The NFL Draft is next weekend -- did you know that?
If you are an ESPN watcher, espn.com checker or ESPN the Magazine reader, then that is as silly a question as asking if Jack Bauer could kill you with his bare hands. Of course, Jack Bauer could kill you with his bare hands. In fact, the only reason you're conscious right now is because he doesn't want to carry you.
But back to my point: If you have a sports pulse at all, it has been next to impossible to not know that the NFL Draft is coming up. The Worldwide Leader in Sports cannot go an hour, it seems, without stuffing Mel Kiper Jr.'s hair in front of us or sending Scouts Inc. out to hype up Vanderbilt quarterback Jay Cutler.
Over the past week, SportsCenter has even started a segment they call "On the Clock" where they put Kiper Jr. and analyst Tom Jackson in a studio and "simulate" the draft. The piece features graphics that show which team is supposed to be drafting at the time and who they are considering drafting. It's so eerily similar to what actually conspires at the NFL Draft that I have had multiple occasions recently where I or a friend thought the actual draft was on -- even though we all know it's not until next weekend.
It's fascinating to me that in a time where baseball is beginning to get rolling, golf has had its biggest Major and some peace on the sports scene has settled, the NFL comes rolling through, bells and whistles chiming and blaring -- all for speculative analysis on which player an NFL team might invest some money in.
For me, ESPN's enormous draft coverage leads to a larger sports media question: Is the whirlwind of draft and NFL coverage a product of consumer demand or an agenda that ESPN is forcing upon us?
I have some theories on this issue. It's no secret that ESPN and its parent company Walt Disney have a very lucrative contract to showcase the NFL on its stations. From Monday Night Football telecasts to NFL Primetime to daily NFL Live shows, ESPN revolves much of its programming around the NFL. This can be countered with the argument that ESPN is just providing America with what it wants, as the NFL is conventionally seen as the most popular sport in the nation. However, I always wonder a little bit if our interest in the NFL isn't intensified just a bit by the continual, year-round coverage by ESPN.
It is also true that in ESPN's formative years, the NFL Draft was the first live event the Bristol, Conn. station could land with the four major sports leagues. At the time, in the late 1970s, nobody had even thought to broadcast the draft, but ESPN was so set on getting anything with the NFL logo on its programming, they jumped at the opportunity. And through the years, the NFL Draft has certainly become one of the mainstays and big money-makers for ESPN. So I'm sure some of the extreme indulgences of draft coverage today stems from ESPN's heritage and its early days as a rogue sports channel.
To expand the scope of this argument even more, it's becoming increasingly evident that ESPN is blurring the line between sports journalism and sports entertainment. From the maniacal speculative coverage of the NFL Draft to the one-sided perspective pieces like the new series, "Bonds on Bonds," it's tough to identify if the programming shown is from ESPN or ESPN Original Entertainment -- a major distinction between sports journalism and sports entertainment.
But I suppose this is all just a product of the media-saturated world we live in. ESPN acts as if it tries to straddle the line between bringing sports entertainment and protecting the purity of the games we so helplessly follow, but we know better.
As I was reading Sports Illustrated this week, I stumbled across a quote from late sportswriter Sam Kellerman that put sports in a different perspective than anything I've ever heard -- and one I think is relative to today's sports media. He lamented, "Sports is man's joke on God. You see, God says to man, 'I've created a universe where it seems like everything matters, where you'll have to grapple with life and death and in the end, you'll die anyway, and it won't really matter.' So man says to God, 'Oh yeah? Within your universe we're going to create a sub-universe called sports, one that absolutely doesn't matter, and we'll follow everything that happens in it as if it were life and death.'"
So maybe ESPN got this NFL Draft thing right: I actually am dying to know who my Carolina Panthers are going to take with the 27th pick.
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