I don't take back anything I said, mind you. This is no apology. However, it did occur to me that I really haven't sat myself in front of the TV and watched said spectacle in, oh, many years.
Despite myself, it occurred to me that I should really check myself, and look at the whole NFL draft spectacle (or at least the biggest highlight, the first round).
I did actually think to turn on ESPN early. Just in case anything interesting happened.
O.M.G. The event is even stranger than I remember.
They have a red carpet now. A red carpet for the select soon-to-be draftees to enter, sporting their own distinctive fashion choices. The greatest fascination appeared to be for what looked like rhinestone-studded shoes being worn by a small mountain as he entered. On display, a la the Oscars? Check.
Anyway, on with the spectacle/commodification checklist:
Interviews with Urban Meyer, coach of Ohio State University's football franchise, and Nick Saban, coach of the University of Alabama's franchise, to talk about the oh so human moment of seeing their former players and families at the moment of drafting. (Saban was interviewed while being driven in from whichever Chicago airport.) This is an efficient way to take care of one of the required "see, we really do know they're human" moments meant to distract you from the commodification and objectification to come.
Jon Gruden, former NFL coach, in to take care of the required number of football clichés. I highly discourage you from playing any drinking games involving words such as "intensity," "hard-working" or any variant thereof, "physical," and so forth. You will die of alcohol poisoning.
The reporters stationed with various teams. Not quite Bernard Shaw hunkered down in Baghdad, but close, I guess.
Lunatic fans. If I wonder if I missed anything in Tuesday's entry, I wonder if I missed out on the commodification/objectification of the fans themselves. Are they just as much a commodity to be used as the players are? Are they simply just another cog in the spectacle machine?
Patriotic interlude, with military member singing the national anthem.
Green room interviews. Right now the twin quarterbacks, Jared Goff (formerly of the University of California) and Carson Wentz (of North Dakota State University), are the ones in front of the camera. Goff played his part perfectly by delivering the only right answer about his dream: "This is it." You didn't think he was going to talk about curing cancer, did you?
Draft retrospective. What happened to last year's draft picks; past first-round picks; almost anything can be included here. (As I type this there appears to me some commercial for Peyton Manning.)
The inevitable appearance of Mel Kiper, who owes his existence to the NFL draft, a circumstance beyond explanation.
An unavoidably human moment, in which the ESPN crew acknolwedges the absence of NFL analyst Chris Mortensen, away due to cancer treatment.
Breaking news, I guess, that Myles Jack might not get drafted in the top ten. Okay. Are they trying to set him up as this year's slider? I mean, the injury he suffered last season wasn't new news.
So, against my better judgment, I'm going to live-blog this event. I want to see if I can try to comprehend the spectacle machine. I'll update as I can. I'm probably going to hate myself for it. But to begin to understand how the hype machine affects football's dealing with its ongoing brain-trauma I suppose I'd better confront it head-on.
So here goes.
8:05 ET: Forgot to mention the mandatory interview with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. Of course, no mention of brain trauma of any sort. Dismissal of Deflategate. Now of course Goodell has just opened the draft, with the St. Louis Los Angeles Rams on the clock. So of course a review of their previous tenure in LA, and Chris Berman tenuously suggesting that some St. Louis fans might still support the team. Please tell me you have more pride than that.
8:08 ET: Discussion of all those traded draft picks that set the Rams up in the first spot of the draft. One agreed, more or less; another said he wouldn't have done it. Had to be that way; agreement isn't interesting TV. Jared Goff, the presumed top pick, is being dissected now.
8:11 ET: Former California quarterback Steve Bartkowski (Steve Bartkowski!) was invoked during the pre-show; now former California quarterback Aaron Rodgers is invoked. I'm beginning to realize that part of the spectacle/distraction is the sheer overabundance of information. I already know more about Jared Goff than I ever knew about most of the people that orignially were in the running for the Republican presidential nomination.
8:16 ET: Shockingly, the Rams select Goff. "What a moment..." uttered for the first of probably 76,349 times this round.
8:17 ET: Now on to the Philadelphia Eagles, who also traded up, and now have a disgruntled quarterback in Sam Bradford, who really hasn't done enough in the NFL to earn disgruntlement. This time the inevitable Mel Kiper seems to dislike the trade for both teams. Segueing to the presumed pick Carson Wentz. In the meantime, the inevitable interview with Jared Goff, who continues to get his lines right.
8:20 ET: Goff talks about the connection he felt with the Rams coaching staff. Now we're taking off on The Bachelor, I guess.
