I had a few nice days watching the NFL Draft.\u00a0\u00a0 Both the Giants and Jets did quite well, I think.\u00a0\u00a0 Not many exciting skill players drafted for either team, admittedly, but they both picked up building blocks to fortify their offensive lines, which I think is key.\u00a0 Games are won and lost in the trenches.\u00a0 Of course, even though the talking heads have all been busy “grading” each team’s picks, no one will really know anything for a year or two.\u00a0\u00a0 The history of the draft is littered with sexy “can’t miss” college stars who totally flamed out in the NFL.\u00a0 See Vernon Gholston, Blair Thomas, Eric Flowers.\u00a0\u00a0 The list is long.\u00a0\u00a0 So… proof, meet pudding, let’s wait and see.\u00a0\u00a0 But I am hopeful.<\/p>\n
What was really fascinating this year was the format.\u00a0 Instead of thousands of screaming fans gathered together in New York City or Chicago or (as planned this year) Las Vegas, and the draftees parading up on stage to get a hug from the commissioner and a jersey, the NFL went virtual.\u00a0\u00a0 But that was fascinating in its own way.\u00a0\u00a0 We got to see the homes of the coaches, players, and talking heads, from Kliff Kingsbury’s palatial digs to the commish in his basement man cave to the very modest apartments of some of the young men being drafted, we got to see their families, their pets, the pictures on their walls…<\/p>\n
… and their bookcases.\u00a0\u00a0 For whatever reason, a lot of the commentators\u00a0 sat in front of bookcases.\u00a0\u00a0 I could not help peering at the titles on their shelves, being a writer and all.\u00a0\u00a0 Alas, I failed to spot any copies of my own books on anyone’s shelves.\u00a0 But Marshall Faulk seems to be a big fan of Harlan Coben, and on other shelves I spotted Edgar Allen Poe and Philip Roth.\u00a0\u00a0 A lot of football books too.\u00a0\u00a0 Many ex-players and coaches had ONLY football books visible behind them.\u00a0\u00a0 Which still trumped the guys who owned bookcases, but (seemingly) no books.\u00a0\u00a0 Just pictures, trophies, footballs.<\/p>\n
I hear that next year, if COVID-19 is no longer a factor, the NFL may combine elements of this year’s draft with the traditional format.\u00a0\u00a0 That would be cool.\u00a0 This was the most viewed draft in history.\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe because the country is desperate for SOMETHING sport-ish to watch.<\/p>\n
I was impressed at how well the virtual draft worked.\u00a0 Very few technical glitches… though the time lapses were noticeable from time to time, as commentators waited to make sure the previous speaker had finished.\u00a0\u00a0 This bodes well for the forthcoming virtual worldcon, I think… hope… pray.\u00a0\u00a0 It proved it can be done.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, ESPN and the NFL channel have considerably more resources and expertise than fandom, but still…<\/p>\n
It still remains to be seen whether we will actually have an NFL season this year.\u00a0 Which puts me in mind of a story I wrote back in 1971, called “The Last Super Bowl.”\u00a0\u00a0 Eventually it saw print in GALLERY magazine, surrounded by naked Girls Next Door\u00a0 (none of them actually lived next door to me, I should hasten to add).\u00a0\u00a0 Computer sports were still a dream back then (PONG would not appear in my local bar for several more years), but they were coming, so I donned my prognosticator’s hat and predicted that by the far future year of 2014 computerized football would have become so much more exciting than the real thing that actual football would go extinct.<\/p>\n
Well, that didn’t happen.\u00a0\u00a0 Turns out we were wrong about the flying cars, the household robots, the cities on the moon, and a whole lot of other things as well.\u00a0\u00a0 Never mind about that, though.<\/p>\n
Maybe this is the year that my predictions come true.\u00a0\u00a0 If the virus does not relent, and we have to cancel the 2020 NFL season… why not go with an ALL VIRTUAL season instead?\u00a0 We know who is on each team, we know who they drafted, we can MADDENify the entire league and play out the schedule week-by-week on television, with SFX and animation.\u00a0\u00a0 MADDEN has the player stats.\u00a0\u00a0 The actual coaches can sit by their own computers and call the plays and the defenses.\u00a0\u00a0 The play-by-play announcer and the color guy can sit by their screens and do the commentary, just as if they were talking about a real game.\u00a0 And we can all watch our favorite (virtual) teams.<\/p>\n
Hey, the networks need something<\/em> to televise, after all.\u00a0\u00a0 And all us hopeless football addicts need something to watch, besides reruns of SuperBowls past.\u00a0\u00a0 And maybe, if we go all computer, the Jets will finally<\/strong><\/em> get back to the SuperBowl.\u00a0\u00a0 I wrote “The Last Super Bowl” only two years after their last (and only) appearance, as it happens… and I put them in that bowl, against the Green Bay Packers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had a few nice days watching the NFL Draft.\u00a0\u00a0 Both the Giants and Jets did quite well, I think.\u00a0\u00a0 Not many exciting skill players drafted for either team, admittedly, but they both picked up building blocks to fortify their offensive lines, which I think is key.\u00a0 Games are won and lost in the trenches.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[239,237,24,11],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6167"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6175,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6167\/revisions\/6175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}