Oh, Oh… Pick me! Pick me!

This past weekend marked the pinnacle of sporting events for the year. It was March Madness, Super Bowl Sunday, and the World Series all rolled into one. No, it wasn’t the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs. I’m talking about the NFL draft. Two days of nonstop action! Thankfully, ESPN was kind enough to display the draft without pause, even during commercial breaks.

Now I know what you’re thinking: How can one draft pick every 15 minutes be exciting? It just is. The waiting, the suspense, the agony… will Heismen winner Reggie Bush be the first pick? Will Vince Young get picked over Matt Leinhart? So many questions and you have to wait so darn long to find out. And those are the easy ones. What we really want to know is who is who will the Carolina Panthers select in the fifth round as the 155th overall pick? With all the top names gone and many of the smaller ones as well, who is left for them to pick up? What positions do the Panthers need to fill? The answer, of course, is Jeff King, a tight end from Virginia Tech. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

The action is cutthroat as teams look to out maneuver each other with their selections and their last minute trades. This is the time for the teams’ general managers and presidents to shine. All year long the players and coaches get the spotlight, but on this very special weekend, it’s the management that takes the field. And what do they get for their efforts? Practically nothing. Can you even name the GM for your favorite football team? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

I think the main problem with the draft is that there is no clear winner. Sure Huston got to pick first, but does that mean they won? We could let the industry analysts vote to decide who had the best draft picks and made the best trades. But since most analysts are former players and coaches, I think that would be entirely too biased. We could let viewers at home vote online for whom they think had the best draft. But I don’t trust the average viewer to have ingested all seven rounds thoroughly enough to make a sound decision. Instead, I have devised a simple way to choose a winner that is both unbiased and fair.

You take the average height of the players drafted for each team, and divide that by the average age. Then you multiply that number by pi (about 3.14). Add to that the number of current team members selected for the most recent Pro Bowl, and then multiply that by the absolute value of the difference between the age of the team’s head coach and its general manager. The team with the highest score wins. The secret is in the formula’s simplicity. I don’t think I could have made it any easier to keep track of. But just in case, I’ll write out the shorthand of the formula for you here:

[((AvHei/AvAge)*3.14)+ProB]*CoaAge-GMAge = team score

See, simplicity itself. But since I don’t happen to have a calculator nearby at the moment, I’m going to designate the winner of the 2006 NFL Draft to be Denver. Because, why the heck not? They deserve it just as much as anyone. So I’d personally like to congratulate the management team of the Denver Broncos for winning the first ever NFL Draft Champions Cup. Way to go team!

I’d also like to announce that the NFL Draft Champions Cup is not an actual cup. Nor is it any other sort of tangible object. The winning of the NFL Draft Champions Cup does not confer any special privileges or rights, monetary or otherwise, to the victor. You can get a special Certificate of Achievement for a reward. By request, I will email a copy of the Certificate to the winner of the NFL Draft Champions Cup, but the team’s management will be responsible for going to Kinko’s and paying to get the fancy print job done. I’m not running a charity here.

But I am hoping that this new award will pave the way for management to get new, lucrative endorsement deals. As I said before, the team management is often the forgotten, but extremely crucial, part of the professional sports team. In this day in age professional athletes make multimillion dollar deals with apparel companies. Coaches have even begun to make their way into commercials and brand endorsement. It’s certainly true even in college athletics where players are banned from endorsements, but coaches are not. This is evidenced in Duke Basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski (pronounced Sha-shefskey)… (I know I know, apparently the K makes a “sh” sound, crazy) participating in commercials during March Madness while watching his team get knocked out early in the tournament.

The time has finally come for the GM’s of pro sports to get their endorsements. Instead of signing with Reebok or Nike, I think management should sign with classy outfitters like Armani, Ralph Lauren and Sean John. Since management is always in the suits, they should endorse the people who make the suits. I for one would jump at the chance of owning a Marty Hurney sports coat (Carolina Panthers’ GM). I’m sure this new wave of endorsements would trigger a nationwide surge in demand for business suits. And I back this claim up with absolutely no relevant data whatsoever.

The bottom line: the NFL Draft rocks! And you should watch every second of it and devour each and every draft pick as if your life depended on it. Either that or you could actually get a life. It’s up to you.