since graduating, and they do their best to get into the spirit of things. There's this moment when the mathematician says something in a style that isn't his usual way of talking, and the narrator lets us know that this was his sort of football voice--his adopted voice.

The friends have had a diversion. By the game's end, the ceremony of the day has largely worn off. The excitement was in the build-up. Going off together, returning to the old school, seeing the campus again, the somber pomp--which I think is an accurate term--for autumn. They're not yahoos. And you can tell, too, that they both know about football. They know the game. Trends and strategies within the game, what each team needs to do to win, the necessary countermoves, etc.

Back to baseball for a second: Social media is a big part of the appeal for people now. That is, they don't actually care about baseball. It's something else to post, though, which, as we know, usually comes back to me me me me me. Would that particular woman who posts about the Dodgers do so if they were bad and couldn't talk about "Mookie" and "Shohei" on a first name basis and like they were stuffed animals she'd just given a big hug? Would she follow any games at all, check out any highlights, let alone, watch the games, if there was no social media and no one, really, to broadcast her interest with?

(Also: If you could only drink water while watching the NFL, a lot less people would watch it. People love to eat and drink, especially if they can turn it into a kind of event. Or it's paired with an event. Num num num, glug glug glug. Lick those fingers! Belch! Yeah!)

People have terrible memories, and that allows garbage to just repeat without any objection or anyone pointing out that this was said last year, just as stridently. It's like people's simple brains are just wiped clean every day or so. And after a year? Please. They have no idea what they thought or said--or what anyone thought or said--a year ago.

The Patriots might have one player in this draft and it could be a selection from the later round. You just have little idea until the games are played and at least a portion of the career happens (or doesn't, because the player doesn't make the team). Go back through all of the drafts. Or, find yourself a list of NFL Hall of Famers, and see where they were drafted. It's from all over the place. There are a lot of variables once you get to the pro level.

But every year, you got the same thing with the large-gutted mouth breathers. This is the year, these are the picks, we're back, baby, blah blah blah.