8:22 ET: To the perennial chorus of boos, Goodell announces that the Eagles pick Wentz. Chris Berman reaches impossibly far for a Roger Maris reference. This reminds me that I'm actually pretty happy not to have Berman announcing baseball games, or at least none that I've seen. Since Wentz played for an FCS team, players like Phil Simms and Joe Flacco are now invoked.
8:26 ET: Now the cliché about "fitting the prototype" is invoked upon Wentz. Commercial break, with a bumper featuring Wentz standing among cows.
8:28 ET: After that brief commercial break, we are now promised that the spectacle will be commercial-free for the rest of the hour. The
8:33 ET: Apparently there are six-digit numbers of people gathered outside the theater where this event is happening. It is apparently part of Roosevelt University. I wonder what that school is getting for this, besides trampled.
8:35 ET: Mel Kiper was surprised by the Chargers drafting Joey Bosa.
8:36 ET: More and more I'm getting that the key to this event is absolutely not allowing you, the viewer, to breathe. Filling the many minutes between draft picks with words. This necessarily requires some amount of running down the expected upcoming draft picks, sometimes with mere insinuation. Apparently there's something wrong with Jalen Ramsey that caused him to have only a small number of interceptions in his career. In the meantime, the Dallas Cowboys draft Ohio State running back Ezekiel Elliott, making two of possibly six OSU players to be drafted in this round. This would apparently tie a record. This kind of thing matters in this vortex of words.
8:41 ET: Booking.com is the sponsor of the interviews with the just-drafted players. Apparently the difference between being drafted first and being drafted second is getting interviewed by Suzy Kolber. Sorry, Carson Wentz. But Ezekiel Elliott does get interviewed, leading to our first war-room peek-in, where we learn (!!!) that the Cowboys considered trading down before deciding not to. (An aside: really, guys? "War room"?)
8:45 ET: The Jacksonville Jaguars pick Jalen Ramsey, a defensive back who can just tootle on down I-10 from Tallahassee (Florida State). He is shown nearly decapitating a receiver in a highlight clip. We are told he is not a finished product. We are also told he is not a safety, and has not shown the "urgency" (drink!) to play deep or something.
8:50 ET: Another humanitarian moment: linebacker Jaylon Smith of Notre Dame, and his catastrophic knee injury, are now discussed. The expectation is that he will not be able to play at all this year, although Smith will not cop to that. We learn he is a character guy. The Baltimore Ravens, who we learn do not typically draft this high, pick another Notre Dame guy, offensive tackle Ronnie Stanley.
8:54 ET: We have our first "slider" candidate: Laremy Tunsil, offensive lineman, Mississippi. This is mostly because he was expected to be the first o-lineman drafted, and was not. Now it is time to invoke the domestic violence charge he faced some months ago, and a tweeted video, apparently on Tunsil's account, of someone hitting a bong (from the brief view shown, it's pretty much impossible to identify the man behind the bong). This gives Gruden the chance to play cranky grandpa about social media. The presumption of guilt is more or less a given in this spot.
9:01 ET: The San Francisco 49ers, now coached by former Oregon coach and Eagles washout Chip Kelly, draft d-lineman DeForest Buckner from ... Oregon. For today, the party line is that this is not a Chip Kelly thing, but reflective of the team's general manager and his philosophy. Okay. Then Jon Gruden goes off the party line and pretty much assumes it's a Chip Kelly-Oregon thing.
9:04 ET: A trade changes who's up next, bringing up the Tennessee Titans. They choose Jack Conklin, an offensive tackle from Michigan State. Leramy Tunsil is now cemented in the "slider" role. Remember the book and movie The Blind Side, pivoting on the importance of a left tackle and protecting the quarterback's titular blind side? Jack Conklin is a left tackle. Now we hear that Conklin really was the number one o-lineman in the draft after all. Dare I mention that Conklin is white, and Tunsil is ... not?
9:09 ET: Second commercial break. We've had seven draft picks so far. There are, what, twenty-four left? What have I done to myself? Thankfully, tomorrow is my day off. The "slider" storyline, now set in stone, provides the opportunity to turn that vortex of words into an outright hurricane.
9:11 ET: Now we get an interlude: in memory of Walter Payton, the NFL annually gives a Man of the Year award, which recognizes community service as well as on-field capability. Anquan Boldin is revealed as the 2015 award winner. At the risk of seeming cynical, well, that's a nice distraction. Another follows as a junior football team from the Chicago area takes the stage for the announcement of the Bears' pick (after another trade). This seems at least a sideswipe at all those cowardly mothers who doubt whether their wussy sons should play football. (You knew I was going there, given the chance.) Finally the Bears draft a linebacker from Georgia, Leonard Floyd.
