The Show.

I happen to get pretty frustrated when the NFL draft comes around every year. If I try to watch TV within a 3 week radius of the draft, I'm bombarded with "expert talk" about all the draft prospects, who's going to get picked at the sacred #1 spot, who's going to drop, who's going to bust, etc. The reason it bothers me when I see this is because it seems like a waste of time to watch these "experts" argue over the unforeseeable.

For example, JaMarcus Russell was picked first overall by the Raiders in the 2007 NFL draft. Of course at the time it seemed like a reasonable pick. During his junior year at LSU he lead his squad to a 10-2 record as well as a Sugar Bowl berth where he earned MVP honors after beating Notre Dame 41-14. Now, with this in mind, it becomes evident why the Raiders would pick him #1 overall - they needed a quarterback, and Russell seemed like a stud. Leading up the the draft, Russell was the talk of the draft. After the Raiders picked Russell at the #1 spot, draft experts raved over what an outstanding pick it was, and Mel Kiper Jr., one of these "experts," went on to say something along the lines of (and I'm paraphrasing,): "JaMarcus Russell will be one of the top 3 quarterbacks in the NFL 2 or 3 years down the road." As we've come to learn, Russell has turned out to be one of the biggest busts in NFL history. He has 18 career TD's and 23 career interceptions. Granted, he is on a horrifically bad team, but if he had followed suit with what draft experts predicted at the time of his draft, he would have pulled the Raiders out of the slums and heroically carried them to the Promised Land amongst the NFL's elite.

Now, I'm not going to criticize a man like Mel Kiper Jr. for telling an extremely impressionable audience that JaMarcus Russell would be an elite quarterback in the NFL - after all, it is the man's job to make such claims. However, I will blame the unnecessary hype and notion that if you tag the word, "expert" next to your name, you can tell me what will without a doubt happen. It seems to me like being a "draft expert" has a striking similarity to being a pro baseball player - if you succeed 3 out of 10 times you're considered pretty damn good. Every year these glorified draft experts tell us who is going to bust, who is going to shine, and who is going to surprise. Why do we listen to them though? Do they know what will happen? Do hours of film and research qualify them to predict the future? Of course not. We see the same thing with March Madness every year. The experts make their brackets, which inevitably bust, and it turns out some 23 year old chick from God-knows-where who has never seen a college basketball game in her life has a near-perfect bracket.

So why do we do it? Why do we fill out brackets religiously, and why do we make mock drafts every year if we don't know? The answer, at least for most people, is for the excitement. It's the chance put your sports knowledge, reasoning, and logic to the test. I'm not going to blame someone for making predictions that end up busting tragically, but I am going to blame people who tell me what will happen, because they don't know. I don't care if you know every single aspect of a player's game and personal life, because there is always a chance of the unexpected. Injury, trade, lack of work ethic, trouble with the law - the list goes on. There are so many factors that go into a players fate that the draft experts cannot account for. So please, do a mock draft for the excitement, do it for the thrill, but spare me your unwavering knowledge about the unforeseeable future. Let's just sit back and watch instead.