[Elvis]

It's finally here!

This can be a general catch all thread for the draft. We'll start a thread for each player drafted by the Rams.

Suggestions welcome...

[Elvis]

[RedAlice]

Sounds like an organized plan to me.

[Elvis]

https://apnews.com/3de28afe08b94ede8517b0f2a3bb53e5

From cozy get-together to huge event, NFL draft has soared

By BARRY WILNER
April 23, 2019



NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Bert Bell had been burned and sought a way to get even.

His creation, the NFL draft, has become an industry unto itself and the league’s third-most popular annual event behind the Super Bowl and opening weekend.

Bell owned the Philadelphia Eagles in 1933 and was hot to sign Stanley “King Kong” Kostka of the Minnesota Gophers. All collegians were free agents back then — college football was far more popular than the pros — and Bell saw the bruising fullback/linebacker as a building block for his team.

But Kostka signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers; yes, that was a football franchise back then. Never mind that Kostka lasted one season in the NFL. Bell had a calling.

“I made up my mind that this league would never survive unless we had some system whereby each team had an even chance to bid for talent against each other,” he later told The Associated Press.

With some negotiating and arm-twisting — Bell was so good at that he soon would become NFL commissioner — he persuaded owners of the other eight clubs to try a draft. The team with the league’s worst record would pick first and the rest would go in reverse order of their success in the standings.

On Feb 8-9, 1936, in a Philadelphia hotel owned by the Bell family, the draft was born. And guess who had the first selection: the 2-9 Eagles.



That they took halfback Jay Berwanger, the first Heisman Trophy winner, who played at Chicago University — yes, that was a college team back then — and couldn’t sign him was somewhat embarrassing; Berwanger chose to go into the “real world” where he could earn more money than the Eagles were offering.

Regardless, the draft was established, with nine rounds, increased to 10 the next year and to 20 in 1939, with this oddity in 1938 and ’39: only the five teams with the worst winning percentage in the previous season made selections in the second and fourth rounds.

The number of rounds fluctuated through the years, in part because of competition from the All-America Football Conference in the 1940s, but also because college football grew and more players were available. For a span of a dozen drafts, there even was a bonus pick to start proceedings, with one team each year getting until every team had gotten one.

When the AFL began in 1960 and soon started pirating NFL players and hiding college seniors, the NFL moved its draft up from the spring. Cloak-and-dagger stories developed, as soon-to-be Pro Football Hall of Famer Gil Brandt told Ken Rappoport and me for the book “On The Clock, The Story of the NFL Draft.”

“Our battle for players with the AFL featured the so-called baby sitters who would hide players so the other league couldn’t find them,” said Brandt, who scouted the colleges for the Dallas Cowboys for three decades, drafting the likes of Roger Staubach, Bob Lilly and Tony Dorsett, and now is the lead draft consultant to the NFL. “There was a group of people, ex-coaches, ex-players, even the governor of Oregon, who were involved.”

The merger led to a common draft, but the grab bag for talent wasn’t a big deal whether staged in Philly, New York, Washington, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Los Angeles or Chicago. Then television stepped up.

This brand new TV entity called ESPN approached NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle in 1980 offering to broadcast the proceedings from the New York Sheraton. Rozelle couldn’t fathom why ESPN boss Chet Simmons made the offer.

“Pete thought Chet was out of his mind,” said former ESPN vice president John Wildhack. “But Pete said, ‘Let’s try it.’”

Desperate for programming, ESPN hired Bill Fitts, who had worked games on CBS and NBC, as producer of the draft show, which Fitts admitted in “On The Clock” was rudimentary.

“I would say at the beginning it was like with our golf coverage — we started covering one hole,” Fitts said with a laugh. “Look what it went to.”

It would not be an exaggeration to say the draft has exploded beyond the selection meeting tag the league hung on it. And don’t underestimate the credit TV deserves, first with ESPN’s gavel-to-gavel coverage and then with NFL Network joining in since 2006. Plus a move to prime time for Thursday’s first round in 2010, and to the early evening for Rounds two and three on Friday.

Would Mel Kiper Jr., Todd McShay and Mike Mayock have become household names to draftniks? Would there even be draftniks? Would mock drafts begin appearing as soon as college underclassmen declared for the pros in January; in 1990, the NFL began allowing collegians whose class had been in school for three years to apply for the draft.

Just as television has been a powerful force in the popularization of pro football, it has been irreplaceable in the universalizing of the draft.

When the league moved the proceedings to Radio City Music Hall, where it held nine drafts, it also turned the fans loose in the art-deco landmark. That meant several thousand folks dressed in jerseys from all 32 teams howling and screaming — and often booing — the selections.

That made for great TV, naturally. And it gave the draft an entertainment element it never had, with red carpets to follow.

Those fans would follow the draft when the NFL turned it into a road show. In 2014, Radio City, owned by Madison Square Garden, had scheduled a spring spectacular for the usual draft dates in late April. The league had to move the draft back into May, only to see the Radio City show switched to 2015.



Annoyed by the Garden’s machinations, and intrigued by the possibilities of moving around its biggest offseason event, the NFL abandoned the Big Apple for the Windy City. After two highly successful years in Chicago in which the league used iconic local settings and fan festivals to boost the draft’s profile and the size of the crowds, it headed to Philadelphia — the original site back in Bert Bell’s days.

