VARIOUS—One thing that has always remained a mystery to me is the hype leading up to the NFL Draft every April.  I can barely understand the exercise of watching – or should I say waiting for – the draft as it slowly unfolds one excruciatingly slow pick at a time.  But listening to the two-month pregame show that starts right about the time the Super Bowl ends is ridiculous.

If all the experts know who is a good pick and who is not already, then why do they even play the games?  For me, the draft has some intrigue until about the 20^th pick.  At that point the Raiders have certainly made their annual gaffe and the players being picked are no longer household names – unless your household is headed by an NFL general manager or coach.  Heck after I heard the Raiders took Darius Heyward-Bey about 20 picks too high and then took Michael Mitchell, a safety from Ohio University, in the second round (when he was projected as a seventh-rounder); I stayed close to my phone thinking they might call my name at some point.

Considering the Detroit Lions came to terms with their No. 1 pick, Matthew Stafford, late Friday night took all the drama out of the first selection.  The only drama left in the first 10 picks was who would draft USC quarterback Mark Sanchez (and what would they give up to get him) and who would the Raiders overvalue and pick at number seven.  Of course we know now that the Jets had the biggest crush on Sanchez even though he has started only 16 games for the Trojans and was last seen playing Penn State in the Rose Bowl.  Despite my dogged investigating, officials tell me that that was not Penn State’s junior varsity.

Yes, the only real winners to come out of this weekend’s draft were USC and the people that refused to waste a perfectly good weekend watching an abundance of awkward pauses, interviews and analysis from the orgy of draft coverage on the NFL Network and ESPN.  All that hype and bloviating about the draft benefited one school more than any other – USC.

The Trojans were basically handed a free 16-hour infomercial (or however long the blowhards were on) for all the work they’ve done turning good college players into top-flight NFL prospects.  Needless to say they just locked up the best recruiting classes for the next several years by getting 11 players drafted – more than any other school.  Not that potential recruits didn’t already think this, but when head coach Pete Carroll sits down on their couch and says, “I can help you get to the pros,” now they know it.

So now all the pundits who have turned a six month job into a year-long affair will now come out with their grades for every team just to fill time between now and training camp, which I believe starts in about an hour.  Actually, teams will now begin what they call "mini-camp" to help their draft picks and free agent signings get acclimated to the way they do things.  Next on the docket for NFL writers: the report that “so-and-so” is looking great in mini-camp (against air).  Wake me in September when the games count and then we can start evaluating the draft.