Each year, the National Football League, like most professional sports organizations, conducts a draft that involves teams choosing players, mostly college stars, to sign contracts and essentially try out exclusively for their squads. Normally, we would pay this event about as much attention as Lamar Jackson’s offseason tweets (more about that later), which is to say, not much at all. Sports drafts are roughly the equivalent of all those just-for-bragging-rights rotisserie leagues, where fans choose players in any given sport for their statistical performance and then compete head-to-head with their fellow die-hards. The people who care about such things really, really care. The rest of us have lives. Yet, over the years the NFL has smartly hyped this moment in the way an oasis might advertise water: In the offseason, you know you want it, don’t you thirsty football fans?
That was before the coronavirus pandemic. Now, it’s not just football fans that hunger for athletic competition, it’s just about anyone who ever cheered for somebody, somewhere, doing something where they run around and/or toss around a ball of some kind. By all rights, the Orioles should be enjoying an off-day Thursday having wrapped up a series against the Angels in Los Angeles and hosting the Toronto Blue Jays at Camden Yards beginning Friday. But there is nothing “right” about 2020. Sports at every level, from children’s recreational leagues to high school and college to professional sports, has been sidelined indefinitely. It’s unquestionably the right call under the circumstances. There’s a COVID-19 global pandemic that’s already cost the lives of 45,000 Americans. Tens of millions more are unemployed because of the stay-at-home orders. These are serious circumstances.
And yet we pine for sports.
No doubt there’s some primal need for athletic competition, something deep within our DNA that draws from our days as hunter-gatherers traveling in packs, defending our homes, strategizing a lopsided victory against our prey, supporting our tribe no matter what. Wait, is that sports or politics? In any event, we are drawn to football, baseball, basketball, ice hockey and myriad other pastimes. Going cold turkey on all that is tough.
Enter the 2020 NFL Draft beginning Thursday at 8 p.m. for the first round, followed by the second and third rounds Friday evening, and the rest midday Saturday. Stretching out a draft to three days used to seem excessive. Perhaps because it was. This year, it sounds a little light. Hey, Commissioner Roger Goodell, you sure you can’t have a Sunday kickers only draft? For the first time, it will all be done virtually. No big gathering. No handshake from the commissioner. Everyone is stuck at home on their computer on Microsoft Teams. Kind of like a — wait for it — giant rotisserie league that just happens to be broadcast live on ESPN. The commissioner is reportedly working from his basement in Bronxville, New York. How perfect is that? Hopefully, his mom will bring him down a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of cocoa at some point.
Ravens fans can cheer for Baltimore’s selections and speculate on how other teams have fared. Second guessing the team’s general manager, Eric DeCosta, is presumably the point. We expect Mr. DeCosta will get banged up a bit on Twitter and smacked around on Facebook by those who think he should have traded up or down or chosen a wide receiver or pass-rusher or should probably be fired. Can he read the field? Is there adequate protection? Does he have a backup? And speaking of social media, does anyone in the Greater Baltimore area really care that Lamar Jackson tweeted “Truzz Trump” after the U.S. president praised him Saturday? We once called the president vermin, and we can’t really get excited about it.
The NFL draft is thin gruel, of course. Last Friday’s WNBA virtual draft wasn’t exactly a ratings giant (although they were excellent by the WNBA’s rather modest standards). Perhaps Major League Baseball will salvage something this summer. A shortened season with teams performing for the cameras in empty minor league ballparks in Texas, Florida and Arizona is a possibility. At this point, we might settle for more of those videos showing cats walking down hallways filled with upright dominoes without a single one being toppled. Add some play-by-play and hysterical coaches, and it might just work. Absent that, we’ll settle for three days of watching young men fresh from college gridiron success become instant millionaires from the safety of our television sets. And hoping that, when the NFL goes back to playing the game on the field, these guys might just amount to something.
The Baltimore Sun editorial board — made up of Opinion Editor Tricia Bishop, Deputy Editor Andrea K. McDaniels and writer Peter Jensen — offers opinions and analysis on news and issues relevant to readers. It is separate from the newsroom.