My Sunday column

Our man Mel


Saturday was the first day of the NFL Draft. It continues today.
The draft is the National Football League’s equivalent of a slave auction. Young athletes, after having being poked, prodded and questioned intensively for weeks, are divvied up by NFL teams and told where they will be working.
One key difference — many of these “slaves” will be paid millions of dollars.
I am a Draft Dork. A Draft Dork is different from an average NFL fan. The average fan has some interest in the draft because he wants to see who his team selects and try to figure out if the new players will help much next season. A Draft Dork shares that interest, but his passion runs much deeper.
We — I proudly embraced my Draft Dorkhood brethren — want to see whom every team drafts. We want to estimate how every team will be impacted by the draft. And most of all, we want to see Mel Kiper — say his name with reverence — blast some nimrod general manager for making a stupid pick
Mel Kiper is a visionary. He is a genius. He is a leader. He is the King Draft Dork.
Years ago Kiper fell in love with the NFL draft. But instead of just vegging out over it as others had done in the past, Mel remade himself as America’s first draft guru. And he did this without ever having played or coached pro football. Heck, I don’t even know if he’s ever actually gone to a game.
Some NFL types resent Mel’s success. More than one coach or general manager has been known to string together profanities when discussing Mel.
But for Draft Dorks, Mel is MEL.
Like that computer HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
MEL is HAL, except with a big unfashionable pompadour.
Mel is THE draft dude in America. He publishes numerous high dollar specialized draft publications, the most noteworthy being “the blue book,” the bible of the NFL draft. In “the blue book” Mel profiles hundreds of prospects, lays out each team’s needs and makes his highly educated guesses about who will be playing for which teams in the near future.
“The blue book” is pricey but every year I steal the necessary money from my daughter’s college fund to buy it.
Mel is also on TV, radio and the Internet pretty much year round now, confirming his supremacy on all things draft-related. His main gig is at ESPN, the host network for the draft.
In a stroke of programming genius, the brains at ESPN have created an opponent for Mel, a young challenger to his crown.
Todd McShay — speak his name with derision — is the Youthful Pretender.
McShay actually knows his stuff and seems like a decent enough fellow, but it’s clear that Mel — the bull elephant in the NFL draft herd — doesn’t like another pair of tusks being around.
Mel and McShay went at it pretty vociferously last year and in the weeks leading up to this year’s draft they seemed ready to rumble again.
Oh goody!
You see, Mel is at his best when his face gets red and he starts breathing through his eyes. That’s when he really unloads on all the faux experts around him. That’s when Mel really becomes MEL.
And our Draft Dork chests swell with pride!

Jimmy Espy is executive editor of The Daily Citizen. He blogs at espysoutpost.blogspot.com. You can see his views on the NFL draft, and a lot more, there.