9:18 ET: We are now informed that Leonard Floyd is weak. We also keep hearing about teams whose first-round picks didn't play at all last season due to injury, presented as if "hey, it's like they get two picks this year!" Okay. No, not really. It's more like "we just hope this guy gets to the field this year." Oh, and now the commercials are apparently going to come at a much more regular pace. This is odd, if you think about it. Right now is the time when we really don't know what's going to happen next. Early in the round when we knew everything pretty much in advance, we couldn't be allowed to look away. But then, I guess I'm not good at spectacle.
9:22 ET: Ohio State gets back on track as Eli Apple, a cornerback, gets drafted by the New York Giants. That gives them three of the top ten, which is apparently unprecedented, which is a good start to having six of the top twenty-five or whatever the record is. The first Eli "Big" Apple joke has already been made. We also get an update on the continuing slide of Laremy Tunsil.
9:25 ET: Part of the visual spectacle in this thing is the TV screen itself. There's the constant chiron or crawl updating you on who's been drafted and who's coming up; constantly refreshing graphics on teams about to pick and key statistics about that team, what happened to their picks last year, a note that "PICK IS IN," the inevitable Mel Kiper's "Best Available" overall or by position. We're waiting for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Goodell is still being booed. The Buccaneers draft Vernon Hargreaves III, a defensive back from Florida. The Florida NFL teams are shopping local so far.
9:31 ET: Commercial break. We now have graphics on screen that break down the just-drafted player's shortcomings. If you're not in the green room, you probably don't want to watch the draft at all. It's a major whipsaw: "He's great, he's great, he's great, here's why he's awful."
9:33 ET: Just a reminder: SportsCenter is on after the draft, where they will talk endlessly about...the draft. If they get bored, they might mention the NBA playoffs, I guess.
9:34 ET: The Laremy Tunsil Slide Watch is now critical. Suzy Kolber interviews Hugh Freeze, head coach of the University of Mississippi football franchise, to endorse Tunsil's character. Freeze, one of the more blatantly evangelical coaches out there, inevitably invokes God in doing so. He also introduces a pretty clever potential chiché: "it's not Draft Career, it's Draft Day." The thought seems to be that the picture is of Tunsil, but probably as far back as high school. The New Orleans Saints select Sheldon Rankins, defensive end from Louisville.
9:42 ET: The commercial breaks are getting longer; maybe a clue that things aren't as important now? Or just that the motormouths need a bigger break? Now we get an extended look at Mel's "Best Available."
9:43 ET: The Miami Dolphins break the Laremy Tunsil Slide, picking him at #13. Really, in the grand scheme of the NFL draft, that's not much of a slide. Now, as if to make up for the hell that has been visited upon the kid, the procedure is reversed, and we hear how talented and how great a kid Tunsil is. We hear "you have to root for the kid" for the first time.
9:47 ET: The ESPN crew now gets around to admitting that the Leramy Tunsil Slide, while costing some number of dollars, wasn't much in the grand scheme of things.
9:48 ET: Now it's safe to interview Leramy Tunsil, who has his lines down. "It's a blessing just to be here" enters the lexicon. Suzy Kolber actually asks "Is it you?" and Tunsil's answer sounds like "yes," but isn't all that clear.
9:50 ET: The
9:57 ET: The Cleveland Browns finally make a pick, after a lot of trading down both before the draft and tonight. The pick is a Baylor wide receiver, Corey Coleman. We learn he is fast, but played in a system where learning to run routes was apparently not a priority. I may not watch many games, but I do know that Baylor scores a lot of points. Apparently he learned something.
10:00 ET: Two hours in, we're about halfway through the round.
10:02 ET: The Detroit Lions draft an offensive tackle, Taylor Decker, from Ohio State. The OSU franchise is well on track to those six picks in twenty-five or the first round or whatever. The graphic says "INCONSISTENT EFFORT." Jon Gruden was disappointed. I really don't know what to make of the graphic bumpers leading out to commercial breaks. Images of the player just drafted, in fast-cut style, ranging from da Vinci-esque poses to vaguely hip-hop gestures. I can't decide if it's idolization of the body or just distraction.
