The NFL Draft

(This was first posted almost a year ago on the eve of the the 2007 NFL draft.
As I write this in 2008 the jury of Brady Quinn is still out.)

The NFL Draft takes place today...

The Raiders and Detroit Lions, at the head of the line, when it comes to franchise ineptitude will be picking first and second respectively... As I have stated before on this blog, the most rational course of action for teams that suck in multiple areas (as high drafting teams invariably do) would seem to be trading down. That happens rarely.. I have no doubt that by the end of today Jamarcus Russell and Brady Quinn will have the hopes of mediocre organisations resting on their shoulders. Top five picks ARE the hallmark of a lousy organisation as well as a bad team. Lousy organisations are much further than just a draft pick away from excelllence.The cap space invested in a potential superstar can actually prevent a team from becoming competitive and effectively adressing the many other needs high drafting teams inevitably have.

What blows me away about predraftr prognosticators is their absurd confidence levels...

Gil Brandt NFL.com's Draft guru states about Notre Dame QB Brady Quinn...

"He will be a Pro Bowl QB and will be able to take a team to the playoffs"

Not "might" not "could be" not "has potential to be" but "WILL"
Bear in mind that this is by a guy who was VP of player personel for the Dallas Cowboys for almost 30 years! (1960-89) An NFL insider who has closely followed the NFL Draft his entire adult life!
A guy who has watched Heath Shuler Rick Mirer, Ryan Leaf, Todd Marinovich, Tim Couch, Joey Harrington and David Carr all be touted as the superstar QBs of the future!

That a guy who studies more hours of football in a year than I will watch in a lifetime and has made his living in this game can make such statements of pseudocertainty in regard to a QB prospect shows just how dramatically people underestimate the degree of uncertainty involved in these decisions and why team after team plump for the can't miss golden arm prospect rather than spreading the risk

College Sports scam

I read an excellent New York Times piece by Micheal Lewis of Liars Poker and Moneyball fame. One of the best things I have read on the economically exploitative student-athlete farce.
It makes the scale of the ripoff abundantly clear.

In 2005, the 121 Division 1-A football teams generated $1.8 billion for their colleges. If the colleges paid out 65 percent of their revenues to the players, the annual college football payroll would come to $1.17 billion. A college football team has 85 scholarship players while an N.F.L. roster has only 53, and so the money might be distributed a bit differently.

“You’d pay up for the most critical positions,” one N.F.L. front office executive told me on the condition that I not use his name. “You’d pay more for quarterbacks and left tackles and pass rushing defensive ends. You’d pay less for linebackers because you’d have so many of them. You could just rotate them in and out.”

A star quarterback, he thought, might command as much as 8 percent of his college team’s revenues. For instance, in 2005 the Texas Longhorns would have paid Vince Young roughly $5 million for the season. In quarterbacking the Longhorns free of charge, Young, in effect, was making a donation to the university of $5 million a year — and also, by putting his health on the line, taking a huge career risk.

At least Young was able to eventually to parlay his college football exploits into a lucrative NFL Career. The vast majority of young athletes that keep the cogs on the NCAA's money machine turning never see a penny of it.

I recommend reading the whole article here. Lewis focuses on football, but the same obviously applies to basketball. The NCAA tourney generates tremendous sums that most of the (often poverty stricken) kids who create the product that launched a thousand CBS commercials will never see.