Mocking the NFL Draft: First Edition

Mocking the NFL Draft is a column running every Tuesday until the NFL Draft, in which Pipez literally* puts on a Mel Kiper wig and discusses the tough issues surrounding the draft.

Consider this column the first day of NFL Draft 101 in the college of professional sports. I am your professor, you can call me Kipez, and I have already handed out your syllabus and course outline. Today is going to be an introduction to the NFL Draft.

The NFL Draft is the culmination of the most homoerotic part of the NFL: Scouting. There are numerous “experts” who examine all the physical “specimens.” They spend countless hours scouting and “measuring” all the prospects to project how they might “perform” in the NFL.

You will hear many descriptions of things like “this guy has a motor.” Do not be fooled. Nobody actually has a real motor in the NFL. It just means that a certain player has a relentless hunger to do his job; he just will not quit.

There is also what is called a “big board.” However, there is no actual “big board” any more. Before the advent of computers, the best way to keep an up-to-the-minute list of the best players available, one needed a large bulletin board to keep track.

The two most important people you need to know are Mel Kiper and Todd McShay.  They are supposedly so brilliant at scouting athletes that no NFL team can afford**  them. Therefore, ESPN has hired them to argue with each other about who each team should pick.

However, the most important part of their job comes on actual draft day. This is when they are supposed to trash-talk all of the teams who do not pick the players at the top of their “big board.” These teams will obviously now be complete failures, and should probably just forfeit all of their games in the upcoming season.

I’m sure that this a lot for you to absorb on your first day, so I will let you go early. Today’s class is dismissed.

*Not literally, figuratively

**By afford, I mean is willing to pay them for any of their services