The NFL draft is a pinnacle for plenty of gamers, maximum of whom have dreamed for years of listening to their names known as by way of Commissioner Roger Goodell in entrance of hundreds of thousands of TV audience.
But in 2020, as gamers celebrated attaining the pro ranks, the printed zoomed in on their non-public tragedies.
In one broadly condemned example, as Tee Higgins, the extensive receiver from Clemson University, was once selected thirty third general by way of the Cincinnati Bengals, he pulled at the workforce’s cap and hugged friends and family who sat beside him in Knoxville, Tenn. ESPN then confirmed audience a graphic that, amongst different biographical main points, spotlighted his mom’s previous drug habit.
It was once one in all a number of such gloomy cases in what’s another way a celebratory tournament loved by way of hundreds of thousands of soccer fanatics on tv, however one that comes with sides that may be dehumanizing to the individuals who will have to be its stars. Viewers realized, as an example, that the sister of receiver Jerry Jeudy, whom the Denver Broncos decided on fifteenth general, had died whilst he was once in highschool. The package deal introducing Michael Pittman Jr., a receiver taken thirty fourth by way of the Indianapolis Colts, printed his stutter. Trevon Diggs, a cornerback picked 51st by way of the Dallas Cowboys, was once famous to have misplaced his father to center failure in 2008.
The highlight at the heartbreak within the lives of the gamers decided on, maximum of whom are Black, by way of manufacturers of the publicizes aired by way of ESPN and the NFL Network drew complaint for wading in so-called tragedy porn, an indulgent center of attention on non-public trauma.
“We still think that’s a big deal, to acknowledge the obstacles they’ve had to overcome in their journey to the NFL,” stated Seth Markman, who has led ESPN’s draft protection for 11 years, and who apologized to Higgins in 2020. “ But what we realized that year is that we could probably do a little better job balancing and making sure that not every story is about those obstacles and those backgrounds. Not everybody has to be a kind of a clichéd bit of storytelling, if you will, and I think that year it was.”
Markman and his counterpart at NFL Network, Charlie Yook, said they have also become more mindful of not focusing repeatedly on troubles in the prospects’ lives.
“You don’t want everyone to cry every time,” Yook said. “This is a celebration of a dream coming true. It’s not a game of gotcha. We want to tell your story and it will be unique to the player.”
It isn’t the only part of the draft process that has been called out for its indignities. As the NFL last year re-evaluated the workouts, medical testing and physical measurements that players undergo ahead of the draft, Troy Vincent, a league vice president who is Black, reportedly told team owners that the scouting combine had characteristics of a “slave market .”
“We just feel like the overall experience, talking to the players, we can be better in that particular aspect,” Vincent stated of his assembly with workforce house owners in March 2022. “So there was, I would say, a good discussion around what that looks like, where we could be, keeping in mind that the combine is the player’s first experience with the National Football League, and in that experience, there has to be dignity.”
The scouting combine is an annual audition for 300 college players who are interviewed by team personnel, given medical exams and perform drills in front of team scouts and coaches. After widespread complaints from agents and players — including some prospects who declined to attend the event — the league now holds workouts on one day, instead of across two.
It streamlined the sharing of medical records so players don’t have to be tested several times. The interview process has also been standardized after complaints about intrusive questions. And the league last year stopped administering the Wonderlic test, a 50-question IQ exam long criticized for racial and socioeconomic biases, replacing it with the S2 Cognition test.
Players undergo only one full orthopedic exam, with the results presented to all 32 teams, and there is no longer a built-in window for teams to administer their own behavioral assessment tests.
Despite these changes, perhaps the most potentially dehumanizing aspect of the combine remains: Players still wear skintight outfits during drills as dozens of mostly white scouts evaluate their physical attributes.
Joby Branion, a longtime player agent, said the process has “hints of slavery.”
He added: “It’s about as dehumanizing at that moment in this process as it can be. It ain’t about you. It’s about how your body looks.
This year, 17 top prospects will attend the first round of the draft in Kansas City, Mo., on Thursday, with the league paying for airfare and hotels for the players and several of their family members and friends. There, they’ll wait to hear their names called in the draft’s green room, which the NFL said will feel more like a living room than the stiff-table setup used in past years, when some prospects waited in partitioned rooms.
Markman said the networks have also reduced some of the close-up shots of players fretting as they wait to have their names called.
Still, the evening can quickly and unpredictably turn sour if a player’s name is not called for hours, or at all. The potential for that stress and embarrassment is why Brad Blank, a longtime agent who represented former offensive lineman D’Brickashaw Ferguson, former defensive lineman Chris Canty and other top players, tells his top prospects to skip the draft.
“My advice to anybody is: ‘Don’t go. Stay at home, no pressure,'” he said.
But some players ignored Blank’s advice because they viewed the draft, including the chance to wear their new team’s cap, hold up a jersey and hug Goodell on national TV, as a rite of passage. Blank recalled the mother of one top prospect pushing back hard against his advice.
“She lambasted me: ‘This is our moment. We’re going and we’re going to hug the commissioner,’” Blank stated.
Markman stated ESPN started transferring clear of zooming in on gamers within the inexperienced room after 2013, when quarterback Geno Smith sat via all of the first spherical with out getting picked.
“Every time someone got picked, the camera would look at me, and it created this perception of negativity that wasn’t there,” Smith stated.
Figuring his identify wasn’t going to get known as, Smith left ahead of the top of the primary spherical so he may have fun his mom’s birthday. His departure, on the other hand, resulted in tips that he was once sour.
“As TV producers, we were sort of like, this is going to capture ratings and this is going to be a juicy story line, and make sure we have cameras with these guys,” Markman stated. Now, “we do not wish to display a lot of these guys who are meant to be having the most efficient days in their existence and it turns right into a nightmare. Let’s no longer profit from him on this scenario.”
Smith, now with the Seattle Seahawks, said he didn’t realize how he was portrayed until afterward. He had not planned on returning the next day, but his mother persuaded him to attend.
When the Jets drafted Smith in the second round with the 39th overall pick, he visibly exhaled as cameras trailed him to shake hands with Goodell and his voice cracked as he described his relief in an interview.
After Smith watched quarterback Malik Willis, a projected first-rounder, drop to the Tennessee Titans in the third round last year, he called to reassure him. Smith also said he told Lamar Jackson, who was the last player in the green room before the Ravens selected him with the final first-round pick in 2018, that he should have gone higher. “I texted him, ’cause them to pay.'”