ahimes@mavs.coloradomesa.edu

If you are a sports fan or just happened to flip past ESPN this weekend (or since January), you know the NFL Draft happened over the weekend.

Despite amazing NBA playoff games, the final weekend of the NHL regular season and some dang good baseball, the only thing that has been jammed into my brain by big networks is what college kid is now a millionaire and how they could possibly make a difference for their new team, but most likely won’t.

But I’m not here to bash the networks. I’m here to ask why football gets so much coverage and how the biggest of football fans don’t grow tired of football before the season starts.

I completely understand that football is now America’s favorite sport and that the NFL even runs the country’s economy. But the fact that the NFL Draft is shown in its entirety as if it was the Super Bowl takes things overboard.

Yes, a handful of guys who get drafted past the fifth round make it to the big time, but that’s rare. Instead of having some coverage of one of the greatest NBA playoff games in history with the Nets/Bulls triple overtime thriller, we only saw guys we have never heard of get drafted.

The NFL Draft improved this year, however. NFL Network and ESPN decided to not have any of their analysts tweet the picks before we can see it on TV. That actually made the draft worth watching on TV instead of online on social networks. But that’s one of very few compliments I can give everyone involved in the draft.

The main reason I wasn’t going to watch the draft is because of how much coverage and analysis each team got the four months prior to the draft. There are only so many ways you can report that the Kansas City Chiefs are going to take an offensive lineman with its pick. We get it. And since we have been told that for so long, what’s the point of watching the draft?

Of course there are surprises and the die-hard fans are going to be glued to their televisions for all of it. The amount of coverage the event gets prior is what ruins the experience for most sports fans. Give us only a couple stories about each team, what they need to draft and let us watch for ourselves what the teams do. Maybe I won’t lose my excitement for football when the season finally kicks off…in September.