Spare Us the Analysis, Please

Tonight begins one of the great non-events on the sports calendar - the NFL Draft, an event that could be done in about six to eight hours, but now lasts three days.  To be fair, it isn't really a non-event, it is important to the 32 NFL teams who will select between six and nine players each that will all play critical roles as these teams make their inevitable march to the Super Bowl.  Yeah.

What makes this a non-event is not only all of the overkill leading up to it, but the mountains of analysis that will follow.  What teams "won" on Draft Day(s), which teams blew it, which teams got the best value.  Please, spare us.  Come to us after, say, the 2018 season to tell us which teams had the best draft in 2015.

For example, in the year 2000, one NFL team made the following selections with their first four selections in that year's draft:

1. No selection
2. Adrian Klemm, OT, Hawaii
3. J. R. Redmond, RB, Arizona State
4. Greg Robinson-Randall, OT, Michigan State
5. Dave Stachski, TE, Boise State

Now, I am sure that the local press and national pundits probably discussed these four players in great detail in the days following to determine how well this team did in that draft. In all honesty, i can say that I have absolutely no familiarity with any of these guys.  Maybe they had decent NFL careers, but none of them are going to Canton.

So, bad draft for that team, right?

Well, not really, because in the sixth round that year, the New England Patriots selected Tom Brady, QB, Michigan.  I am betting that, while the drafting of a QB always generates interest, probably very little attention was paid to a sixth round QB when all of the post-draft analysis was being done in the Boston area back in 2000.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, knows who will be THE big star to come out of this 2015 draft.  It very well could be Jameis Winston or Marcus Mariotta, but it is every bit as likely that it will be some dude selected in the fifth or sixth round out of East Overshoe University, just like that Brady kid was in 2000.

This is why I will read very little about the draft in the days ahead.  Tell me who the Steelers picked, and then let's wait and see how they do once the real games begin.