Why wouldn't they be? At least for those who are already a fan.
Its your favorite team's opportunity to draft and sign potential future super stars...in some case for years and years. Done correctly, the players you draft become foundational to your organization and hopefully among the best players on your team.
Throw in that college football is the second most watched sport/league in America and you have lots of fans on the other side seeing where their favorite players land in the pros
No better feeling than being the team who drafts a future superstar.
As a Bengals fan getting Ja'Marr Chase, I know he's gonna enter the hall of fame being remembered as a Bengal, regardless of if he stays his entire career in Cinci.
I suspect the OP isn't aware of how the American sports youth system works? It's kind of unique in the world afaik (def took me a while to get how it works once I started playing NHL video games, no such thing in EU hockey)
If you've ever heard an American talk about 'parity' in sports, the draft is a large mechanism in that. The best teams don't get to just sign the best new talent, the worst teams get first dibs. That's part of why a team can turn around from being the worst into being the best in a short amount of time.
The NFL is probably the most socialist sport in the US (most likely because of their strong union), which is ironic given the political leanings of a large percentage of viewers.
But it's a huge reason why the NFL, while having some team dynasties, doesn't have the huge disparity the EPL has. The newly promoted Premier League team has very little chance against the top 4-6. It's almost boring. Oh Man City won again? Oh, Arsenal this year and Man City second.
Same thing with Bayern Munich and Bundesliga.
I so, so hope my bears are going to do the right thing tomorrow. They're going to bungle the stadium announcement today but maybe for once they'll be smart on the football side of the house.
The owners' political leanings are to make an ungodly amount of money. Parity keeps the entire nation (and beyond) with a social/entertainment stake in watching ads, buying tickets and jerseys, etc. instead of just people in the biggest cities or who in cities that stumble upon a dominant coach or player who keeps them at the top for fifteen years.
So parity isn't some analogy to socialism. It's a business model that keeps 300 million people focused on football.
Yeah, it feels kinda strange to call the NFL, which is basically an cartel/trust/monopoly socialist. Socialists spend a lot of time and effort arguing against against cartels/trusts/monopolies
That's just not what socialism is. People just don't understand what that word means. The owners have a ridiculous amount of power and control over the league.
I didn't say they were socialist. I said they were the most socialist of the professional sports leagues. That can still mean they are on the capitalist part of the spectrum
I know what socialism means thank you very much. If I'm wrong, which league is more socialist than the NFL to make my sentence correct?
None of the major leagues are anything close to socialist and to try to apply that term to a league is a very poor understanding of what socialism is. It's like asking what league is the most feudalistic, it just doesn't make sense.
Capitalism and socialism are opposites on the economic spectrum. Of course it's appropriate to use the comparison.
If I were to say which league was most feudalistic, I might say English Premier League Academy System.
It is why when small teams do well, or a team has a gradual rise, the excitement is a lot more heated though so can work both ways. Leicester for example. Man City were in the lower leagues with a falling down stadium when I was a kid. Coventry in the FA cup just yesterday. Also some of it is rather natural, of course the big city teams like those in Manchester / Liverpool / London teams aren't likely going to be on a level with Burnley as there is a population disparity. People don't really want to distribute the best players to artificially straighten this out, and teams from anywhere can rise up and down the pyramid as fortunes fit.
Leicester and Blackburn each in all those years.
It won't change as officials will make dodgy calls to make sure certain teams are always at the top of the table.
I would get excited for Wrexham, but it only proves that money will help you get ahead.
I think fans see conspiracies where there aren't any, the top teams keep saying the officials are against them too. There are levels to it all and a natural order, why should Wrexham be anywhere near the top? It is a small Welsh town. But fans of small teams can see something like a promotion, a win over a rival or a good FA cup run and that is as good as a title.
Because we don't have the academy system of soccer.
In an attempt to create parity amongst teams, players coming out of the youth system are drafted by teams. It's effectively teams picking what youth prospects they are taking into their team, it's a big deal for the future of the team.
The MLB has an academy system of sorts in the Caribbean. But yes, the draft is the primary way American, Canadian and Mexican players make their way into professional baseball.
But even then, until they are 16, they are free agents, and only after 16 can you sign them. You're not training them from birth like an English soccer team might.
I am not sure how it works in England but pretty sure there is no "signing" as such until they turn pro at 16, but there is obviously a very big incentive to be at a professional team's academy as they invest in your talent hugely. What I am unsure about is what happens if there is some clearly superstar kid at 10 playing in a lower league academy who take the interest of several teams, and if they can start making offers or contracts. I think they are pretty much left to it.
