The Current Sauce

Issue date: 4/23/08 Section: Sports

Miller Daniel, Sports Editor

So, why do fans get so worked up about the NFL Draft?

Each year, the fans of college and professional football come together in an ever-increasing fanfare filled with shared jubilation of unproven college prospects.

This brings together an interesting mix of people. College fans are extremely localized, while professional fans are defined by regional groups of states, like New England and the Patriots.

The NFL Draft creates an interesting cross-section of the two because it typically brings a state and region that have little in common. We saw this in the 2006 Draft when one phenom began selling Saints jerseys in Los Angeles - his name was Reggie Bush.

This year there is talk about the impact of this draft on several franchises in key transition periods. According to si.com's NFL analyst Peter King, the Saints have several options to make major moves to affect this year's draft.

According to King, they may trade up for a strong regional figure, LSU's Glenn Dorsey. The Saints may trade up for another mystery man. They are also in talks with Jeremy Shockey, one of the dominant tight ends in the league over recent years.

Any of these moves could change the fortunes of our state and region's prominent team. But to think as an investor, none of the elements of the Draft are very safe.

Thinking about the Draft, there are a lot of tangible ways to measure a prospect's worth in combines, workouts, and pro days. But the entire concept of football revolves around intangibles. This is why it's such a complicated game to understand.

You can run as many different physical, mental, psychological - and something called the Wonderlic - tests, but nothing can measure how a player will mature and adjust to the speed of the NFL.

Now teams are almost scared of picking high because it is such a risk to go after an untested rookie who's never stepped foot in an NFL camp.

Sure, this happens every year. Every year, new players come into the league and perform the best to their abilities - but there are only a few superstars from each draft.

The high draft picks are sure to have all the expectations of a superstar when they arrive from college into an NFL franchise. The fans back in their college towns that watched a player develop from a special teams player to major award winner join with the professional fans that expect the player to be the savior of his franchise.

That's quite a bit of pressure to put on 22-year-old college kids. There is no entry-level position in the NFL and no easy introductions are made.

So when the NFL Draft kicks off on Saturday, remember that the young men being selected aren't much older than most college students. Fans can't rush a prospect or get angry about their favorite franchise's bad picks, because it's impossible to gauge the worth of young raw talent.

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