Inside Blitz: NFL Draft Combine is Polarizing, but Gave Out 900 Credentials Because Football Rules
By Jason McIntyre
The NFL Draft Combine in Indianapolis last year was one of my favorite work trips in my eight years running this site. There have been over 900 media credentials handed out for this week’s Combine in Indianapolis, which is the jumping off point for the 2015 NFL Draft on April 30th.
The Combine is perhaps the most polarizing event on the sports calendar. You either enjoy young men in tights lifting weights and running sprints and catching passes, or you abhor the silliness of it all. Crazy people have noted they’ll watch more Combine this week than MLB regular season on TV.
To get you sufficiently geeked, here are three storylines to watch this week.
1. Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies: The X-Files motto applies this year, as it does every year – Trust No One. Agents plant items, scouts plant items, misdirection is the most commonly used ploy, and reporters looking to feed the NFL Draft beast willingly play the game.
Remember how the Bills loved Ryan Nassib because Doug Marrone coached him at Syracuse, and were considering him in the 1st round? Buffalo repeatedly passed on him, and drafted EJ Manuel. Remember how pundits loved Blaine Gabbert … more than Cam Newton? Look it up. Mike Mayock had JJ Watt tied for the 5th best pass-rusher coming out of Wisconsin. [Ed. It’s right here, pre-Combine in 2011.] And on and on and on. Moral of the story: Have fun, stick to your guns, trust nobody.
2. Most Unpronounceable Name with 1st Round Potential: Owamagbe Odighizuwa, UCLA. Feel free to start calling him “Diggy.” Put together one of the most dominant Pac-12 defensive game this year against USC with two tackles for loss, two sacks (video here). He’s a 6-foot-3, 270 edge rusher who should slay the weights/skills portion of the Combine. The negatives: Turns 23 in April, has had two hip surgeries (kept him out of 2013 season). Dallas, Green Bay and Denver could all use him late in the 1st. It’s a great draft for edge rushers, and Diggy is a guy teams are buzzing about.
3. Who is the 5th best QB? Logic, athleticism and arm point to Brett Hundley, the Kaepernick-lite UCLA star as the third-best QB, with Baylor’s Bryce Petty coming in fourth. But because every loves a storyline out of left field, you might hear these two names by the end of the week as “risers” to be the fifth QB taken: Shane Carden, East Carolina (the tattoos and cocky attitude will scare off some) and Bryan Bennett, Southeastern Louisiana (was at Oregon, transferred when Marcus Mariota took over). More than a few NFL people seem to think the Eagles are targeting Bennett as a surprise pick in the middle rounds if Chip Kelly doesn’t mortgage the farm for Mariota.
Garrett Grayson from Colorado State, who is a very accomplished athlete and currently trending as the “Jimmy Garoppolo” of the 2015 class, is nursing a hamstring injury and won’t participate.
One thing you won’t see at the Combine this week if you follow any ESPN team reporters? Non-NFL tweets. The buzz around the Combine today is that ESPN is stressing to its NFL team reporters to avoid personal tweets (it’s cold, the food stinks, my uber driver is rude, whatever). You can guess how this went over among the reporters.
NBA ALL-STAR WEEKEND RATINGS … UP?
Fun with ratings: In 2014, the NBA All-Star game only generated a 4.9 overnight rating, but it was going up against the Winter Olympics. (Same deal in 2010, hence the 4.6 overnight rating). Sunday, the NBA All-Star game had a bigger opponent – the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, which NBC turned into a blockbuster event with a red carpet and celebrities galore.
The NBA still managed to pull a 5.5 rating, up 12 percent from 2014 (though 7.2 million viewers is actually down 4 percent from 2014. Yes, ratings are dumb.). But this note on Sports TV Ratings is interesting: This year’s game was simulcast on TNT and TBS.
All-Star Saturday night, which featured Zach LaVine’s incredible dunking exhibition and Stephen Curry’s 3-point shootout victory, saw a 10 percent ratings spike against 2014. And I wasn’t just being a prisoner of the moment: Zach LaVine is on Vince Carter’s dunking level.
MAINSTREAM MEDIA JOURNALISM IN 2015
“I spent valuable time duping the wrong folks. No wonder everyone had puzzled looks on their faces when I said I was a member of LeBron’s security team. I should have realized my mistake when I didn’t recognize any of the people nearest me.
My momentum was stolen; my pride took a major hit. It turned out LeBron’s name-tag was placed on the final chair. I exited the herd defeated, though I played it off like I had an important phone call.”
— Beat writer for newspaper writes about lying to get to the front of the scrum in hopes of getting crumbs from LeBron, only to realize said sportswriter was in the Pau Gasol scrum.
THE OSCARS
“Boyhood” better clean up at the Oscars. Such a powerful, brilliant movie. I’m going deep on the movies on my radio show Sunday, if you like movies, you’ll want to tune in.
ODDS & ENDS:
Excellent story about how a local Chicago website broke the Little League story last week … in the TV pilot about Matthew Berry’s fantasy football life, Vanessa Williams will be one of the stars … a tad old, but one of the best reads after Dean Smith’s passing … Dana Jacobson is going to be hosting a boxing show on Spike TV … utterly fascinating: How the New York Times Works … Dave Kindred, longtime sportswriter, is now writing about high school girls basketball in Illinois … RIP former Blue Jays beat writer Allison Gordon … Bob Simon’s advice to young journalists … Jason Whitlock’s new site at ESPN has a name: The Undefeated.