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Today is report-card day in the world of sports. Before the afternoon has bled into night, every pundit will have entered schoolmarm mode and assigned grades to each NFL franchise based on its draft-day performance. Many typically confident personnel guys will be reduced to slinking homeward, their polo shirts bearing the scarlet C-minus of shame.
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| Grading the Raiders and their Darren McFadden pick? Ah, forget about it. (Getty Images) |
A more didactic pursuit would be to grade organizations on their 2005 drafts, to see which picks look smart after three years of, you know, playing. It says here that more immediate draft postmortems should only include three grades: "Team filled the gaping holes in its lineup," "Team did not fill the gaping holes in its lineup," and "Team is run by Matt Millen."
I won't deny that draft report cards sure are fun to parse, even if western civilization gets a little dumber every time Dr. Gabby McShinyhair touts a cornerback's "fluid hips." So why stop there? Let's grade everything and everyone that happened this weekend.
Coverage of the NFL Draft: I spend 16 hours a day inhaling sports, yet I saw only a few token mentions of the draft in the days preceding it. There was nary a "mock draft," in which experts attempt to predict which teams will select which players, to be found. On TV, the local sportscaster bantered with the weather girl about the kid from State U., but their discussion delved no deeper. The Internet was otherwise occupied with pornography.
The situation worsened on draft day. The TV dial offered only a hodgepodge of Flip This House reruns and infomercials. None of the usually reliable web correspondents offered a "live blog" rife with barbed witticisms about Mel Kiper Jr.'s thickly shellacked coif. I was forced to sit on the cold, hard pavement outside Radio City Music Hall, hoping my faithful courier Benedict could pass unmolested through security and deliver news of the fateful proceedings taking place therein.
Why does the media refuse to cover this mysterious "player selection meeting"? Who's pulling the strings? I smell conspiracy. Grade: F-plus
Kansas City's draft-report-card grades: The football world seems unanimous in its belief that the Chiefs hit the jackpot-o-roonie. As a result, the team has received nearly unanimous A-plus grades. Borrrrr-innnnng. The very real possibility that Glenn Dorsey will spend his entire $17 million signing bonus on Devil Dogs should've muted the post-draft genuflection at the altar of media favorite Carl Peterson. Grade: C
The green room: It emptied much earlier than usual this year, which can only mean one thing: A shortfall of potato puff appetizers. You think Brady Quinn hung around for 32 hours last year because no team had designs on his pretty tail? Stop being so naïve. Grade: B
Right shoulders: A torn subscapularis muscle in Jorge Posada's, discomfort in John Smoltz's -- damn you to hell, you contemptible laterally projecting parts of the human body formed of the bones and joints with their covering tissue by which the arm is connected with the trunk. Can't you see? If you don't work the way you're supposed to, a player can't throw the ball. Worst reliability by a body part since the great oblique pandemic of Aught-Six? Grade: D
That guy who won the golf tournament that was played: He swung the club really well and made lots of nice shots at the place where they play golf. Many of the nice shots came when he totally had to make them or else he might not have won. It was really nice. Grade: B-plus
The umpire who took a 95-MPH Brad Penny fastball in the face: Mask or no, based on this clip I pronounce Kerwin Danley tougher than Pete Rose, Rick Mahorn, Triple H, Picabo Street, Jack Dempsey, Jack Bauer, and every athlete who has ever suited up for Duke University. The dude is fine, miraculously enough. We should set up a who's-toughest pay-per-view event pitting Danley against Arturo Gatti, in which the participants are pelted with items like billiard balls, igneous rocks and volumes of The Riverside Shakespeare. BTW, way to get that glove up, Russ Martin. Grade: A
The job I did cleaning my apartment: I cleaned for need on the first day, bringing a new Dyson vacuum into the fold and upgrading at left toilet. The second day was all about the best available cleaning implements, which resulted in enthusiastic scouring in and around the sink. At the end of the afternoon, I was extremely pleased with my handiwork and gave the press some zippy quotes to that extent ("We did what we needed to do. We really think this space is only a few Windex spritzes away from habitability").
