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Diehard draftniks are simply daft
Posted: Monday April 17, 2000 03:29 PM
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Jack's take, give us yours. This is one of my favorite times of the year. For the next 11 months we don't have to hear about the NFL draft, the most over-televised, over-analyzed, over- Mel-Kiperized event on this or any other planet. Further, I await eagerly the coming days of contract acrimony and mini-camp holding-out, that glorious time when draft picks who were once described by team officials as indispensable salts of the earth are now miserable, avaricious creatures (their agents are worse), and cities that seemed so hospitable during the pre-draft courting period are now heartless prisons that exist only to disrespect fine young men in search of an honest dollar. Can you imagine what's going to happen in Cincinnati? That's where penny-pinching Bengals general manager Mike Brown has to sign flighty Florida Stater Peter Warrick, the wide receiver who, commenting last week on the Bengals' decade-long failings, said, "I ain't never played for a team like that." Yo, Mike, I think he's dis-respecting you.
The NFL draft will not make you whole, as the NBA draft might do if you land, say, Sam Bowie in the first round. (Sorry, make that Michael Jordan.) This is the era of experience and free agency, the era of plugging weaknesses with veterans who may have been lost on other rosters and who usually weren't high draft picks. The player who made the biggest difference in the NFL last season, remember, was picked off the football scrap heap. To those of you who were tuned in on Draft Day '95: Did you hear much about Kurt Warner? Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum will contribute a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the
writer.
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