Drafting the Viewers

The National Football League draft was the last of the great newspaper events.

For years, fans would besiege sports departments with calls, asking what players their favorite team had selected.

But like nearly everything else in sports, television has taken over, ever since 1980, when ESPN first carried the draft. Although its only action is a name being read from a podium every 15 minutes, the draft has become a staple of the all-sports cable network.

Other pro leagues and cable networks have followed ESPN’s lead. TNT carries the National Basketball Assn.’s draft and SportsChannel covers the National Hockey League’s.

“(Television) has taken the draft from a hotel room to the living room,” said Joe Browne, the NFL’s director of communications. “Back in the early days of the draft, if a newspaperman stumbled into the draft by mistake, the league wasn’t sure if they were pleased or concerned. It wasn’t necessarily something that the teams wanted publicized until they chose to do so.”

Aside from his off-the-wall nicknames coined for “SportsCenter” broadcasts, ESPN’s Chris Berman is perhaps best known for serving as one of the hosts of the network’s draft coverage.

“(The draft) is like an oasis in the middle of a five-month desert,” Berman said. “It gets the football fan interested again in the spring.”

Before ESPN’s coverage, he said, “There was no reason for fans to focus on football from Feb. 1 (after the Pro Bowl) to July 15 (the opening of training camps). Once it was on TV, the fans starting wondering two weeks before the draft who’s going to be drafted. People are talking football, not just about who their team would draft, but who the other teams would draft.”

The draft has proven to be a hit with ESPN viewers. Last year it drew a 3.9 rating and was seen in 2.27 million households, both records for the 12 years ESPN has covered it.

Coverage of the NFL’s 57th draft begins at 8 a.m. Sunday. Mel Kiper Jr., Tom Jackson and Joe Theismann will join Berman as hosts at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York, anchoring a 5 1/2-hour telecast. Chris Fowler, Mike Gottfried and Fred Edelstein will report from the floor.

ESPN will also have reporters and cameras at the headquarters of the Atlanta Falcons, the Dallas Cowboys, the Indianapolis Colts and the Washington Redskins, and with attorney Leigh Steinberg, whose clients in this year’s draft include Heisman Trophy winner Desmond Howard, and quarterbacks Tommy Maddox and David Klingler.

“This show is best when I’m not putting too much of the onus on the guys in New York,” said Fred Gaudelli, who will produce the telecast for the third consecutive year. “When we’re equally able to disperse them with the information reports, that’s when I think our show’s at its best. When we’re flying around the country and keeping the pacing quick, that’s when the show becomes a lot more interesting, and people stay with it.”

A computer “crawl” will run at the bottom of the screen, recapping the earlier choices and giving the order of the picks to come.

Another camera will be at the home of the “bubble person,” a player who could be selected in either the first round or the second.

Past bubble people have included running back Thurman Thomas, who had become bored with the whole process and fallen asleep; defensive tackle Marc Spindler, who was passed over during the 1990 telecast and then was selected seconds after the sign-off, and quarterback Dan McGwire, the only bubble person to be chosen in the first round.

Berman begins preparing for the draft telecast April 1.

“I get the taxes done, then I do this,” he said. “Doing the draft for me is like doing a course in college that you need to do well in for your major and you’re way behind on the reading or the writing. You’ve laid everything out on your coffee table and your books are open.”

Berman has developed enough contacts and confidants throughout the league that “a good half-dozen teams are kind enough to almost give me their whole book.

“It’s not so much I can say “X” likes this player, but I can have something that I can talk about the player,” he said. “Another half-dozen teams are pretty frank with me. They know I won’t say where it’s from and that I’m not out to get a scoop. I’ll use (the information) they give me, but it won’t hurt them.”

He also gets his information by working the telephone, often spending up to two hours on a long-distance conversation.

Gaudelli begins his preparations even earlier. On Feb. 1, he starts compiling highlights and research on the top 150 players. A 45-second tape is prepared for each of those players, although only 40 to 50 are run. Researchers write five-page documents on the needs of each of the 28 NFL teams and a 45-second profile is produced for each team.

“This is the hardest show I do,” said Gaudelli, who also produces NFL and college football and basketball games for ESPN. “The amount of preparation and the bases you have to cover is incredible. Here you’re preparing for 28 teams in addition to 150 players, and what they can and can’t do, how much they can bench press, the times they ran and the injuries they had in college.

“The volume is incredible. You’re on the air live for 5 1/2 hours. The first five minutes are scripted, then here we come. It’s 5 1/2 hours by the seat of your pants, so you better be ready.”

ESPN will air the first 5 1/2 hours of the National Football League draft beginning at 8 a.m. Sunday.