F--- The Draft

Today, one of the most ridiculous overhyped events in all of professional sports takes place -- the NFL Draft. It infuriates me how much attention people pay to what is essentially a high-priced educated crapshoot. Careers are born and careers die on the basis of all this draft spin, long before any player sees his first snap of the season. Teams are inexplicably willing to throw all their draft muscle behind a player on the basis of one bowl game (against a team that didn't even want to be there) or one heat of the 40-yard dash at the annual meat market, er, scouting combine. After all, the Houston Texans drafted Mario Williams with the first pick last year, largely on the basis of rumor or innuendo.

Your normal everyday fan all of a sudden becomes the expert on which players will fulfill his teams' need. Remember when the Eagles fans in attendance booed Donovan McNabb four full months before he would even have a chance to play a game that counts? Everyone's an expert. Why not let the front office people do their job, especially since they have been preparing for this day since January? (The previous sentence does not apply to the Detroit Lions, since any random guy off the street could do a better job than Matt Millen.)

The irony is that while so much work goes into preparing for the draft, maybe one of every three first-round draft picks is a huge success. For every Peyton Manning or Orlando Pace that becomes a perennial Pro Bowler, you have a David Carr or a Tim Couch who either languishes on the bench or becomes a career journeyman, and you also have a Ki-Jana Carter or a Courtney Brown who falls off the face of the earth, never to be heard from again, except in one of those "Worst Draft Blunders of All Time" retrospectives on the Fox Sports Network.

Yeah, I'll check the internet periodically to see where the dozen or so college players whose names I recognize end up, and of course I'll keep track of what the Patriots do. But as for all those draft gurus who grade each team's performance the Monday morning afterward, I'll wait until this autumn to pass judgment, as any sane person should.