NFL Draft: Whose Draft Is It Anyway?

We are still more than 48 hours from the first one-round, mid-week Draft day in NFL history and I hate the idea already. Of all the shameless, ratings-grabbing acts perpetrated by the League in the past few years, this one stinks higher than most.

Why? Well, first of all, it runs contrary to a lot of the things that the draft has previously been about—the relentless suspense of not knowing who might be drafted by your team that day, the chance for your side to redeem a dodgy first round pick by taking a bargain in the later rounds and so on. It also, frankly, makes it less of a demonstration of the skill of each side's Draft party.

Even when the Draft became split over two days, each side knew that they were going to be on their toes the whole time, ready to trade up or down quickly so as to pick up the best available player in the later rounds, and particularly between the first, second, and third rounds.

Now, with just the first round on the first day, you lose all of that. Teams have a chance to go away, watch more tape, talk to potential trade partners and basically take a much more relaxed approach to the whole event. In fact, if you don't a first round pick and don't want to trade back into the round, why bother showing up at all on Thursday? You can follow everything you need to on television with a phone in your hand, just like the rest of us.

Except that it won't be like the rest of us. What other sport would decide that it was a good idea to move their spring showpiece event to a Thursday evening? At 7.32pm, a time which might be fine in NYC, but which comes right at the end of the working day on the West Coast. If you're a St Louis fan and want to watch the moment that your side drafts the franchise quarterback of the future, you're going to have to be home before drivetime to do it.

If US fans feel a bit put out by this, then fans abroad have been totally stiffed. For all the NFL's talk in recent years of wanting to make this more of a global game, the timing this year pays no attention at all to those outside of the US. For US servicemen and women in Germany, the Draft begins in the small hours of Friday morning. Even here in the UK it will be 12.32am when the Rams hand in the slip marked "Sam Bradford".

No sports fan believes that any sport they follow will take their interests into account when making a major decision. The average governing body such as the NFL believes the definition of "Fan" to be "Cash cow to be milked until they run dry". Taking one of the weekend events of the year away from us is a step too far, though.

So I hope that the NFL's latest attempt to grab ratings is a bigger bust than Ryan Leaf. That way we can get back to the Draft being done properly, and in a way that most fans can follow.