Almost Like Picking From a Catalogue
How would you like to own a business in which your material, already partially refined, is delivered to you at no charge, no shipping cost, no labor cost, no developmental cost, no promotional, publicity or advertising fees? It’s all yours. No strings attached.
Let’s face it. If you’re in the steel business, you have to go out and buy the iron mine, steam-shovel the ore out, put it on an ore boat, ship it to the mills, refine it, fabricate it--and only then do you get to go out and sell it to the public.
If you have a suit business, you have to buy the land, put the sheep on it, shear the sheep, weave the wool, cut the cloth, design the style--and then ship it to markets and split the profit.
The owners in the National Football League are the luckiest tycoons in the world. Every business in the country has to envy them.
Watching the NFL draft Sunday, I was struck anew at how fortunate they were. Here they were, wallowing in the biggest pool of natural talent, the great glut of material for their business--and all they had to do was buy it uniforms and give it a football. They didn’t even have the Japanese to worry about. The rest of corporate America must be gnashing its teeth.
Their business is athletics and selling tickets--and shaving cream and beer--and here was a ready-made pool of the year’s greatest athletes handed to them on a silver platter, fully publicized and advertised--to the point where a cable network could spend three hours at the suspenseful drama of where a 5-foot-8, 195-pound college junior was going to be working for the next 10 years.
It’s the most felicitous business arrangement in the free world. There isn’t even any middleman.
Their deal contravenes whole sections of the U.S Constitution. It was not a right given over to pro football by any particular legislation, it was a privilege it just arrogated in a more innocent past. Today, it survives as part of a union agreement between management and players. Except there’s no union agreement currently. And hardly any union, whose only hope is in the courts, not the bargaining table.
Basketball enjoys somewhat the same arrangement as pro football but hardly any other sports--or businesses--do. Baseball must maintain an extensive and costly minor league system to develop its raw material. Football leaves this to the taxpayers of the state institutions and/or the eternal sophomore alumni who endow things like a permanent punting scholarship so they can walk around town with “Go Big Blue!” painted on their hats.
The pro draft is a felicitous arrangement for all concerned. The colleges, after all, get the kids to play for nothing by dangling the prospect of a multimillion-dollar pro career in front of them. It behooves a college to put as many players in the pros as it can. It improves its image as a pipeline to the pros, a triple-A franchise in the farm system of big-time sports.
Colleges were not always that enthusiastic. I can remember a time when Tex Schramm, then publicity director for the Rams, told me how the team had to get office secretaries to address the envelopes of letters to draft prospects and then douse the letter in perfume to deceive the athletic departments into thinking they were love letters, otherwise they might not get delivered.
Another time, the Rams were so desperate for draft information that the late Dan Reeves, former team owner, proposed that the magazine I worked for get film on prospects under the guise of needing it for selection of an All-American team, whereupon I was to turn the clips over to the Rams. They would give me an All-American team and their scouting department a title team.
You don’t need these subterfuges anymore. The colleges and the pros are locked in a mutually beneficial loop. Something for everybody.
The pros need prime material now more than ever. In an attempt to get the hot breath of the federal courts off their necks, they have cut loose great chunks of their player pool. There never was a better chance for a rookie class than this year of Our Lord in the pros. There are holes in nearly every franchise, caused by the picking-over of quality free agents.
Even though the new draftees are proven ticket-sellers--Heisman Trophy winners, Outland Trophy winners, All-Americans, Rose Bowl veterans, the pros take no chances. Even with nothing to lose, they stage a kind of complicated audition for the class of 1989 at Indianapolis where they measure the trade for ability to jump, speed and strength as well as for personal habits and predilections. They not only look gift horses in the mouth, they make them jump fences.
Still, they make mistakes. So, it is the policy herewith to cut down on these with a little helpful advice for the owners who already get everything else they need free.
1. Don’t be too sure the No. 1 pick will be a big star. Roger Staubach was chosen in the 10th round. Norm Van Brocklin was chosen in the fourth. Bob Hayes was chosen in the seventh. John Unitas was chosen in the ninth, then cut and had to come back to the NFL as a free agent off the sandlots.
2. Don’t go after the running back. If Earl Campbell or O.J. Simpson can’t get you into a Super Bowl, no one can. If Gale Sayers can’t win you a championship, who will? The Dallas Cowboys finished last with a Heisman Trophy winner in the backfield last year. The Raiders had two.
3. Don’t bother with the Ivy League. An occasional Calvin Hill or Gary Fencik may come from Yale, an Ed Marinaro from Cornell, but skip the Fight Fiercelies. Harvard is totally out of the question and Princeton is, too.
4. Get the quarterback. Joe Montana was a third-round choice by the San Francisco 49ers. Warren Moon wasn’t drafted at all. It’s inconceivable that Rodney Peete wouldn’t be drafted for five rounds. Give Barry Sanders the Heisman Trophy. But give Rodney Peete the football.
5. Get a kicker. About 70% of NFL games are won by field goals, one way or another. Most of the points in the NFL are scored by kickers. Isn’t that the bottom line?
6. Get the defense. The greatest single draft choice in the history of the NFL might have been Bob Lilly by the Cowboys in 1961. Or Merlin Olsen by the Rams in 1962. The greatest 14th-round pick of all time was Deacon Jones by the Rams in 1961.
7. Get the coach. Coaches win even more games than kickers. It’s their game. Does anybody seriously doubt that a Vince Lombardi would have the Atlanta Falcons in the Super Bowl in three years? Maybe two.
