Feel a Draft?

The NFL Draft is in a week, which means sports commentators have been talking about for nearly a month. It used to be the draft was something people only marginally cared about and wasn't even televised. However, with the huge upsurge of people listening to sports radio and watching Sportscenter, interest in the draft is high even more than a month before the event.

This is a funny thing too. Most of the rest of society wouldn't draft people for a job. You think of the military drafting people. However, without the draft, there wouldn't be a fair balance among teams. You'd have baseball instead, or possibly hockey, where you might not be able to afford to keep a player (though they now have some kind of salary cap).

The top four draft picks are likely to be: Reggie Bush to the Texans, someone to New Orleans, Titans to draft either Leinart or Vince Young. The owners seem to like Young, the coaches seem to like Leinart, especially, Norm Chow who was the offensive coordinator at USC while Leinart played. The fourth pick would go to the Jets, who is likely to pickup whoever the Titans don't, although they may forego Young for someone else.

Other players named at the top are, most notably, Dbrickishaw Ferguson, who is an offensive tackle from University of Virginia.

Basically, people think Bush is the most talented player, that Leinart is the most ready to play right away in the NFL as quarterback, a position notoriously difficult to succeed in right away (which makes Ben Rothlisberger's accomplishments all the more stellar) and Vince Young to possibly have good upside (people had been a little down on him since he didn't do so well on the Wonderlic test, a test of football IQ).

Jay Cutler, QB for Vanderbilt, has seen his stock rise. Other players that are mentioned are A.J. Hawk, outside linebacker from Ohio State and Vernon Davis, tight end at Maryland. It's hard to believe how highly Vernon Davis is rated given that Maryland has missed the postseason the last two years.

Jai Lewis, who helped George Mason reach the final four, has also thrown his fortunes with the draft. We'll see how that turns out.