OSG Opinion: We Mock What We Don't Understand

So, it's NFL Draft day and people with very little to do with their lives all over the world are frothing at the mouth with excitement.

And we have no idea why....

Sure, it's a chance to find out who your favorite NFL Team is going to pick and try to replenish their roster with. We get that part. It's sort of important.

Sort of.

However the part we don't understand is the 3 month build up. The 6-plus versions of the Mel Kiper/Todd McShay mock draft. The 841,000 Mock Drafts that come from everyone who has ever written a Sports story or been on Sports Talk Radio.

Why?

Yeah, speculating is nice. It's something to keep you occupied on a dull day. But why all the Mock Drafts? Does it really matter what ______ Sports Writer from the Green Bay Gazette or some other small, obscure website thinks all 32 NFL Teams are going to do with their 1st round picks.

And think about it....does not the term "Mock Draft" mean that you are making fun of the draft? Because Mocking something is roughly synonymous with Satire...or at least that's the literal interpretation.



Maybe we're just cynical (ok, we are cynical), but we've never understood the crazed excitement. I'm a huge Sports fan/borderline Sports Geek who probably knows more about how Sports works and the history of it than most people should.

Yet I don't get "Freaky Excited" over the draft.

Realistically, it's a "Best Guess" as to who is going to be a good player for your team. There is no "Exact" science to this. NFL personnel people are an odd, wacky bunch who sometimes obsess over things like 40-yard dash times, speed in the cone drills and the .2 sec difference in release times. Yet they often overlook the person and their performance.

And a lot of times, they are flat-ass wrong. JaMarcus Russell, Ryan Leaf, Akili Smith, Lawrence Phillips or anyone picked 1st by the Jacksonville Jaguars in the last 5-years--all examples of why you shouldn't go Ape Shit over the draft. Your team could get lucky...or the guy you pick could blow out both his knees in the 1st exhibition game and never play again.

But yet you all obsess over this.

Please NFL Fan, I strongly encourage you to watch and enjoy the draft. The NFL in their infinite marketing wisdom has managed to figure out how to drag it out for 3-days. If you watch all 3-days of this, you need to do some serious evaluation on your life and how you are living it.

Yes, we encourage you to support your favorite team. Support them. Be happy when they succeed, be disappointed when they don't. But PLEASE--please stop obsessing for months on end about whom they will draft at the end of every April. PLEASE don't be crushed if they don't pick who you thought they would. PLEASE go watch a baseball game, go play golf, go hit tennis balls--just do something that you should be doing in late April/early May instead of worshipping this over-hyped, over-blown, manufactured, artificially created drama that in reality never will, never has and never should be so controlling over your every day life.