Last week, the eyes of the sports world were turned on Indianapolis and Lucas Oil Stadium. Why, you may ask? The Indianapolis Colts ended their home season Dec. 30.
Here’s why: The National Football League’s Scouting Combine, the annual pre-draft workouts for prospective draft picks. Yes, it is literally guys in T-shirts and shorts running, jumping and lifting. Yet for some reason, the NFL Network devoted 60 live hours to the nonsense, featuring 24 commentators live on-site. ESPN’s SportsCenter sent three commentators and featured multiple live reports during a weekend when there were actual games in college basketball, the NBA and the NHL, major events in NASCAR and PGA golf and fake games in Major League Baseball.
Why do the media think we care so much? Sure, professional football is America’s most popular sport by a wide margin, with college football arguably No. 2. However, people like to watch real games. The scouting combine is not even close to a real game. Heck, it’s not even a practice. The players aren’t wearing helmets and pads. All the combine does is allow NFL teams to realize that, yes, this guy can in fact run fast. Or yes, this guy is strong. (Makes sense, he’s been trained by a top-notch trainer at the college level.)
While ESPN could be debating topics such as which college basketball team truly is the favorite (for the record, I think it’s Indiana University), instead they are debating topics such as:
- If Tyrann Mathieu, the former Louisiana State University cornerback, had a strong enough performance at the combine to convince NFL teams to overlook his criminal marijuana history that got him kicked off of the LSU team.
- Whether or not Manti Te’o, the University of Notre Dame linebacker best known for having a fake girlfriend, is worth a first round pick.
- The true meaning behind University of Georgia linebacker Jarvis Jones’ strong combine. Does it truly make him the top prospect?
The sad part about this nonsense is that the NFL now wants to prolong its offseason by placing one major event each month from February through July – a pre-combine tryout system, the actual combine, the schedule release, the draft, more workouts and the start of training camp. The league feels it will raise interest by doing this, but I will be the first to say that it will make me stay away. I like football. I just don’t put it on some pedestal over other sports. And I especially don’t want to waste time “getting excited” in the middle of an offseason.
Sports have offseasons for a reason. If there was a baseball game every day for twelve months a year, not just six, I would get bored with it. Besides, anticipation is natural if you’ve been away from the sport you love for six months. The NFL is trying to blow itself up in the national sports scene and make an attempt at establishing itself as a year-round entertainment entity.
I sincerely hope people stay away from the NFL’s offseason hype. One of the beauties of sports is that fans can take a break for a few months. There is no substitute for actual games, regardless of what the NFL tries to do. Count me as one who will read the draft results, read the schedule, and not much else during the NFL offseason – the way other sports do it, they way it should be.