10:08 ET: The Atlanta Falcons draft Keanu Neal, a defensive back from the University of Florida. I'm trying to figure out if that makes UF the only other school besides Ohio State with more than one former player drafted so far. Now it's time to turn attention to Myles Jack, who's getting lonely in the green room. Jack suffered a knee injury during the season, and perhaps drew red flags because of his unconventional choice to leave the team (being unable to play anyway) and start rehabbing/preparing for the draft on his own. Oddly, the ESPN crew isn't really getting into that, part, focusing only on the injury. The Indianapolis Colts draft center Ryan Kelly from Alabama. He has he generic Alabama offensive lineman look.
10:14 ET: Before the commercial break we got an acknowledgment that Ryan Kelly had a 4.0 GPA in a graduate program this past season. This is, as far as I can tell, the first acknowledgment that any of these young men were college students.
10:17 ET: The Buffalo Bills draft Shaq Lawson, defensive lineman, Clemson. It's official: we are now living in the generation of people who were born when Shaquille O'Neal was a big thing. Now Jon Gruden abuses Shaq for getting handled by Ronnie Stanley when Clemson played Notre Dame this past season. You might recall that Ronnie Stanley was drafted sixth. We learn that Lawson's father was killed in a car accident five years ago. Asking Lawson about this in this spot seems a bit exploitative, but he handles it about as well as one could ask.
10:21 ET: Now we're getting Twitter highlights, in this case about Shaq Lawson. An interesting contribution to the spectacle. In the meantime it's time to start talking up some of these second-tier prospects before they get drafted; in this case the subject is Paxton Lynch, quarterback from the University of Memphis. To the degree I was paying attention, I thought Lynch was a more likely second-round pick, but whatever. The New York Jets choose to add to the Ohio State run by drafting linebacker Darron Lee. This makes five, so that record or whatever is very much in reach.
10:28 ET: The commercials are getting longer and more frequent. Guess Chris Berman ain't as young as he used to be.
10:31 ET: Now they're finally playing the Ohio State angle. Ohio State did of course win a national championship two seasons ago, so I guess it's not a shock. The Houston Texans don't cooperate, instead taking Notre Dame wide receiver Will Fuller.
10:35 ET: The spectacle is flagging at this point, with much more frequent commercials and frankly less hook-like stuff to talk about. I have the feeling that once the Leramy Tunsil Slide got broken, their game was thrown off. The green-room shots are fewer and farther between, even though Myles Jack is still there. That's a kindness of a sort, I guess.
10:39 ET: The Washington franchise chooses Josh Doctson, TCU wide receiver. By contrast to some previous picks, Doctson gets a virtual love-in from the ESPN foofs. Doctson is shown getting the Goodell Hug, which we just haven't seen enough of tonight. I mean, really, you can't see enough of the Goodell Hug. Seems vaguely mafia-like.
10:43 ET: SC@night promises to break down the first-round winners and losers. Seriously, can you really do that before the player has had two or three years to play?
10:44 ET: PICK IS IN. And yet they keep talking.
10:46 ET: The Minnesota Vikings select Laquon Treadwell, Mississippi wide receiver and apparently a Chicago-area native, which matters tonight. We get comparisons to Terrell Owens and Anquan Boldin. He can jump, which apparently will help his new quarterback. CREATING EXPLOSIVE SEPARATION. The Twitter updates are back. DROPPED PASSES. The whipsaw is getting really quick now.
10:51 ET: Apparently Laquon Treadwell's daughter was stealing the show at the podium and after, though the ESPN foofs either didn't see to comment on it or didn't deem it worthy, though the daugher is in daddy's arms as he gets the Booking.com interview treatment. Actual humanity must not be allowed to interfere with the serious business of spectacle. Instead, we were getting the CREATING EXPLOSIVE SEPARATION and DROPPED PASSES graphics. The Cincinnati Bengals select Houston defensive back William Jackson III. We're not hearing much from Mel Kiper at this point; he finally shows up, trying not to act surprised.
10:56 ET: The Pittsburgh Steelers select Artie Burns, a cornerback from Miami, who appears not to be at the draft. However, we got a shot of him apparently getting the phone call at home with family around him. I think that's the first appearance of that particular bit of theater.
10:59 ET: The Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos are on the clock, and the hype machine suddenly shudders back to life with the Breaking News that the Broncos need a quarterback, and traded up to be able to get one. Meanwhile, with no new Ohio State draft picks of late, that storyline has been allowed to go quiet.
11:02 ET: Another humanizing interlude, as a sixteen-year-old cancer survivor from Denver is at the podium to announce the Broncos' first-round pick: Paxton Lynch, Memphis quarterback, who is also not at the draft, apparently. If it were up to the crowd, the sixteen-year-old would take Goodell's everyday job. Apparently Jon Gruden fell in love with Lynch when he interviewed him; all he can come up with to criticize is that he needs to get quicker, which is qualified with "as all 6'7" quarterbacks do." In the meantime, all the talk about Lynch needing a couple of years to learn things suggests that Mark Sanchez will be your starting quarterback next year, Broncos fans.
