Be a Draft Dodger

Oh come on, relax. We’re not being unpatriotic, but
are rather talking about the NFL draft, which although not until next
weekend has already overtaken the sports websites and taken up entire
hour-long segments of valuable ESPN2 time which could easily be used to
air “Sports Century: Charles Barkley” in its entirety.

We here at
the Left Field desk do indeed care about the results of the NFL draft,
it’s the draft itself that we just simply can’t invest our valuable
sports-watching hours in. Sure, we might watch to see who the Lions
take as the overall number one pick and what unheard of offensive
lineman the Seahawks squander their first-round pick on, but we just
can’t justify watching the whole damn thing. But as for the rest, we’ll
just pick up a newspaper and see who went where and call it good until
training camp starts up.

Here’s how the NFL draft goes down: After a two-hour preview show the commissioner announces the first pick, thus summoning to the stage any one of three (or maybe four) soon-to-be millionaires who then holds up a jersey and adorns a baseball cap bearing the logo of whatever team he will then hold out on for another million bucks in his contract. Then, Chris Berman waves his bloated, combed-over head around the screen and, along with the other three anchors, feigns surprise at this particular pick. Meanwhile, you’ll be left thinking, “Huh, I’ve never heard of that guy.” Rinse and repeat a couple hundred times over two days.

Let’s be clear, Left Field is all about watching sports on television. In fact, we enjoy televised sports more than any other recliner-related activity. But we simply can’t get behind watching a digital clock count down to the exact moment that (insert player name here) is picked by the (insert team name here) before being traded to the (insert team name here) in a three-way deal also involving (insert team name here) and a second-round draft pick in 2014.

This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2009.