Three days of selections, sin

By David Mullen

Young talent will take over Las Vegas for three days from Thursday, April 28 through Saturday, April 30. Slick executives with laptops will roll the dice as if they have found a spot at a hot craps table. Deals will be made at the same pace as cards being tossed at a rare single deck 21 table.

Could it be a convention of professional gamers? Is it the latest review featuring a once popular group making a big comeback? 

Might it be an awe-inspiring magician dicing an associate into pieces? 

Yes and no. Welcome to Sin City’s version of the 2022 NFL Draft, the latest spectacle from a league hellbent on providing bloated entertainment in a time when modesty is demanded. Thousands of football junkies will attend, and millions of armchair quarterbacks will watch the 2022 NFL Draft. Hope and hype converge at the unofficial kickoff to the upcoming season.  

Cue the water display and bring up the spotlights.  

What began generations ago in a smoke-filled downtown Philadelphia hotel room filled with balding men clad in short sleeve dress shirts, horn-rimmed glasses and skinny ties has become a spectacular worthy of broadcast on the NFL Network, ABC, ESPN and ESPN Deportes. Let the show begin.

Las Vegas is a fitting locale for such a game of chance. The decadent Las Vegas Strip is home to the interactive NFL Draft Experience and a Draft Theater adjacent to the Caesars Palace Forum Shops. For three days, perusing purses at Prada will be replaced by looking for lineman from Louisville.

 Each of the 32 NFL teams participate in a selection process that sets the tone for a young man’s future. Players are taken by teams from an unpaid collegiate workforce and are immediately expected to help a successful team get stronger or a failing team become relevant. There will be 262 players selected overall. For many, hearing their name called from a well-lit podium will be their 15 seconds of fame.

For others, like Georgia linebacker Travon Walker, Michigan edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson, N.C. State offensive tackle Ickey Ekwonu, Cincinnati cornerback Sauce Gardner and a half-dozen wide receivers from Alabama to USC, they will hit the jackpot with huge contracts. There is nothing like seeing the face of a free safety who grew up in Florida hear his name called by a representative of the Detroit Lions. It makes for great drama and is exactly what the NFL broadcasting partners seek.

The Jacksonville Jaguars currently has the No. 1 pick in the 2022 NFL Draft, which by all accounts is unspectacular. No one player stands out, and the crop of quarterbacks entering the league is looked at as bleak. A team with top skilled players, like the Kansas City Chiefs, will load up with need players if they spend their entire booty of 12 picks.

In 1936, in a small corner room at the Ritz-Carlton in Philadelphia, the NFL held their first draft. The Philadelphia Eagles, needing an offensive lineman, selected Heisman Trophy winner and University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger. The Eagles traded his rights to the Chicago Bears for lineman Art Buss. 

Berwanger rejected the Bears contract offer of $13,500, took a job at a rubber company and never played in the NFL. This year, draftees will wear neck chains that cost more than $13,500. The NFL has come a long way from when distributing rubber was more lucrative than distributing pigskins.    

Eagles owner Bert Bell lobbied for a draft of amateur and collegiate players, having difficulty signing quality players. Bell designed a plan where all rookies enter a draft pool and teams would select from the pool in worst-to-first order, round after round. The first draft was nine rounds, ballooned to 40 rounds years later and finally settled on the current seven round spread. Even seven rounds test the attention span of today’s TV audience.  

The NFL Draft faced a rival in 1960 with the birth of the American Football League (AFL). The NFL’s monopoly could no longer pass go with a rival competing for top talent. Outrageous contract offers and multiple lawsuits finally gave way to an NFL/AFL merger agreed upon in 1967 and executed in the 1970 season.

 Jerry “I am the owner of the Dallas Cowboys” Jones is known for his draft day trades, primarily because he has the power, and trades guarantee him camera time. But it was Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson in 1989 who is credited with sending running back and current U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker and several draft picks to the Minnesota Vikings for five veterans, three first-round picks, three second-round picks, a third-round pick and a sixth-round pick that turned out to be, among others, Emmitt Smith, Russell Maryland, Kevin Smith and Darren Woodson. The trade was the foundation for three Super Bowl Championships.

This season, the Cowboys’ biggest need seems to be improving and restocking a depleted offensive line. Holding the 24th overall pick, the defending NFC East champions appear centered on guard Kenyon Green of Texas A&M or guard Zion Johnson of Boston College. More offensive lineman will follow, mixing in a wide receiver and defensive back along the way to the buffet line. The Cowboys have eight more picks in rounds two through six, but Jones will throw those around Las Vegas like free drink tickets.

The NFL Draft is a crap shoot, making Sin City an apt place to hold such a risky endeavor. The odds are long that a single draft choice will immediately impact a franchise. Jones and the Cowboys should stick with the safest choices in the 2022 Draft. But as everyone knows, there are no sure bets in Vegas.