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Never Understood Why People Liked "Friends," Either

The NFL draft is a very important event for pro football, so it's perfectly understandable that fans pay it a lot of attention.

The draft, being an event with hundreds of as-yet unknowable conclusions, is a perfect means of creating arguments. Fans of all sports love arguments, so I get that element of the draft's appeal as well.

The draft's popularity as a television show, however, I will never understand. It combines the worst features of two genres, the game show and the reality program, that are basically ignored by anyone too young to be the target of those safe bathtub ads with Pat Boone. Why the Internet hasn't killed it as dead as your daily local newspaper is beyond me.

Boil it all down, the draft is a list of names. There's nothing the Internet does better than lists. Moreover, those lists can be easily correlated with the five kazillion pre-draft lists detailing the bona fides of all possible selections along with four kazillion conflicting opinions on same. These are precooked sports arguments -- just add the clicks and serve.

Anyone with even modest digital literacy can do all this on their phone or laptop while putting their TV to better use, indeed, about the only use it has left, the live broadcasting of sports events. There is no need for the tawdry and utterly predictable "show" of the televised draft. All of us have heard Roger Goodell booed, thank you. It's an old routine that palled sometime before the end of Deflategate.

The Bruins play the Islanders at 7 pm EDT. The Spurs and Nuggets tip off at 8. The Stars and Blues drop the puck at around 10. I mean, you could even watch baseball. All are superior entertainment to the draft broadcasts.

And yet, those broadcasts will be, as they always are, the highest rated sports programming of this night and indeed week. Why this is I do not know, but I have a guess. It isn't just that pro football is popular. I think it has more to do with why I watch reruns of "Perry Mason" so old and predictable I can name the murderer before the second commercial break, or why "The Simpsons" is still on the air.

TV satisfies the human need for the familiar.

posted by Michael Gee @ 8:59 AM