Draft net: a behind-the-scenes trip with costumed fans, anxious players and electric activity reveals why the NFL selection process has become an Event

Sporting News, The, May 5, 2003 by Paul Attner

Resplendent in a tailored suit, Ricky Wright stands out amid the Halloween-in-April crowd that is the NFL Draft Live. He also stands at the head of the line waiting to enter the draft's opening day, first among a 2,500-plus gathering of masked creatures and birdmen with capes and normal-looking guys with stuffed lion cubs resting atop their caps, a wisp of culture within a cauldron of tackiness, lunacy and average Joes wanting a football fix.

A fashion designer by trade, Wright hopes to parlay his presence into ... who knows--maybe a chance contact with one of the soon-to-be millionaires who later will saunter across the stage of the Theater at Madison Square Garden as the first-round Scrabble board starts to make sense.

It is a fantasy, of course; the contact will never happen. But it is enough to entice him to fly last Thursday from Jacksonville and spend Friday afternoon walking around the outside of the Garden, searching for a ticket to the draft. He is a bit stunned to become the first to obtain one, free for the asking, at the ticket window.

So around 5 p.m., 17 hours before the doors will swing open, he begins a line that, by the next day, will curl around pillars and posts, through doorways and down stairs, until it meanders onto a Seventh Avenue sidewalk soaked by a steady, miserable New York rain. But this is the best bargain this city of extravagant cost could offer: free entry to unreserved seats and an NFL-supplied goody bag to what will become eight hours of mostly deadly dull lulls filled with occasional announcements of players few in the crowd know or remember for long.

But even now, at 10 a.m., 30 minutes before Wright's extended wait will end, three hours before the Vikings again will bungle the first-round selection process and generate turmoil among the ESPN pundits, there already is draft controversy, good-natured for sure, but controversy. Seems the Lions fans at entry door No. 2 really thought they, not Wright, had been first. Flying in from Detroit, they'd arrived earlier, searched longer for tickets and, as fate would have it, decided to begin standing in line just a few minutes after he did.

"He's been telling people he was first, but not really," says Mark Lodge, laughing. There's already camaraderie among the early standees who mercifully were given wrist bands by sympathetic Garden employees Friday night so they could get some sleep and then return to the head of the line at 6 a.m. Saturday. Chris Jarrett, wearing a Raiders jersey, was the most grateful; he was fatigued, having traveled the farthest, a live-hour flight from northern California.

They all are entranced by this uniquely American event, the NFL draft. For two days, consuming 14 hours, spitting out 262 names, many of whom never will even make a pro roster, the NFL intrudes upon and dominates baseball's time. It is hard to say what is more remarkable, that last year ESPN's broadcast averaged 2.5 million households over its first seven hours of opening-day coverage or that Mel Kiper Jr.'s hair, despite 20 years of exposure to hot television lights and the occasional slings and arrows of general managers, still shows not one hint of gray.

I have come to New York to figure out firsthand why this excruciatingly long weekend marathon has developed such a hold on a decently large segment of the sporting public, even the hopefully sane members, and not just the guys in the lobby of the Theater who, three hours into the first round, are huddled in sort of a draft-elite convention consisting of "Captain Dee-Fence" (the name on the back of his Ravens jersey, which is puffed out by shoulder pads); "PantherTheMan 1" (we can only hope there isn't a No. 2); an Eagles fanatic in tights, cape and, at his side, a mask with a bird face attached to a helmet; some fellow with a vest adorned with medals that seem to have no relation to the draft, and two highly intense Steelers fans who must have been responsible for leaving some of those empty beer cans spotted on the grounds outside the Theater at 10 a.m.

So I ask Tom Webster, the lone Bengals fan brave enough to wear his team's jersey--unofficially, the only franchise not represented among the 2,500 or so in attendance is the Cardinals, but they don't have many fans in Arizona, much less New York--what in hell he is doing here, once I learn he really belongs in Ohio, where he lives. "This was on our Top 10 list of the things we wanted to do with our fives before we die," he says proudly, pointing to a buddy.

Maybe that is it. For the real football fan, not some corporate glad-hander or wine sipper or khaki wearer, but those men, women and children among us who can recite their team's two-deep depth chart, who really believe success next year will depend on whom their general manager picks in the fifth round (even if he played for Jellico Junior College), who hinge on Kiper's every utterance, this is the demarcation line between the pretenders and the true believers, between those who say they are fans and those who really are.