Steve over at PackerGeeks has taken umbrage with my tirade against the immediate grading of the draft and those that practice it.
As the kids say, “Oh, it is so on…”
After trying to work out some of his own childhood issues, Steve states that I never explain why I believe the giving of grades is an exercise in futility. Fair enough. Perhaps it’s because I start each post here at Cheesehead TV with the assumption that you, dear reader, are not an idiot. That every person compelled to follow a professional football team to the point where they check multiple blogs about their team is well aware of the tried and true axiom of needing to wait AT LEAST three years before one can truly begin to take stock of what transpired on draft day.
Steve then tries to engage in a game of ‘gotcha!’ by pointing out that if I don’t believe in grading a draft, how could I possibly be able to offer cogent analysis of various picks throughout the weekends’ proceedings, using my post labeling the Brohm pick a steal as his prime example of my double standard. The problem with this tactic, as I’m sure he is well aware, is that assigning value to individual selections is a much more subjective exercise (and therefore well suited to blogging) than giving out letter grades for an entire draft, with a universally agreed upon standard of what constitutes “A” through “F”. I’ll debate whether you think getting Brohm at #56 is a steal or not (mostly because it’s an argument I’d win) but to try and give a group of nine players one unifying ‘grade’, which attempts to encapsulate how the entire crop of selections have helped or hindered the fate of their respective franchise, when they haven’t so much as attended a mini-camp, is absurd. Or, to quote my original post, bullshit.
As for Steve’s noting that I never explain the “root of my rage”, well, there he has me. I think mostly it’s because the grading of drafts as they happen in real time (I mean, ESPN had a poll up immediately after the Brohm selection asking who would be the Packers’ starter by the end of the year…) is a crystallization of the Great Dumb Down that has held our country in a death grip and that shows no sign of stopping any time soon. I won’t pretend to have more lucid, laser-sharp insights into the “root of my rage” (Thanks Steve, loving that phrase!) or that I have some grand manifesto explaining the correlation of immediate draft grading and it’s effect on, say, the subprime mortgage crisis. (All I’m saying is Congress should investigate…;) I’ll just leave it as something unexplainable in my gut and beg Steve’s pardon that I can’t offer a better explanation.
I will, however, thank him ever so much for his kind words regarding my post about Day Two at Radio City. He is too kind.
UPDATE: Just for fun, have a look at this roundup of grades immediately following last years’ draft. Both teams that ended up in the NFC Championship got ‘C’s from Rick Gosselin. Both teams that ended up in the AFC Championship got ‘D’s. (Kiper gives them a C- and a C, respectively) Didn’t the Packers have key contributions from several rookies last year? Mason Crosby, James Jones and Justin Harrell all played pretty big parts. How many rookies contributed to New York’s title run? Bradshaw, Ross, Smith, Boss: the list of huge contributors to New York’s Super Bowl triumph is long. And apparently worthy only of a ‘C’.
Like I said, bullshit. Complete bullshit.
