Philadelphia, PA (Sports Network) -
Maybe I'll wash my car two or three times while waiting for the Washington
Redskins to pick Robert Griffin. Or finish up "War and Peace." Perhaps I'll
pick up chess.
That's the thing about the NFL Draft, it just drags on forever and the waiting
between picks, with sincere apologies to the great Tom Petty, is the hardest
part.
Now, please don't get me wrong, I love the draft and all the buildup to it
(even though I pick on mock drafts done by amateurs), but when it arrives, you
remember how slow it is. Galapagos tortoises laugh at it.
The draft is a prime example of how the anticipation is so much better than the
actual thing.
Still, trust me, I'll be watching. And I surely won't be alone. The draft is
big business and big ratings. It's become, remarkably from lowly beginnings
with Pete Rozelle scribbling names on a chalkboard in some hotel ballroom, an
event. A truly non-athletic, athletic event.
And whatever NFL office genius who had the idea to have the first round on
Thursday, the second and third rounds Friday and the fourth through seventh
rounds on Saturday should be promoted if he/she hasn't been already.
Will there come a day when the NFL Draft becomes a week-long event?
There's perfect symmetry, seven rounds, seven days in a week. Start the first
round on a Sunday at 1 p.m. to mimic the regular season. Don't put it past
them. If it happens like that, I want credit.
But I digress.
Let's get back to the problem at hand.
We know the Indianapolis Colts are going to take Andrew Luck. Fine. A couple of
the talking heads will call him Oliver (his father) and then be told on their
headsets by a producer to correct themselves. They'll smile and do it.
Then the Redskins are going to take Griffin.
The rub? The Redskins, you can just about bet on it, will take the full 10
minutes to decide what they decided months ago (the Colts did us a favor the
other day by officially saying they'll take Luck. Thank you, Indy).
To the 'Skins: Guys, if you really need that extra 600 seconds after shipping a
king's ransom away to the St. Louis Rams to move up, then maybe you shouldn't
have done it.
If nobody has been able to by now to change your mind, they're not going to
later tonight.
As soon as the Colts hand in their card with Luck's name on it, walk up to the
podium and turn in yours with Griffin's name on it.
We don't need suspense at picks one and two. Normally there is. In this draft,
there's not. The suspense begins at pick No. 3. That's what we're all waiting
for. That's what we all want to see.
Let the trades start flying and let's see everyone's "big board" unravel
because the guys who get paid to pick usually have much different ideas than
the guys who don't get paid nearly as much to predict who the guys will pick.
Make sense?
An early flurry of trades will keep us going until the next lull hits and then
we'll be glad it's 2012 and not 2007. That was the last year when teams had 15
minutes between picks and the first round lasted for 47 days.
Still, I watched. What I need to do is stop complaining about something I look
forward to for months and just let it be what it is.
The NFL, just like anything else it touches, has cornered the market on
something - in this case its draft - and turned it into the gold.
The Major League Baseball Draft is lame because half the picks are high school
kids we never heard of from high schools we never heard of.
The NBA Draft rivals baseball for lameness because by the third or fourth guy
we're looking at some 7-footer from Juventus or something
And hockey, same thing as baseball and basketball. Dudes we never heard of
albeit with longer names.
But the NFL Draft, with its college football feeder system already letting us
know a lot of the players, is the perfect machine. I can't wait for it to
start.
Drew Markol has been a sportswriter and columnist for several Philadelphia-
area newspapers for over 25 years.
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