A little of something good is a good thing. A medium amount of something good is also a good thing, but better than a little bit of it. By this logic, you might assume that a large amount of something good is the best thing, but you'd be wrong: the best thing is actually being crushed under an avalanche of the thing that is good to the point where you can no longer breathe and are straddling the line of ecstasy and wishing for the sweet release of death.
You know, something like this:
Welcome to the 2018 NFL Draft.
The NFL today announced a new broadcast arrangement in which NFL Network and FOX will team up to simulcast live coverage of Rounds 1-3 of the 2018 NFL Draft. Additionally, the league has expanded its partnership with ESPN/ABC whereby ESPN2 will supplement ESPN's coverage of Round 1 with a separate and unique college-themed production in addition to a simulcast of ESPN's live coverage of Rounds 4-7 airing on ABC. ...
The expanded coverage gives the NFL Draft its largest audience reach ever, and marks the first time ever that the entirety of the live three-day event will air on broadcast television.
Just dip me in the finest oils and leave me for dead in a pile of baby quokkas, please.
I was doing some research into the NFL Draft for this piece, and one of the things that I discovered was that since it merged with the AFL, the NFL Draft has always been at least a two-day affair. Which is completely insane when you consider that there were only like 8 professional teams in the 1960s and only maybe twice that many college teams capable of sending players not enfeebled by polio to the draft.
Over time, coverage of the NFL Draft has continually grown, seeing the largest jump in interest once a little-known cable channel whose programming consisted of snowmobile races and Bill Dance marathons decided to devote approximately 30915677823 hours of coverage to the event.
The New York Times wrote this breathless account of ESPNs coverage of the draft all the way back in 1991, a quaint time when having our brains and eyeballs bombarded for hours by Chris Berman and company seemed like a good idea rather than a cry for help:
ESPN's coverage of yesterday's National Football League draft proved one thing: that a record-length near-five-hour first round replete with talking heads need not be a sleepathon. Maybe the folks behind the Academy Awards show will learn from ESPN's run-and-shoot production that vapid song-and-dance numbers are unnecessary. Just put Chris Berman up on the podium to bestow the Oscar on Tom (Let Me Take You On A Sea) Cruise.
Wow! Five whole hours of coverage! I'm not sure that I can consume such a cornucopia of NFL Draft deliciousness in one sitting, thank God someone invented the VCR so that I can watch it in easily digestible half-hour bites instead!
Of course (as stated above), today the NFL Draft is a three day marathon, stretched out to ridiculous lengths as every player is analyzed from every single possible angle, with interviews from every possible family member and acquaintance that stumbles in the direction of the cameras embedded in the homes of the soon-to-be-millionaires, several dissertations about the importance of hand measurements and shuttle times, and a possible social media scandal that pops up at an inopportune time.
And hey, at night, when coverage shifts and things ostensibly settle down, why not make the agonizing wait for more draft coverage shorter popping in the cinematic classic "Draft Night," a fictional movie about the Cleveland Browns making intelligent and prescient moves in the NFL Draft.
It's a bit much. And that makes me sad, because as a kid, I loved the NFL Draft. But there's a fine line between enjoying being smothered to death by coverage of an event and actually just kind of hoping that you can get through it without serious mental harm, and in the past few years I've been wondering why I've gone from genuinely enjoying the draft to writing pithy articles about it on Eleven Warriors dot com.
Turns out the answer is pretty obvious! Even though Urban Meyer has sent an absolutely absurd amount of Ohio State players to the NFL Draft, spreading it all out over the course of three days means that any joy that I'd have over Buckeyes being picked is now heavily diluted. It used to be that you could watch the draft for four or five hours, see a handful or two Ohio State players get selected, give your fandom a nice high five, and then take a well-earned nap.
Now, you might see... what? Two, three Ohio State picks? Per day? That's really not enough to whet my appetite, and relying on the Bengals or the Browns to produce enough entertainment in between the announcement of Buckeyes is a fool's errand. Even at the peak of the Meyer era in Columbus, there just isn't enough to keep a Buckeye fan like myself interested in the draft beyond the first round.
So when you think of it in those terms, the answer becomes pretty obvious: in order to continue to grow interest in the NFL Draft, and to personally keep me, Johnny Ginter, glued to the television screen, one very specific drastic measure is necessary: every single Ohio State football player must be drafted, every year.
This is an idea with some fairly obvious advantages besides forcing me to watch, Hunger Games-style, as my favorite collegiate players are drafted into the pros every season.
For example, it would give Urban Meyer 85 new scholarships to play with every season. You can't tell me that he wouldn't relish the idea of being able to honestly tell every single freshman recruit that they will see immediate playing time. And frankly, the difficulty of constructing a functional football team out of completely new players every season is a necessary ramp up in difficulty for a coach that makes it seem too easy all too often.
Rounds six and seven would also take on a kind of Benny Hill urgency, as teams would be falling over each other to snatch up Buckeye longsnappers and punters and placeholders. And maybe, finally, possibly, the Cleveland Browns might be forced into drafting someone from Ohio State. Someone good.
Ultimately even drafting the whole damn team might not be enough to get me to watch the draft like I did when I was a kid, because the difficulty that the NFL and ESPN and FOX have is that bridging the gap between the college football fan and the NFL football fan isn't necessarily more coverage, it's an understand of what makes college football awesome and how college football makes the NFL better.
Maybe the answer, then, has never been "more," but instead has been "better." We'll see if draft coverage from the likes of the World Wide Leader and the NFL Network will ever reflect that, or if they'll keep striving to impress the New York Times in 1991.
