The NFL Draft: Stop The Madness, Pass The Pick

"Madness! Madness!" Major Clipton at the conclusion of The Bridge on The River Kwai.

The NFL Draft has become a national monstrosity.

Once a meek beast that was quietly undertaken on a spring afternoon in Gotham. It has morphed into a mighty leviathan, full of lot of sound and fury, but signifying mostly nothing.

Except of course for draft nuts like Mel Kiper, pictured above, and a few million draft mad men scattered across the realm.

The NFL is all about marketing and money a vicious corporate behemoth built to pick your pockets anyway they can. The draft has risen from its slight beginnings to become a money making beast.

But most of the men taken, those same men idling in their in front of middle aged men and answering dumb questions from pseudo football shrinks, will be washouts.

Out of the 32 top picks, more than half, despite all the prodding, pokes, and tests, will be poor to barely average players. Another quarter will be solid but not spectacular, a few will be good, and a tiny fraction will be very good.

And still teams drop millions on these men, particularly on the top 10 men.

Why would a team waste millions on a shell game where the odds of hitting the proverbial football home run are about one in eight?

Why not just pass?

If a team can not trade down out of the top 10 and even the entire first round why not just let the clock expire?

Save your millions and sign a prov-en player or three.

Before Al Davis became Mad Al, the grinning skull obsessing over lawsuits, coach's contracts, dropping a hundred million silver, and black bucks on defensive backs. He used to be the master of finding the veteran free agent longing for a ring or a come back.

Those days are gone for Davis, and they are not coming back.

But Bill Belichick's New England Patriots seem to manage the free agent market in the old Raider way these days. The Patriots have maintained a high quality team and recycled stars like Randy Moss and Cory Dillon into productive twilight year players.

Jerry Jones's dreams that his Dallas Cowboys are like the old Raider renegades. He, however, is much more interested in being the ringmaster, or the big clown, in a sad traveling circus that plays poor football.

Jones used to have a draft master in Jimmy Johnson, only rivaled in the draft day trade down department by the San Francisco Forty Niners Bill Walsh. Jone's hubris destroyed that relationship and his Cowboys have never been the same since.

So will teams try to save money and acquire productive players instead of a high risk, high possible prim-madonna players?

Doubtful.

Teams fear the ire of frustrated fans and the mind-numbing stream of television talking head rants and inter-net rumblings from the endless armies of experts.

But has drafting high for decades helped the Detroit Lions or the Cincinnati Bengals?

Since Sid Luckman, have the Chicago Bears, save for Jim McMahon, ever been able to pluck a first-round quarterback diamond? 

And now the cost is obscenely high to sign these guys. Why not trade down or hit the pass button, and drop from the top 10? Save a trainful of dollars.

Sure crazy-eyed Kiper will be shocked, awed, and aghast, foaming, frothing, screaming, and shaking that they know not what they do. They know not what they have wrought on his draft.

Perhaps they could cage Kiper. Let him hang, a rabid Elvis headed howling monkey, high above the savagely drunk New York crowd, insanely screaming forty times, and weight reps.

Maybe intoxicated Jets fans can bare their fangs, fling beer bottles and full beer cans at the caged, demented draft beast, while irate, insulted general managers throw much more vile bodily fluids at their nemesis.

We know Chris Berman and Tom Jackson would beam, sip their strong gins, and say that is just our Mad Mel.

Matt Millen though might have more murderous eyes and, after his fifth bourbon, begin to contemplate how fine a Kiper scalp would look in his den.

Ah, the draft.

At least it is entertaining and harmless as long your not paying the tab for some soft-brained, steroid-crazed, cocaine-eyed, pistol-packing wide out ,who just cracked both feet stomping, three screaming stripper sisters at his draft day eve bash in some violently bizarre Gotham underworld bar.

But that is the chance team's management takes when they throw sixty million or so at a twenty-year-old.

Play the draft pass game. Stock up on the second-rounders and hard charging third and fourth rounders. Sign some quality free agents. Maybe steal a late first-rounder that lingered long on the board.

Above all draft football players. Players who enjoy the game and are intelligent. Pass on the potential super stars or super busts. Those Janus headed players cost coaches jobs.

Why roll hundred million dollar dice on a quarterback who left early after only one year in the college saddle? Does your team really need a 350 pound down south diva tackle?

What is better the big back with the slow times and fast injuries or three hungry late round running backs?

Does your team need the boom or bust undersized, speed pass rusher who left early and might be a hard fit in the scheme of a professional defense?

What about the player who has a ton of potential, but can not seem to grasp complex schemes?

Or the big named player who was babied every year of college. Will he really help?

Run, don't walk, from the top 10. Bank your bucks, buy prov-en free agent.

Let the Lions loosen the purse strings and extend their long losing costly draft streak.

Draft Doctor Jekyll but beware after a few months you might have a Mister Hyde on steroids. Its a dangerous experiment, the draft, and men will be made or badly broken with the quick whip of a phone.

But it is only football for millionaires, and it is not real life. So as Keith Richards once sang, "Don't Take It So Hard."

And that means you too Mel.

But Mel doesn't care, even with that hair, the draft has made him millions too.

Maybe in the end, we are the rubes.