Tonight's NFL Draft is a welcome sight in a sports-starved world

Sports Illustrated

"On the Great To See You Again scale, Roger Goodell ranks somewhere between your tax accountant and your proctologist," says Pat Forde. "The sight of him usually stirs up dormant annoyance. Few commissioners in any sport are beloved, but Goodell is well below the mean. Yet Thursday night I will gaze upon the boss of the National Football League like a long-lost brother. It will, indeed, be great to see you again, Rog. Goodell will announce the picks in the first round of the NFL draft Thursday, and the fallow sports landscape will bear its first fruit in weeks. For the first time since March 12, the day sports in America slammed to a halt, something will happen. We will have something to watch, and it won’t be a documentary (some of which have been great) or a replay of an old classic game. It will be present tense. We’ll have live and unscripted sporting drama, and it will be quite welcome. It’s a long way from the most important thing in our world right now. Way down the hierarchy of needs. But man, is this draft arriving right on time."

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• Get ready for the most "complicated" NFL Draft broadcast ever: "With the nation shut down because of COVID-19, the NFL Draft will be a technological juggling act over three days over multiple networks," says Richard Deitsch. "It will feature staffers from multiple networks in different locations working together. There will be 180 remote video feeds across the country giving the production access to draft picks, coaches, general managers and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell from his home in Westchester County. Each of the people involved in the remote video feeds has been given individual video kits to connect with the production. We’ll see how it goes."
• Hopefully tonight's NFL Draft will be full of disasters: "In short, I want the league that is too big to fail, to fail," says Ray Ratto. "I want the first truly mockable draft. Not because of any moral or ethical issue (you can have a field day with that if you want; in the new dystopia, the world is chasing paper towels and yeast for amateur bakers), but because nothing in entertainment is better than abject collapse. The draft was thisclose to being fully Las Vegasized, so I’m all in on the draft turned into a third-grade classroom from the ’60s where nobody is listening to the teacher."
• ESPN showed the first televised NFL Draft 40 years ago this month, on April 29, 1980
• Check out NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's basement NFL Draft set