Out of Our Dungeons and Lairs, We Emerge From the NFL Draft

"The wives and girlfriends of NFL bloggers are true American heroes on Day 3 of the NFL draft... Let’s be real, this shit is 10x nerdier than WoW or D&D at this point..." - Kevin McCauley

Yup! SBN's Kevin McCauley said it best: We're all draft geeks of one stripe or another. I know as I write this, there are guys working on Mock Drafts for 2014, and in Joe McAtee's case - 2018. The amount of time and energy is well spent though, right? The NFL Draft is important. No, REALLY! It's an intellectual obsession for we that know things. Not real things, but THINGS... I have little doubt there are Washington "Think Tanks" - and possibly War Colleges - studying the strategies we've put forth as NFL fans. Certainly our decision making paradigms will have scholars - and future archaeologists - studying the draft paradox for centuries to come.

So just how obsessed are we about the NFL draft? Well, I can't speak to other sports sites, but SBNation has generated 1763 article about the NFL draft in the last 48 hours. If you include ALL draft articles - Mocks, players evals, ect... - the number is right around 20,000... Yes, REALLY! That's weird? Right as I typed the "REALLY!", I heard a booming "What's your point?". It kind of sounded like a baritone Hallelujah Chorus, and I got the faintest whiff of stale beer in the air...

The draft is our way of denying the NFL season ever ends. It continues on and on, in a Spencer Hall/Dan Kadar created worm hole thing that has to do with of sub-space time. I wonder what would happen if EA Sports created a NFL Draft video game? They could merge Madden, Call of Duty, Fast and Furious and some game with Zombies. It could center around breaching the Radio City Music Hall fortress. If you get to the evil overlord Rodger Goodell - after getting past his commercial break minions and Mel Kiper - you win a HD date with Bar Rafaeli...

The things we do as Draft fanatics keep our souls true. We hide at work to send a secret message to our team's war rooms, or spend a strangely long period of time in the bathroom to text this or that to our ethereal brethren - "No, we must trade down, you fool! But take care, I fear we're being watched..." This is when you glance up at the bathroom door - the one your wife or girl friend have been pounding on. You realize then she's saying something about the fire department, and how she's set you computer ablaze. I often wonder how many marriages or relationships find their end due to the draft? It's part of the circle of life I guess, and since marriage vows don't mention the NFL Draft specifically, I think God is on our side - I'd love to see HIS BPA spread sheet...

So I leave you to ruminate your NFL Draft quest, but I'd love to know if any of you have stories to tell about what lengths you'll go to during this hallowed time of year.