Media Savvy
Intriguing...but overdone
By Alby Oxenreiter

It's spring. All over the country, thousands of football fanatics are in a frenzy, counting the days to the NFL's annual off-season soiree. Draftniks everywhere are buried in mock drafts, and the biggest and baddest of them all, Mel Kiper, is cramming for the weekend that made him famous.

The NFL Draft is less than a month away, and my curiosity is peaking... but only because I'm wondering how anyone can get excited about an event that might someday produce an impact player. If Midnight Madness is the King of Overrated Sporting Events, as I wrote in this column last fall, then the NFL draft is making a serious run at dethroning the King. If your name isn't Cowher or Colbert, and you plan your schedule around the draft, you need to realign your priorities. If you're not paid to watch or analyze the draft, but insist on doing so anyway, you need to switch your online link from ESPN to ebay, and place a bid on a life.

I'm really not a party pooper. Quite the contrary. I think this country's passion for football is one of the things that makes it great, and I grew up with Western Pennsylvania's unique obsession with its team.

But the draft? I'm just happy the snow melted.

Chris Berman's banter with Kiper... the scramble to air video of the latest pick... complete up-to-the-second crawls across the bottom of your screen... loud graphics... louder announcers... instant analysis... instant nausea!

That's not to say this year's draft doesn't come with some intrigue. Anyone with an interest in Pittsburgh sports wants to know where Larry Fitzgerald ends up or how the Steelers take advantage of the first-round.

But be honest. After the middle part of the first round, it gets murky and very boring. There's nothing exciting about watching the 18th or 30th best player put on a hat and pose for the cameras. It looks staged. It feels hokey.

Truth be told, watching a player who doesn't get picked provides much better drama. There's a certain fascination that comes with keeping tabs on a player who has to wait...and wait... and wait. Who can forget Pitt's Marc Spindler, frustrated and angry, waiting to be drafted from his father's bar in Scranton? It wasn't Spindler's most enjoyable afternoon, but the drama made good television.

The media deserves some blame for blowing the draft out of proportion. In the good old days, local television stations would scramble to get the first "one-on-one" interview with the Steelers' top pick. I remember Channel 4 trying to find a way to get to a small town in Kentucky for an "exclusive" interview with Aaron Jones.

Jones was a first-round bust. Jamain Stephens, Huey Richardson and Troy Edwards were others. Back when we thought it mattered, we fell all over them.

None of these players even dented the landscape of Pittsburgh sports. Very few do. But we keep plugging it and analyzing it. Maybe that's not so bad. After all, I'd rather my children and other young fans attaching themselves to the draft and football rather than some other addicting habit.

But we all need to take a step back and keep things in perspective. Instead of disrupting your Saturday schedule later this month, go for a walk or play golf, go to your child's game, or better yet - sleep.

With or without you, the Steelers will make their picks, and five years from now, you'll have a pretty good idea of how they did.

Alby Oxenreiter is sports director for WPGH-TV Fox 53.