Tomorrow night, at long last the meat market is open for business. The NFL Draft is upon us. And it’s one of the weird SportsWorld things that kind of leaves me queasy. On the one hand, the concept of a draft is meant to create at least the illusion of a level playing field, and it serves to excite fans by giving them hope that bad teams will be good again. OTOH, how many young men with specialized skills are denied the right to market those skills to the highest bidder? And are then forced through an endless series of tests – some that have nothing at all to do with those skills – a process of being “injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected” (to quote Arlo’s song about another draft). Fans revel in the event, teams spend months preparing, and media outlets conduct more mock drafts than there are players in the league. And I think most of us never think about how demeaning and unfair it all is. Even while we, too, are trying to figure out who our teams should pick.
But hey, what’s one more questionable thing about the NFL, right?
Elsewhere…
- The first round of the NHL playoffs is nearly over, and but it was kind of a dud. Will tonight game 7 in Boston and the next round fix things?
- The NBA has done a bit better in the first round, with the bizarre Cleveland-Indiana series the most interesting.
- Looks like the Yankees are out of their slump, just as the weather gets warm. (The next time a player used to warmer weather has a bad April, remember how weather affects baseballs and baseball players.) Still waiting to see if the Nats wake up.
- Goodbye, Arsene Wenger.
As ever, all sports topics welcome.