About a month ago, I wrote a very well received and very sarcastic column about people with nothing better to do than sit around and debate what is a sport and what is not. But I forgot that there are people with even LESS to do – and they spend their time attending professional sports drafts.

Now I love sports, I wouldn’t be doing this job if I didn’t. And I have been to training camps, spring trainings and preseason games in my time, but I have never in my life thought going to a draft day would make for a fun evening. The attention put on the drafts has gotten out of control.

Almost as soon as the Celtics won the title, mock drafts were all over the Internet and the sports networks began “draft coverage.” I have wrestled with this term for a long time because the draft hasn’t happened yet when coverage begins, so they aren’t actually covering it. What they are actually doing is covering themselves talking about the draft and what they think will happen. It is like election coverage, except the candidates are all at the gym.  

These people are also almost never right unless it is impossible to be wrong. The pundits got Rose and Beasley right this year, but even people who spent money on “Kucinich For President” bumper stickers could have seen that coming. And I seem to remember Glen Dorsey and Reggie Bush being at the top of a billion mock NFL drafts in recent years. What is worse is that when they are really off with their predications, they crucify the poor kid for their mistakes. How long did the network cut back to Brady Quinn trying to look calm in the green room at the NFL draft last year after telling everyone for months he was going high? And then this year, they actually had Token Field Reporter go up to the projected top-15 NBA pick Darrell Arthur who was eventually picked 28th and asked a nicely worded version of the question, “So how come we were all THIS wrong about you?”

Worst of all are the fans at the draft. People cheer and scream from balconies as players walk up on stage, put on hats and then get pulled away from their friends and family, the only people who should really be there in the first place. What a story to tell you grandkids, “I was there the only time OJ Mayo ever wore a Timberwovles cap!” I only caught bits and pieces of the draft during the commercials breaks of wrestling that night and I feel more accomplished.

The NBA draft is better than the unholy NFL draft. I remember my junior year of college when my diehard Tennessee Titan roommate hijacked the TV for the day to see whether it would say Leinert or Young on the back of the jersey he was about to order. People crammed Radio City Music Hall with their faces painted waving signs like they were at the Meadowlands across the river. I still remember one fan with the green and white face paint frantically waving his “The Jets want Reggie Bush” sign at the camera on the way back from commercial – there isn’t even a joke to make about this sad, sad man.

The drafts can be exciting and entertaining. This years NBA draft had so many trades that it was like a bizarre episode of Deal Or No Deal with human lives instead of briefcases. But our interest in drafts and the coverage of them by the sports media makes TMZ look like Pulitzer Prize-worthy journalism. If you are going to give this much attention to which prospects Bill Belichick was impressed with at workouts or whether the Heat are going to trade down, you can’t judge the people glued to the TV when Angelina Jolie is pregnant because you are just as bad. And if you are going to go so far as to paint your face and wave signs at the draft itself, you can’t even be allowed to laugh at the people who flocked to California to cheer Michael Jackson as he walked from his car to court and back a few years ago. Is that a right you are seriously willing to waive just to see James Laurinaitis in a three-piece suit? It is seriously getting that bad sports fans – stop the madness.

On a related note, I hope George Carlin would have been happy with how cantankerous this column is.