Raiders "Al" in to Prove Experts Dumb

(Photo by Gaye Gerard/Getty Images)

The NFL draft is nothing if not a crapshoot.  After all the evaluation, hype, horse trading and strategizing, all NFL teams selections are at best, best guesses on the future.

The NFL and ESPN convert the entertainment value of professional football and this spring rite frenzy for new blood into big dollars.

To justify their expensive productions of a glorified job fair, the NFL and ESPN enlist "experts" to market players, evaluate and comment on picks the only way they can, subjectively. 

In all forms of gambling, the NFL draft included, the main elements are risk and payoff.  The NFL draft is televised for the same reasons poker is, and on the same channel. For NFL owners and GMs the gamble involves real money and real consequences, but network experts only have their marginal reputations at stake. 

After all, if Charlie Casserly, Michael Lombardi and Mike Mayock were actually so good at evaluating talent for NFL teams, they'd still have real jobs, instead of peddling their "knowledge" as sales hacks for the networks.

To say nothing of Mel Kiper and Todd McShay who've never had real jobs in their lives (although McShay was once a Guess-Your-Weight carny.)

So after all that has been said about what has been done in the Oakland Raiders 2009 NFL draft room one thing clearly is going to come out of this:  Somebody is going to look really stupid. 

And for so many selfish reasons, I hope its the experts.

If the smug, blow-dried, clown-college, talking head ESPN/NFL network d-bags thought the Raiders taking wide receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey at No. 7 was a reach then they, and most Raider fans, weren't even approaching ready for round two when Al Davis went all in selecting safety Michael Mitchell.

Indeed, so far Al Davis has played the 2009 Draft for exactly the crapshoot that it is.  The Raiders have taken the players they wanted in the order they wanted them.  Nobody can point fingers and say, "well the Raiders didn't get their guy so they settled for so-and-so and all their talk about always wanting him is just spin."  Not in this draft.

The consensus is that NOBODY in or out of their right mind, would take the players the Raiders took in the spots they took them.  Al Davis placed his bets, not only on the players he likes best based on his own standards, but has bet all-in against the field of "experts." 

Some Raiders fans are left questioning themselves as fans on days like this.  And that's too bahhahh-d for them.  They've allowed the clowns to gin up hysteria based on baseless expectations.

But its days like this that I celebrate being a Raiders fan.  I'm backing these bets, and why not, as a fan I have less to lose than any stupid expert.  And nobody is a bigger threat than somebody with nothing to lose.

So how about a kicker in Round Three?

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