| NEW YORK — How fitting it is that the NFL draft takes place in a
theater. After all, no event in the world can have such a mundane premise as reciting
people’s names and yet display such theatrics that can give an observer chills. Upon
walking into The Theatre at Madison Square Garden — located below the self-proclaimed
"World’s Most Famous Arena" — you are immediately struck … no,
knocked out … by the bright lights of the big city. You’d think the NFL shrunk
Times Square and crammed it into the edifice.
There are rows of lights hanging from the ceiling, crisscrossing to form shiny
diamonds. The stage is littered with lighting, and the colorful show it puts on can make
you wince.
That’s not all. Two giant video screens on both sides of the stage add to the
brightness. The one on the left might as well be the silver screen because of the music
videos and NFL Films episodes it features. And the noise. You’d think they’d
turn it down when the place was three-fourths empty in Round Three.
There are scoreboards that count down the time each team has to make its selection.
There are banners hung for every franchise. ESPN’s Chris Berman entertains the
audience between picks with trivia questions for each team. Heck, even Giants RB Joe
Montgomery and Jets RB Leon Johnson, clearly with nothing better to do on a Saturday
afternoon, went into the capacity crowd during Round One with trivia questions.
Even the stars come out for the event. Not just those crazy Jets and Raiders fans,
either. Gil Bellows of "Ally McBeal" fame was on hand to cover the proceedings
for DIRECTV. Bellows, who also happens to be working on an NFL-sanctioned football movie
for TNT, joined Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott on the set to break down the draft, pick by
pick. Unlike other stars, though, Bellows seemed to know of what he spoke, and he was
genuinely thrilled to work alongside Lott, a star in his own right of Bellow’s
favorite team, the 49ers.
There are also the NFL TV stars, as well as radio. ESPN’s crew has the draft
covered from start to finish, and numerous radio stations and networks camp out to
describe the unfoldings.
It sounds absolutely silly to say that everyone is simply waiting for names to be
called — but that’s just it. Imagine a well-lit bingo game without anyone
calling "bingo." Just the basics: G14, B21, N34. Only here, it’s Courtney
Brown, LaVar Arrington and Peter Warrick.
Therein lies the difference. It’s the players themselves who make the draft
exciting. It’s the renewed optimism that comes with each passing pick, from one to
254. It’s contemplating how each player will fit in with each team. Sure, the lights,
the shows, the stars, they add to the pomp and circumstance. But if they were removed, if
it were just commissioner Paul Tagliabue and a podium, there would be the same exact
excitement there was an hour before the Browns were even officially on the clock.
That’s what Draft Day is about. And the day when the theatrics of it all become
more important than the draft itself is the time when Draft Day becomes just another day
— albeit a well-lit one.
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