THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504230181
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BOB MOLINARO
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
In the first round of the NFL draft, the Washington Redskins got the player they wanted.
So did the Carolina Panthers and New York Giants. And Seattle Seahawks. And New England Patriots. And Houston Oilers.
Coincidentally, for yet another year, every NFL team got the player its management and coaching staff wanted.
It's uncanny, don't you think, how it works out this way every draft day.
The year an NFL general manager announces that his team just drafted a player it didn't want or couldn't use, then we've got ourselves a story.
Otherwise, we're talking about just another livestock lottery, in which the selection of each player is met with astonishment on the part of the team doing the picking.
``Imagine a player of this caliber still being available.''
Imagine.
Of course, no team knows beyond a shadow of a doubt what it is getting in the draft. Never has and never will. We have Desmond Howard to remind us of that.
This may come as a disappointment to the draft cultists, for whom Mel Kiper Jr. is the spiritual leader, but the quality of any draft cannot be assessed immediately. Not until two, three or four seasons have passed can anybody be sure that they got the raw material they needed.
For all the measurements NFL people take of the prospects - body fat, IQ, weight-lifting reps, the contents of their urine - a certain amount of luck is involved in drafting players who will go on to be outstanding.
The NFLers would even have you believe they can measure the heart of each individual piece of livestock.
They can't, of course, but don't tell this to the draftniks and other shut-ins for whom Saturday's seven hours worth of coverage on ESPN was the highlight of the year.
For the TV congregation, Kiper is the high priest of picks. Even his slicked-back hair brings to mind a televangelist.
Kiper accurately predicted that the Carolina Panthers would draft Penn State quarterback Kerry Collins, and that the Cincinnati Bengals would select Ki-Jana Carter.
For this, the man is a genius? With as much time and resources as he and others put into this exercise, they had better know something.
As expected, there was a lot of verbiage Saturday concerning athletes with ``legitimate 4.4 speed in the 40,'' who will become ``impact players,'' and about teams that ``traded up,'' and those that considered ``trading down.''
ESPN promised coverage from some of the ``war rooms,'' reminding us that nobody takes itself more seriously than the NFL.
War rooms? C'mon now.
After the first 12 picks or so, the names of most of the players selected would not have been familiar to anyone but a draftnik or close relative.
This is the way it is meant to be, for on draft day the NFL becomes a secret society for football wonks who think they can find the answers to life in game tapes.
I'm told that, contrary to what we suspect, many draftniks enjoy healthy, active lives outside their obsession with football. Good for them.
But whether you're talking about a general manager, a glib self-promoter with a weather-proof pompadour or a closet draftnik, they just don't know. They can't know who the best players will turn out to be.
Never, though, can they let on to this.
If they should ever confess to any uncertainty, it could destroy the country's faith in computers and stopwatches and the ability of people to foretell the future by measuring the circumference of a young man's neck. by CNB