NFL Draft to primetime - why the hell?

If you're like me, there's nothing you enjoy more on a late-April Saturday afternoon than getting together with a few friends and several dozen beers to watch the NFL draft.

Booze is a necessity to make ESPN's draft coverage tolerable, because when it comes right down to it, the entire thing is just a guy in a suit reading names at 10-minute intervals, followed by other guys making snap judgements and predictions with no real basis in reality.

http://newyorksportsjerk.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-stupid-idea.html

If you're a Maryland football fan, you also get a chance to see a ton of video featuring your players getting destroyed by superior athletes from other ACC schools. When they're putting together their features on ACC defensive linemen, the first thing a producer says must be, "grab the Maryland game tape."

Go Terps.

Outside of that, the only real excitement comes when the Jets are on the clock and they break out the tremendous "Jets draft blunders" video.

Then the Jets do us all a favor and add another name to that list, and we all get a nice chuckle, except for that one friend who lives and dies for the Jets and would instantly become the leading suspect if Mike Tannenbaum was found dead in a dumpster.

To but it bluntly, the draft isn't compelling television, but drinking in the afternoon makes it an event worth watching.

It's a great way to kill a Saturday afternoon, with the added bonus that if you're hosting you don't have to shower or even wear pants.

Well, you're now going to have to find another excuse to boozed up before noon and inadvertantly flash your neighbors, because the NFL is moving the draft to primetime on Thursday and Friday nights.

I am not a TV executive, nor do I have any insight about how ratings or advertising rates work, so what I'm about to say comes strictly from my selfish perspective (which is true for almost everything I do):

This idea sucks. Big time. The draft was perfect on Saturday afternoon, it will be terrible on Thursday night.

Can't the NFL ever just leave things alone? Was there anybody clamoring for a primetime draft?

Ask any football fan what they think of the idea, and I guarantee you they'll hate it, for all of the reasons I described above.

Sometimes I wonder if the NFL is intentionally trying to piss its fans off, just to see how much they can get away with.