Rough Draft

Sam’s Sports Bar & Grill in Hillsboro Village has 20 television sets. Last Saturday, 18 of them were tuned to variations of Major League Baseball, NBA and NHL playoff games and NASCAR racing from Talladega.

But significantly, Sam’s two “big screens” were tuned to the NFL Draft—officially, the 67th Annual National Football League Player Selection Meeting—which, according to some radio wag last week, has now become the fourth-most-watched sports television event after the Super Bowl, the NCAA basketball tourney and the World Series.

This claim might be a tad dubious, but certainly there is no question that football is America’s national pastime. It replaced baseball a long time ago, and the fact that ESPN devotes a full day of coverage to the draft’s first three rounds is a definite indication of its still-mounting popularity.

The atmosphere of the live broadcast from Madison Square Garden is a cross between a political convention and Let’s Make a Deal, including breathless and rowdy fans crowned as Cheeseheads and covered in warpaint. Every 15 minutes or so, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, looking like everyone’s favorite corporate CEO, approaches the podium to announce the latest selection of college talent. Meanwhile, the fully dedicated ESPN coverage, featuring a dozen on-site and field reporters—with Chris Berman as prime host—provides instant dissections of soon-to-be NFL hopefuls: their upsides, downsides, outsides and insides.

It’s all pretty daunting, really. Beyond the higher-profile college players—such as No. 1 draft choice QB David Carr of Fresno State, who was selected by the expansion Houston Texans—you have to be a full-time sports reporter to keep up with the incredible amount of available detail on the newest batch of NFL talent.

Probably the leading purveyor of facts and figures on the hundreds of hopefuls is Mel Kiper Jr., who first made his name years back offering independent talent assessments and is now a staple of ESPN draft coverage. Kiper’s print and online evaluations are nothing less than impressive, with authoritative thumbnail sizeups of little-known athletes from schools like Valdosta State and Duquesne. Kiper can tell you a guy’s clocked time in the 40-year dash, his injury history and even if he ever smoked pot or was otherwise guilty of “team violations.”

Joel Buchsbaum, a lesser-known but equally capable guru, does the same thing with the same intensity for Pro Football Weekly, a national bible of information on the NFL. (Published in the Chicago suburb of Riverwoods, PFW actually supplies the player data for ESPN’s official draft Web site.) “Joel gathers information from college teams and pro scouts, and he’s very thorough,” says Jeff Agrest, PFW senior editor. “He even evaluates a young player’s character and psyche, ’cause the pro teams are into that these days. He also has sources who attend the NFL Scouting Combine.” Agrest laughs. “You should see Joel’s apartment. He’s got four TVs and piles and piles of videotape and media books.”

A huge effort is made by these experts in compiling “mock” drafts, in anticipation of who the pro teams will actually select. “We’re often wrong,” says Agrest, “because things change on draft day.” True enough. But a cursory browse comparing the Kiper and PFW picks with the way the first three rounds went down proved that if the gurus don’t get the exact names in the right slots, they quite often astutely assess team needs.

Case in point: Agrest predicted the Titans would take University of Miami safety Edward Reed in Round 1. “It’s a need,” he said, “especially with the defections of Marcus Robertson last year to Denver and Blaine Bishop to Philadelphia just recently.” Instead, Reed was chosen by the Baltimore Ravens—a team desperate to shore up its defensive backfield after similar free agent defections. The Titans—after dropping one position in the draft order from 14 to 15 in exchange for a later pick from the New York Giants—went with University of Tennessee’s hulking DT Albert Haynesworth.

The Titans chose wisely, not only because they recently lost Jason Fisk and Josh Evans off their defensive line, but also because they simply couldn’t resist the idea of Haynesworth lining up with Jevon Kearse and Kevin Carter. And let’s face it: Good pass defense usually begins with a strong rush, which makes defensive backs of any quality even better.

But Agrest’s instincts were correct, after all, because in Round 2 the Titans grabbed Clevan (“Tank”) Williams with the 45th overall pick. Williams is a 6-foot-2-inch, 223-lb. safety from Stanford, noted for occasionally erratic performance but also with impressive size, big-play ability and the credentials to otherwise have been a potential first-round choice.

The Titans may have found another sleeper with third-round pick LB Rocky Calmus from Oklahoma. Calmus, at 6 feet 3 inches and 243 lbs., is an All-American, an All-Big 12 selection and the 2001 Butkus Award winner. His résumé is huge, but, believe it or not, he’s considered marginally “not strong enough” by NFL insiders. On the other hand, PFW characterized him thusly: “Great intangibles and work ethic. A coach’s dream. Very instinctive. A see-the-ball-and-run-to-it-type linebacker who makes plays and plays very hard.... A leader.” Sounds like a Jeff Fisher-type player, all right.