Off The Press

Off the Press, I don't have much time to dilly dally.  My main man, Jerome "J-Solo" Solomon, is doing a chat, Draft talk with lunch, on the Boston Globe's website at noon, and I don't want to miss him. 

For die-hard football fans, the upcoming weekend is like heaven.  Groups of guys around the country will gather together or sit by themselves and watch every round of the NFL Draft.  I've done it several times (I even blogged the draft last year), and let me tell you it's a grueling exercise.  The keys to surviving the process is having proper rest, enough fluids, a laptop and an understanding spouse or significant other (I've had relationships end over a lost draft weekend).

Sports fans can't dodge this draft, writes Mike Freeman of the Florida Times-Union.  It appears, like me, Freeman is a hard core fan/watcher of the draft. Though, he might be a little bit more into it than I.  An example, Freeman writes:

We love this time of year because we can play NFL general manager. With our Web site browsing and obsessive-compulsive ingestion of every available nugget, draft dorks believe they know as much as the real personnel men who spend their lives evaluating college talent.

"Vertical leap," "motor," "reps on the bench," "good first step" and "jumps through the roof" are just some of the phrases used by draft dorks. After I hear some of those lovely words, I want to smoke a cigarette. Because it's draft time.

Joakim Noah said winning the national championship was better than sex.

He was wrong about that.

The draft is.

And this is how much of a draft degenerate I am

Someone needs to intervene with that brother..

Not everyone feels like Freeman about the draft, just check out what Dallas News columnist Kevin Blackistone says about the draft and the nerds who watch it.  Blackistone writes:

Enough already!

This whole draft thing has reached a point of ad nauseam with me that I'd consider voting for a politician simply because the candidate's platform included a moratorium on draft talk, or, better still, criminalizing such chitchat more than a week before the overhyped "event."

For there is nothing in sports that is more unworthy of so much hyperbole than this annual kabuki dance performed by NFL general managers, coaches and troupes of scouts. It's so over the top that it's driven me to adapt a thought from the character Howard Beale in Network: "I can't take this anymore!"

That man really can't stand it, eh? 

My last item for you is a great piece, Winning Equation, by Jerome Solomon from today's Globe on what makes distinguishes "football intelligence" from the kind captured by Wonderlic tests.  Solomon is a mentor of Vince Young and gets some great quotes and observations from Young on the topic.  Also check my mock draft out on Black Voices Sports.

out.

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• #2 Comment from lasch05 
  6/6/07 5:33 PM | Permalink

  what
• #1 Comment from monponsett 
  5/2/06 6:15 PM | Permalink

  I'm partially Portuguese, I blog about sports, and I deserve a link in your "favorite journals" section.
  
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