I live in WI, the draft is in green bay and people are losing their minds. Why? What’s so special about teams picking players? It shouldn’t be this big of a deal lol.
So it’s basically a combination of everything that everyone else has said.
- NFL is by far the most popular sport in the country, but it also only has 17 regular season games (versus 82ish for NHL and NBA, 40ish for MLS, and 162 for MLB), and the entire season is spread over only 6-7 months of the calendar year, versus 8-10 for the others. There is an appetite for any content at all that materially affects the most watched sport.
- College Football itself is probably the fourth most popular sports “league” in the country, though its organization and economics are WAY different (for now) than the normal pro leagues’. There’s huge overlap in general of course, but the Draft brings all of the fans together as CFB fans see where the top players will move.
- Going back to number 1, the NFL and media companies, being what they are, noticed the gap in the sporting calendar (after March Madness, before NBA and NHL playoffs, very early in the MLB season, MLS well… (LOL, I love MLS and it’s a miracle it’s stable but it’s still not an important “TV sport” in this country). They also noticed that a certain segment of die-hards have been watching the draft for 30 years, and they saw an opportunity to tap that dormant interest for months of “segments” and a big day of ratings and revenue, so of course they did.
- More recently, seeing that their hype efforts were working, they’ve moved it out of an auditorium near League HQ and made it a travelling road show, goosing local attention and furthering the image that it’s an event.
As to why all that worked, I like the posts that talk about the optimism and renewal that the draft represents. The NFL is unique in how it handles player development, in that it mostly doesn’t because it has an independently-popular lower league that will do it for free. Since that lower league is effectively the sole source of players, and since the NFL is an American-style sporting cartel, the Draft becomes the single biggest infusion of talent that a team will see in a given year, some of it ready to contribute on the field right away, and the teams that need the talent the most usually have the best picks and therefore a real chance to improve quickly, though the same bad management that gets teams in a bad place will often squander that chance.
For those who follow European football (soccer, not the niche gridiron leagues over there), imagine a single day (okay, three days now, but Rounds 2-7 are still for the nerds) that combines the anxiety of a promotion playoff final (though with deferred results) with the excitement of the summer transfer window (let’s consider NFL free agency the equivalent of the winter window).
Because sports ball is important to them. Will a good player be on their team? Will they finally drop that player no one likes? What team managed to snag that up and coming player.
All those things are relevant to someone.
I am an avid sports fan, and I will never understand the Draft worship. Like it’s important to get good players, sure. But I don’t need so spend a weekend watching about it. It’s just a way for the NFL to make money by selling ads.
It matters to sponsors. Big companies pay money to have their name slapped on everything, and then huge amount of marketing to ensure the max audience size means many more eyes in the sponsors crap. The NFL makes a killing on these sponsored events, so they will drive up the engagement wherever they are. And since sports matter to many Americans, this needs to REALLY SUPER matter.
I agree, who cares about teams picking players except for the players?
Dude, you live in Green Bay. Shouldnt you have been fully indoctrinated in Packers Football by now? I thought they issued everyone a cheesehead hat at birth.
I’m a Minnesota wild fan. Couldn’t care less about football honestly.
So you have an axe to grind because of another sports success?
Or are you here “just asking questions”
What else is there for people to do?
Read, learn something new, show empathy to other humans, glance at what politicians are doing (regardless of MAGA)
The draft is being held in your state this year, it’s the first time as far as I can recall, they want to make a good show of it so it might return some day.
How is it a show? Isn’t it just guys reading names off a sheet of paper?
The sheets of paper are getting filled in minutes before they’re announced,
The teams can trade their picks between each other,
It’s not known what teams are going to take what players, if my team (4) thinks team 1 is going to take player A, and team 2 isn’t interested in that player but team 3 is, if team 1 takes player b instead my team might talk with team 2 about trading draft pick positions so we can get that player.
There’s a lot of talking between a lot of professionals representing a lot of teams, the whole situation is very fluid, and it might change the course of your franchise (unless you’re the Jets)
It’s also 3 days of spectacle.
There’s constant running commentary and speculation, and biographical segments, and sometimes a little drama when surprising things happen, or expected things don’t, and a large group of people simply care enough that they want to know as soon as a pick happens, though how organic the growth of that group has been is certainly open for debate.
We don’t have the draft for team sports in the rest of the world and it creates these megateams of galactico superstars. There is also relegation in European football/rugby so teams can push into the upper echelons if they are extremely lucky in terms of getting amazing performances out of nominally mid players.
Its where you get hot takes to feel included in the sports conversations.
# Sports go sports! #
# Athletics are number one! #
# Participants are heroes! #
# Go team yeah! #
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Edit: looks like I can’t use hash symbols to show that they’re lyrics - Lemmy thinks I want them to be headers…
Edit2: fixed the hash sign problem thanks to parlordrolap below.
