Bitter Baltimoron

I just spent my entire weekend watching the draft for the ___th year in a row now, and as I applauded the Ravens for their picks I got to thinking just how much I knew about the draft before it happened. I hadn’t just heard of the players who played in the BCS bowl games, or the players who played in the ACC, I had heard of plenty of the guys from the smaller schools too. This isn’t because I’m a great scout, or an avid college football fan. It’s because of the extensive coverage given to the draft these days that makes everyone more aware of the situation. It is to the point where an average fan could probably read some draft websites for a day or two before the draft and make a semi-decent draft.

I’m not saying I could have a draft as successful as a playoff NFL team, but it wouldn’t be a franchise-ending draft. The fact is that most teams today get their information from the same scouting service, and everyone with the NFL network now has the luxury to watch the NFL combine. With so many analysts dissecting and cutting apart the college level, it is difficult today for a team to consistently draft poorly. In addition to the salary cap, free agency and revenue sharing, the endless draft coverage is a huge reason why there is so much parity in the NFL compared to other leagues.

In 1983, the Baltimore Colts drafted John Elway with the first pick, and everybody in the area knows how that turned out. What is sometimes forgotten however, is the fact that in 1982 the Colts used the fourth overall pick on another quarterback, Art Schlichter. Schlichter, an option-quarterback from Ohio State, was taken by the Colts over Brigham Young’s Jim McMahon. Schlichter never had played in a pro-style offense, while McMahon’s BYU team had a complicated pass-first attack that often forced McMahon to make throws downfield. Schlichter had gambling problems during the season and the upside of Stanford’s Elway tempted the Colts into drafting a quarterback with a top-four pick for the second year in a row. This is an unheard of move in today’s environment. I am not proposing that the drafts today are flawless, but no team gives up on a top-five pick in one year anymore.

It would be hard to believe with today’s yearlong draft coverage that a team would have such poor judgment. There are so many prime time updates on the draft, that a good chunk of America knew the name Joe Flacco for weeks, and the biggest game he played in college was against the Naval Academy. People can point to the Chargers drafting Ryan Leaf, or the Bengals drafting Akili Smith, but these players performed at big time colleges and had the physical tools to perform at the NFL level. They failed because of other reasons, which aren’t as easy to predict as what the combine numbers tell us quantitatively. We still haven’t broken down the science of mental and emotional makeups that determine a man’s fate against the top competition. Some psychologists show up and say so-and-so player has the perfect mental makeup to be a quarterback, but it’s always mentioned after a player has already performed at the top level. This happened with Peyton Manning, and similar comments were made about Brady, but of course the comments came after these players were well on their way to winning four superbowls.

Nevertheless, a player with the character issues of a Schlichter now is tagged as having those problems and every year a player of proven talent drops due to his off-field problems. One could click on ESPN’s draft listings and see the players marked for their off-the-field issues, and predict a drop in the draft value. Obviously, the good drafting teams like the Ravens, Patriots, Eagles and Steelers have better judgment than the Redskins front office has shown, but the Redskins still pull out starters from their drafts. After the Ryan Leaf disaster and some years of futility, Archie Manning feared his son Eli would have a similar career that he had with the Saints if Eli played for the Chargers, so Manning held out and was sent to the Giants. The draft picks given to the Chargers were put to good use, and now they’re perennially one of the best teams in the league. Teams just don’t spend decades drafting poorly anymore, and this is the least acknowledged reason for today’s parity in the NFL.

So, does this mean that Mel Kiper has a shot at the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a contributor? This isn’t as ridiculous an idea as one would think. Dick Vitale just got put into basketball’s hall for his contributions that made college basketball and March Madness the phenomenon it is today. March Madness is now part of the American experience for even non-sports fans who fill out brackets, but this was a fairly easy sell–a single elimination tournament to decide the best basketball team in America that has always provided excitement for basketball fans. The NFL Draft, however was an incredibly hard sell. A days long practice that has no competition, no winner at the end of the day, and without Mel Kiper explaining to the country who each player drafted was and what he can do, it was not a spectacle. Mel Kiper’s love affair of the draft, his devotion to at least knowing a blurb about each player taken, has made him invaluable to the sport of football’s growth.

If the draft’s over-coverage today is a reason for parity in the NFL, and Kiper was major catalyst for the coverage of the draft, then Kiper has to be considered a true contributor to the sport. Without Kiper, it would be very possible that teams like New Orleans could still be making terrible drafts decades at a time. Kiper’s goofy hair and machine-gun delivery of information are becoming every bit as iconic to sports as Dickie V’s bald head and overly loud delivery of catchphrases.

I’m not the world’s biggest Kiper fan, Just don’t be too surprised or outraged if one day in your lifetime Mel Kiper hears his name called to enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame.