Dan Dodges Draft in Favor of `Real` Football
Dan Ryan
Monday April 22, 2002
Okay, the blowhards of the mainstream media won’t say it’s real, but there were touchdowns being scored, receivers running post patterns, kickers shanking field goals, lineman knocking the snot out of each other, coaches bitching about calls and fans drinking beer. It was beautiful, man. Excuse me as I weep.
And when I wasn’t tuned into Sunshine Network for the upstart Toronto Phantoms’ nice win over Tampa Bay or listening to the Preds’ disaster at the hands of the Georgia Force [Lord knows I’ve been around this league too long when I’ve seen that lame singular nickname make its second go-around], I played Tetris with my son and took him to Burger King for a succulent meal of chicken tenders and his collecting the ninth Ice Age toy. Again, it was beautiful.
So excuse me as I proudly opine that not once did I hear the voice of Mel Kiper, Jr. on Saturday, nor did I watch clips of some inside linebacker bodyslamming some no-name quarterback from a college with a direction in its title. I did not concern myself over someone from Michigan State’s time in the 40. When I did spectate, I saw John Kaleo trying to rally the Storm. When I went online, it was to get the Sabrecats’ score.
All together now: How does Dan really feel about the NFL draft?
Put it this way: If the fabulous Baker boy resurrected the Houston Thunderbears and the Florida Bobcats (Hey, I still have a file of Bobcat jokes I need to use) and put it on pay-per-view Saturday, I would have watched that stinker out of principle instead of Chris Berman and Joe Theisman droning on about the Cardinals’ need for pass protection and how this guy from Weber State is going to change the world. Hey Berman, the Cardinals are still going to suck. Can the guy find Bin Laden for us?
The word is non-event. But since it’s the NFL’s non-event, we’re attracted to it like Clinton to blondes. {National signing day, the college football version, is worse} It does keep Kiper, Jr. employed and gives the NFL media an excuse to stay on their “beats” [read: not have to really work] and maybe even has created a few extra jobs that call for them to interview each other while vamping for time.
A good portion of all the print space, air time, and brain cell usage in the past two weeks regarding two days of 32 teams divvying up a bunch of already overexposed college football players could have instead been devoting perhaps to high school kids who may never get a chance of seeing their name in print, a local college program or perhaps some bastardized version of gridiron played indoors. Hey, Toronto has a former kicker as its head coach. That, my friends, is a story. Unfortunately, very few people outside our sporting niche will know …and probably don’t care.
For in this day and age, where cable and the net allow us addition information to make us think we’re pro sporting experts, we bite. Did you know that Saturday is usually the busiest day for NFL.com? That’s nice, I guess, in the fact it takes the stress off the servers that host Anna Kournakova sites. And does it pay off or make anyone truly smarter for the day’s expense? Maybe in August, when one of the selectees blasts a future truck driver in the third quarter of a meaningless exhibition game… “Hey Buck, that was our fourth-rounder! Kiper was right! Boy, I can’t wait till the games COUNT! Any more beer left?’’
I admit that the worst thing that came out of Saturday was that some die-hard zealots simply wasted a day talking about a game they love. Nothing at all wrong with that. But there were eight games being played that just possibly were worth a look. And they counted.
Dan Ryan has been involved with all forms of arena football since 1988, including writing for ArenaFan when Joe Kauffman and Tim Capper aren’t killing his columns because they don’t get his jokes or perspective. His day job is at Bethune-Cookman University, which has produced both an NFL Hall of Famer (Larry Little) and an Arena Football Hall of Famer (Stevie Thomas) and his hobby is tracking how many f-bombs Adam Markowitz drops in the chat room on game nights.