11:09 ET: Another person still in the green room is Mississippi defensive tackle Robert Nkemdiche, who is belatedly being set up as the new slider. The Green Bay Packers are no help, taking UCLA defensive tackle Kenny Clark. His own tragedy was ESPN.com fodder already this week.
11:14 ET: The commercials for the NFL draft don't have the cache of Super Bowl commercials, but we're getting weird Nationwide commercials with Peyton Manning and a McDonald's ad in which a father sneaks a Big Mac into his newly-married daughter's limo because "there's never time to eat at your own wedding." Oh, and occasionally you get reminded that ESPN also shows basketball and baseball.
11:16 ET: Myles Jack is still the "Best Available." There are only four picks left, so it seems like Ohio State's quest for history is fading. (Remember, the New England Patriots don't have a first-round pick this year because of Deflategate, so the first round is one pick shorter than usual. Joshua Garnett, a guard from Stanford, is drafted by the San Francisco 49ers (who traded up for the pick), prompting Mel Kiper's first real freakout. He was supposed to go in the mid-second round, apparently, and was the 67th player on Kiper's board. In the commercial bumper Garnett is seen being mean to several foam pillars of some sort.
11:24 ET: Adam Shefter promises "an interesting pick" from the Arizona Cardinals, and they more or less deliver: the aforementioned Robert Nkemdiche, just slipping into the first round. We now learn that the self-described "eccentric" Nkemdiche plays the sax, and that the team might ask him to distance himself from his brother. They've been waiting to spring this stuff all night, you can tell. I'm not a fan of Cardinals coach Bruce Arians for reasons already noted in this blog. Also, Jon Gruden actually says that it's not right for them to sit up there and judge these guys, after the ESPN crew has spent three hours sitting up there judging these guys. Meanwhile Nkemdiche gets the Suzy Kolber interview. Apparently they saved her for the controversial guys. Nkemdiche gets his lines right without sounding robotic, becoming the first interviewee tonight to do so.
11:31 ET: Two more picks left. The Carolina Panthers' PICK IS IN. Goodell is still getting booed. The Panthers select Louisiana Tech defensive tackle Vernon Butler. It takes about ten seconds for any of the ESPN guys to say anything. It's only 10:30 in Chicago, guys. What gives? And we finally get acknowledgment that the Heisman Trophy winner, Derrick Henry of Alabama, hasn't been drafted yet. Actually this is the first mention of Henry all night. I suppose this points to some kind of major disconnect between the NFL and the college ranks.
11:40 ET: Germain Ifedi, Texas A&M offensive lineman, is the final pick of the round, by the Seattle Seahawks. One last barrage of mixed messages issues forth from the ESPN crew. He is also on the phone remotely rather than in the green room. This means that Myles Jack is not drafted yet, and that Ohio State will only have five draftees in the first round, and that the Heisman Trophy winner will have to wait until the second round or later to be drafted.
So the draft resumes tomorrow night at 7:00. I will not be here.
I had no idea just how much the hype and spectacle had elevated in recent years, all formulated around a bunch of guys somewhere in the range of age 22. While the spectacle does slow down, almost of necessity, as the round progresses, it was still a bit crazy.
Random bits:
One of the important stories to be covered on SportsCenter@Night is apparently Ezekiel Elliott's midriff; concealed by his vividly covered sport coat but not by the vest or shirt. From this Scott Van Pelt lurches to an attempted human-interest view of the Laremy Tunsil Slide. I'm not going to stay up for this, but Tunsil is looking a bit more besieged in the post-draft news conference, but still keeps saying that he is "blessed" even if it shows a bit less on his face.
So Tunsil becomes more or less the sacrificial lamb of the evening. The real-time unfolding of the Twitter post and apparent family conflict, and maybe even taking money from his college coaches, is all the more grinding.
Between Tunsil and Nkemdiche, the University of Mississippi football franchise didn't have a great night. The spectacle doesn't limit its blowback to the guys in the green room.
ESPN got handed a story with the Tunsil slide. What would have happened had Tunsil's Twitter account not been hacked? Would Myles Jack have been set up as the paschal victim of the evening? Nkemdiche?
Gonna think about this some more, and come back with some attempt to digest the spectacle and distraction. Meanwhile, no acknowledgment of the NBA playoffs yet on ESPN.
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