There, using the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with the “Rocky” statue and all, as a backdrop, the NFL saw an astounding 250,000 attend over three days.

“Philadelphia is raising the bar,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said.

Last year, a stadium was the site for the first time, at Jerry’s Palace near Dallas. And now, we head to Music City, alongside the honky tonks on Broadway.

Next year, Las Vegas.

What would Bert Bell think?

___

https://apnews.com/tag/NFL

https://twitter.com/AP_NFL

[Elvis]

[AvengerRam]

Here is my "help wanted" checklist for this weekend (things the Rams need):

DL with potential to compete for starting spot ____

Interior OL depth/possible starter ____

CB depth/future starter ____

S depth/future starter ____

Really fast guy at RB/WR who can potentially return kicks ____

Inside LB depth/compete for starting spot ____

Pass rushing specialist (DE or EDGE) ____

(Given this list, the idea of making a trade that increases our number of top 100 selections from 3 to 4 is very intriguing.)

[Elvis]

https://apnews.com/ec44ed56bc1448a4ae5ff2bda0aa2bc3

Coverage will offer different perspectives on NFL draft
By JOE REEDY

George Grande had no idea what ESPN was about to create when he anchored the first telecast of the NFL draft in 1980.

“We didn’t know who or how many people would be watching,” Grande said. “For us it gave us a link to the NFL, it helped our coverage of college football and we had fun doing it.”

ESPN’s coverage that first year went eight-plus hours on a Tuesday with Grande on site from the ballroom of the New York Sheraton.

So much has changed since then. All three days of this year’s draft, which begins Thursday, will be carried on ESPN, ABC and NFL Network and the event itself has become a traveling road show, with Nashville hosting this time.

Last year’s coverage averaged 5.5 million viewers at any given time over the three days. The first round on ESPN, NFL Network and Fox averaged 11.2 million.

The growth of the draft can largely be credited to ESPN. Mel Kiper Jr., who has been a part of the network’s coverage since 1984, has gone from working the first two rounds to being on set all three days.

“To see every pick televised and talked about nonstop is incredibly amazing,” Kiper said. “I thought when I started it could be popular but not at the level it is right now. It’s almost a national holiday.”

Grande, who anchored ESPN’s coverage from 1980 to 1985, said there is still a sense of accomplishment for those who worked that first draft. He will tune in on Thursday as ESPN will televise its 40th draft, sit back and smile.

“There is still pride and joy because we knew how much it meant to the network,” he said.

A look at what the networks are planning for this year’s draft:

ROBERTS RETURN: Robin Roberts was an integral part of ESPN’s draft coverage before going to ABC’s “Good Morning America.” She will host ABC’s first-round coverage, which will have a different approach than ESPN’s.

While ESPN will focus on the pick and where he fits into a team’s plans, the ABC telecast will focus on the player and his family’s journey.

“Your die-hard fans are still going to be serviced, but we are going to go beyond that,” Roberts said. “We talk to Nick Bosa and following the family legacy. One player had a speech impediment. We have so many vignettes to show why this moment is important.”

ESPN’s “College GameDay” crew will also be part of the coverage for the first two days along with “American Idol” judge Luke Bryan and mentor Bobby Bones.

ABC will simulcast ESPN’s coverage on Saturday for the second straight year.

ESPN’S PLANS: ESPN had one remote production truck for that first year at the Sheraton. They will have seven production trucks on hand in Nashville.

Trey Wingo hosts all seven rounds for the third straight year and will be joined by Kiper, Todd McShay, Lewis Riddick and Booger McFarland.

Even with multiple networks airing the draft last year, ESPN still led the way during the first round with an average of 5.473 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

CENTER STAGE: Daniel Jeremiah is well known among league scouts and personnel people from his years with the Baltimore Ravens, Cleveland Browns and Philadelphia Eagles. He has been one of NFL Network’s draft analysts since 2013 but has moved into the lead role this year after Mike Mayock became the general manager of the Oakland Raiders.

Jeremiah said his draft preparation hasn’t changed compared to past years. The only difference is when he speaks.

“Mike was the guy. He would do his deal on draft day and we would fill in around it. Now instead of speaking second, I am speaking first,” Jeremiah said. “What I can do is talk about the experience of being in the draft room and going a little bit behind the curtain of how they landed at a decision.”

Jeremiah expanded his portfolio by doing radio for Los Angeles Chargers games last season. He didn’t know how it would affect his draft preparation, but discovered it actually enhanced it.

“I got to study a different team every week, how they were built and their philosophy,” he said. “I also got to talk to general managers and coaches at the stadium, which was tremendously valuable.”

NFL Network has done on-site coverage of the draft since 2005. Rich Eisen will once again host the proceedings with Jeremiah, Kurt Warner and Stanford coach David Shaw on the main set Thursday. Fox college football analysts Joel Klatt and Charles Davis will join Eisen and Jeremiah the following two days.

[Elvis]

[dieterbrock]

Twitter gonna be the death of me today....
Great idea on the thread, we should move any new threads that pop up in to here

[aeneas1]

so who's the in between round entertainment tonight? beyonce? taylor swift? snoop?