The NFL Draft is a Welcome Distraction
The first round of the NFL Draft starts on Thursday, April 23 at 8pmET on ESPN, ABC and the NFL Network. Critics of the NFL have questioned the timing. Why have it now? Most of the country is in quarantine due to COVID-19. Many people are out of jobs.
At some point, this will end, but not by April 23. People can't sit in their house, stare at the walls, watch old TV shows and play video games forever. Sports fans have not been able to witness live sports in over a month since college basketball conference tournaments ended, the NBA and NHL stopped and the XFL discontinued their league (maybe forever) after five weeks.
We're at the time to start to methodically get society moving again. That doesn't mean ending social distancing and going back to gathering in crowds. We have to do whatever it takes to follow guidelines and also plan on moving on because life has to return to whatever the new normal is at some point. Some experts feel sports and concerts involving big crowds, won't return until the fall of 2021 at the earliest. Maybe that is the case if a vaccine isn't developed within a year.
All we see in the news is the most pessimistic of scenarios and you do have to prepare for that. But why not think optimistically with some caution? The NFL Draft allows us to dream that maybe a full season of football is possible, with or without fans. For three days, we can ponder why the Raiders are now in Las Vegas and wonder whether Tua Tagovailoa will go to Miami or will they take Justin Herbert.
If we weren't dealing with COVID-19, most sports fans and bettors would still be paying attention to the draft. But we'd have baseball, the NBA and NHL playoffs to contemplate. We'd be looking at money lines for pitchers and series odds for the playoffs. Instead, we're looking to bet on how many Georgia and Alabama players will go in the first round and whether wide receiver Jerry Jeudy goes ahead of CeeDee Lamb. Football is a year-round sport and you can follow news on the NFL and college football 24-7. Due to the virus, all there was no complete spring football, will be no OTA's and probably no mini-camps. We just have the draft and free agency to follow.
Sports becomes crucial in times of crisis. What was one of the first acts that people remember after 9-11? It was President George W. Bush throwing the first pitch (a perfect strike) from the mound at the World Series.
In 1942, MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Moutain Landis wrote a letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt about whether they should continue playing during wartime.
FDR responded with back. "I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going," he wrote Landis in what has become known as "the green light letter." The President continued: "There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before. And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before."
Watching the NFL Draft for three days is more than to just help break up the monotony of the day. For three days and several after that, teams will be graded and mock drafts will be critiqued. Talk show hosts, who in the past degraded the draft and the NFL, will have something to talk about for another week or two. The same people who blasted the league for holding it at this time, will relish the thought of having dozens of guests to break down all 32 drafts because it fills air time. Newspapers will be able to fill their sports sections with more than just features and stories about the past.
Why hold the NFL Draft in a pandemic when sports is put on hold? As "Red" Redding and Andy Dufresne said in "Shawshank Redemption", Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying.
