NFL drafts marketing genius
The NFL is amazing. Every corporation in America ought to draft
the NFL’s marketing team. That would probably turn the economy
around.
Think about it. The NFL can get people to watch football even
when it’s not football season. Here we have the Stanley Cup
playoffs going on, the NBA playoffs in full swing, golf, baseball,
auto racing and more, and yet ESPN is picking up impressive Nielsen
ratings numbers on its draft day coverage at a time when we should
all be boating at Lake Anderson.
NFL drafts marketing genius
The NFL is amazing. Every corporation in America ought to draft the NFL’s marketing team. That would probably turn the economy around.
Think about it. The NFL can get people to watch football even when it’s not football season. Here we have the Stanley Cup playoffs going on, the NBA playoffs in full swing, golf, baseball, auto racing and more, and yet ESPN is picking up impressive Nielsen ratings numbers on its draft day coverage at a time when we should all be boating at Lake Anderson.
Did you get a chance to check out the NFL’s draft day coverage on ESPN last weekend? You couldn’t miss it. It was on all weekend long – more live coverage than the Super Bowl! Here it is 10 months before next year’s Super Bowl and five months before the 2008 season gets under way and people are throwing draft day parties. I just can’t believe it.
Each team has eight minutes to make its selection. There are 32 teams. That’s more than four hours of coverage just for round 1! ESPN showed 16 hours of live coverage of this year’s draft not to mention the predictions beforehand, the shows that analyzed and broke everything down from the most surprising move to the riskiest move and the winners and losers.
What’s crazy is the draft is a total crap shoot. How can anyone predict the winners and losers before a down is played? Some guy that gets picked in Round 7 might turn into much more of a star than any first-rounder.
Look at Alex Smith. He went round 1, pick 1 and has put up numbers in his three-year career that would get him benched at San Jose State. Yet an estimated 22 million households tuned in to watch the coverage – sometimes watching for hours before their team was even on the clock.
I can see maybe tuning in to watch the first round of the NFL draft or maybe up until the point your team has made its pick in the second round – if you live in the Snow Belt or it’s dumping rain outside! But to methodically listen to this two-day telecast as 32 teams make their picks through the first several rounds is beyond me.
Half the picks that are supposed to be great end up as busts anyway so why even get excited over a pick?
Locally, the 49ers and Raiders made a number of picks just like the other 30 teams in the league did. The Raiders took Darren McFadden with the fourth pick in the draft. At eight minutes a clip it only took a half hour plus several commercial breaks to catch that captivating moment when a man at a podium said into a microphone, “The Oakland Raiders have selected Arkansas RB Darren McFadden with the #4 overall selection in the 2008 NFL Draft.” It probably was a great move to get the two-time Heisman Trophy runner up, but only time will tell – and the Raiders were already deep at the position.
The 49ers, a team that had arguably the worst offense in NFL history, a team that reacted like they scored a touchdown when they were able to move the chains, opted to beef up the defense with its top pick. Go figure. Last I checked Isaac Bruce was 35. But that’s just what they did – not a single skilled position drafted until the sixth round. Let’s see that’s about 1,250 hours worth of coverage to find out that the 49ers drafted Virginia Tech’s Josh Morgan.
I’d love to interview a local person who watched and waited through the whole draft for that exciting announcement. Anyone out there?
