Credit: Tork Mason / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
By Sean Keeley on

Despite the aura that the NFL and its broadcasters have built up, the NFL Draft is not a magical, once-in-a-lifetime event that demands reverence.

It’s an annual business transaction in which NFL teams select former college football players and decide, one by one, where they will be employed for the next few years (or, at least, the next few months).

There is arguably no bigger business in America than the NFL, and the league has done an impressive job of creating a sense of wonder and importance around the process of assigning elite college football players to teams. It only makes sense that ESPN, which pays a lot of money to broadcast the event, would want to uphold that majesty and weight.

It’s a hugely important day not just for the teams but also for the players, who have waited their entire lives for this. Hearing their names called and finding out that they have been deemed worthy of a spot on an NFL roster (at least for now) is what dreams are made of.

None of this means that reporters have to stop doing their jobs.

On Tuesday, ESPN (and former NFL Network) NFL analyst Peter Schrager made a public plea to NFL journalists not to spoil draft selections before they are announced.

“Put your phones away on draft day,” Schrager pleaded on the latest episode of his The Schrager Hour. “This is not the NFL talking to me, this is not ESPN trying to gussy up the ratings here. There is nothing more fun, and there is no greater reality show than the NFL Draft.”

It’s true that it is incredibly easy for tapped-in NFL reporters to find out who is being selected before Roger Goodell (or whoever) makes the announcement. Every team’s war room is informed of an impending pick about 90-120 seconds before it’s announced, and it takes only a few seconds more for someone in one of those rooms to text that to a journalist.

The NFL knows this and asks its broadcast partners to maintain a policy that its reporters who cover the sport voluntarily sit on draft pick information, as the experience of not knowing is worth more to the person watching than whatever anyone gets out of reading it on a timeline first.

“There is no valor in spoiling an NFL Draft pick.”

There’s no valor in being first to report that an NFL team has signed a second-string punter, but ESPN, Fox Sports, NFL Network, Adam Schefter, Ian Rapoport, and the rest have made a living around that. The draft is no different.

“I do see the value in it because if you’re first, it gets more clicks,” Ian Rapoport recently said about the value of breaking transactional news. “It gets credited more. It gives your outlet more visibility…that’s publicity.” Maybe you disagree with that sentiment, but companies like NFL Network and ESPN seem to believe in it. That is, unless it’s about an event they’re broadcasting.

Schrager is right to say that the NFL Draft is a reality TV show, and that to know the outcome spoils the experience for those who tuned in for suspense and drama. But that’s not the reporter’s responsibility, nor should it be a factor in their decision to share news that they can corroborate.

This isn’t to say that reporters must spoil draft picks. Choosing to sit on that information is perfectly fine. But the presumptive shaming of any journalist who might have access to that information reeks of compliance and an allegiance to the entities that benefit from the secrecy, even if it’s something as banal as who the Tennessee Titans select in the fifth round.

Schrager’s mantra is similar to what you hear from people in the high school recruiting space: reporters should keep commitment information to themselves and let players make their own announcements because “this is their moment,” or something to that effect.

It’s a very lovely notion, and one that usually works itself out. But telling a journalist, a real journalist, that they need to put the entire purpose of their job on pause because it’s not fair to the person or entity they’re reporting is asking too much, especially when the “victims” of that breaking news are billion-dollar corporations and sports leagues.

It’s true that spoiling draft picks might ruin the fun for those watching on TV, but it’s also not the crime that defenders of the sanctity of the draft make it out to be.

About Sean Keeley

Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Managing Editor for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.

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