So with the NFL draft coming up, I thought it might be interesting to discuss possible improvement to the NFL draft for the viewing audience (us).
I’ve offered up a few improvements below.
Feel free to agree/disagree, and add your own.
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Reduce the amount of time for each of the 1st round picks...
Because I don’t have 10 hours to kill just to watch the first round!
As a viewer of the draft, 15 minutes per pick is crazy as a viewing fan. After the first minute or two of each pick, they just keep showing the same highlights of the previous picks over and over and over. Enough already. If my team is picking 10th, I don’t want to wait up to 2.5 hours just to see their selection. Baseball can get a pick made in a couple minutes, so can the NFL (and if they want to trade, they need to be quicker about it).
Put cameras AND AUDIO in the war rooms...
If I have to sit around and endure ten to fifteen minutes of Dallas or Minnesota dicking around before making their pick, I at least want to know WHY. If they are discussing a pick, let me hear how that goes down. Otherwise I’m left just grumbling about those jerks taking the full time on the clock to pick some kid who isn’t coming to Cincy.
Force the networks to not break away to commercials...
Because they ALWAYS break to commercial right after my team picks!
If I have to watch 5 hours of highlights of other team’s picks, I was a few minutes of highlights for my own team’s picks. Goodbye commercials. We’ll do World Cup style commercials where the sponsor’s names are just posted at the top of the screen.
Get rid of the kids in the green room...
I really don’t care to see John Smith walking up to the stage donning a hat of some team that I don’t follow!
Hey, let’s shove a bunch of kids & their families in a room and make them sweat it out for hours watching other kids getting drafted instead of them. Great idea.
If we need to have kids in the green room, let’s go back to the 5 or 10, who were assured to be high picks. Nowadays they add kids who shouldn’t even bother entering the green room until the last day.
Make sure whoever announces the picks can pronounce the names...
It’s so cringe worthy when the commish, or whoever follows him, is handed a card of some kid with a name with a pronunciation that isn’t easily recognizable. At least put the phonetic spelling on the card so the reader doesn’t sound like some jerk who can’t even get the kid’s name right on his big day.
Move the draft up closer to the Super Bowl...
I really have no justification for this other than the waiting around for 3 months between the last NFL game, and the draft just takes so darn long. And to think, the NFL wants to push it further out. Ugh...
Move the draft location each year so fans of various teams can attend...
At some point the casual viewer gets tired of seeing Giants and Jets fans waving and booing and yelling and so forth during the draft. Let’s move the draft from city to city each year so we can see some Cardinals or Bengals or Chiefs fans in the background.
Although I’d steer clear of moving it to Cleveland or Jacksonville – because fans typically ‘boo’ bad picks, and the last thing I want to hear in the background is 3 days of solid "booing" because the home team still hasn’t figured out how to draft.
Bring in some new analysts...
I’m not saying the existing ones are bad, but how many times do I have to see Kiper’s unchanging hair?
Let’s bring in some new guys with some new phrases so I don’t have to keep hearing about "motors" and "sand in pants" and "red flags" and "working well in a phone booth" – heck, most of these kids being drafted have never even seen a phone booth.
Require that every pick after round 4 is mentioned at least briefly...
If I watch an hour and a half of round 5 to see who my teams picks, at least give me a 15 second sound byte about him. Don’t just lump him with the last seven picks and say they all got drafted, before moving on to do an interview with somebody who was drafted 2 days ago.