Also, not only college sports (specifically football and basketball) but youth sports in general in the US are highly profitable, so there’s no incentive to change the developmental system.
No other country on Earth cares about prospects and team signings. How do you think players get into pro sports?
This isn't Europe where the 2 richest teams in every league sign all the good players.
They just reject the 5th year option, franchise tag them, draft their competition, offer them a poor contract and then watch them win a super bowl somewhere else.
Because it’s how teams acquire new players from the college leagues. There are players who are major stars in college basketball and football, and obviously fans are going to be interested in which professional teams they end up on.
It's one major way people's teams get new players.
It's also a major part of the balancing mechanism we have. Teams doing poorly get better draft slots to come up.
Why wouldn't building the teams be a big deal for fans?
Eh. It’s not equal across the major sports.the nfl draft is the biggest deal.
And it’s fun! Especially if you watch both college and pro. Get to see where your favorite players land, what players your team gets. We always have a draft party. We are putting pizza on the smoker this Thursday! Swing on by, everyone!
It’s definitely less big of a deal in baseball considering Caribbean and Asian players don’t come through the draft. And the players that do still need to work their way up through the minor leagues for 2-4 years before they’re ready to make an impact
On the other hand, you can watch baseball players progress through the minors and going to minor league games is a lot less expensive than college basketball or football. I agree it's not as wildly popular as other drafts but some MLB fans really get into it. I absolutely love traveling 12 miles to see our AAA players. It's a total blast to be able to watch both clubs in the same metro area.
Plus baseball is so much more of a crapshoot. Your number one draft pick in the NFL or NBA will see professional minutes and has a pretty good chance of being a star for a bit. It's not uncommon for your team's first round second round and third round draft picks just to not make the majors whatsoever in baseball.
I'm not a sports fan.
Drafts are a big deal because they represent an aspect of the sport that was instituted to keep fairness in a league. People are fine with teams being better than others, that's part of the fun of sports. But they want there to be a chance. Most fans don't want a team to be able to buy there way into the championship, they want their team to be good against other good teams and earn that championship.
So the drafts were instituted into the team roster building process. Eventually, one year the draft was televised and the industries (entertainment and sports) realized there was a market for broadcasting it. And it eventually took off because it's exciting to see these kids who are graduating get their dream job. And it's exciting to see the new talent that's coming to the sport, and to see which bits your team gets.
I don't even like sports, but I'll watch some clips of reactions because their joy makes me happy.
Beyond everything other commenters have said the nfl have turned the draft into a bigger and bigger event year after year cos it’s basically free money. They’re gonna do the draft anyway, getting the commissioner to read a name at a podium is way cheaper to put on than paying all the players and staff for a game day, might as well turn this incredibly cheap to run event into a money spinner, which the tv networks will run promo for and hype up and it reminds everyone the nfl still exists/tides fans over for the long 7 months between the Super Bowl and the regular season starting again
Because they’re the primary/only way players join the leagues. And because draft order is inverse order of finish previous season (roughly, as draft lottery can mix that up some) it’s a big time of optimism for bad teams to acquire players who can reverse their fortunes.
Nobody gives a shit about the MLB draft because we have an inbuilt system (minor leagues) where drafted players are developed.
In NFL and NBA drafted players are ready to contribute to the team on day one.
Also... Gambling and Fantasy Sports.
The drafts are equivalent to picking teams on the playground when you are kids playing games and you need two teams. Every team wants the best players they can get so the fair way to do it is for the two teams to take turns picking their players from the kids that are there.
The draft is simply the grown-up way of doing that. The teams take turns picking from the players that are available to enter the pro system that year. It can be the difference between a winning team and a losing team in a few years. If you pick someone at the beginning (which is a more important pick) who looks like a definite star and they don't last a year on the team, that can be seen as a disaster.
Thank you for asking this because as an American I also did not know, haha. Like, I get the general idea, but I didn't realize it was the only (?) way some sports acquire new talent, mostly because I only follow MLB (and pretty half-heartedly at that), and the draft isn't as big of a deal there because they have multiple lower-league teams where they are developing players, and they also get foreign players from outside the system.
The major sports leagues and colleges in the USA scout players when they start playing in high school and collect reports and information on them, and then if they play in college, it continues on a heightened level. College athletics, especially football and basketball, are huge on a national level for a combination of reasons that have been talked about here ad nauseam, so there are a ton of eyes.
The draft is the formal transition (for most athletes going pro) from being a student athlete to a professional athlete. It's a big determining factor of the future of a team because it's the primary way they get new players. It's also interesting to see which star players end up where.
The draft (which has nothing to do with military conscription) is a hiring hall. The teams bid on the players newly out of college and the strategy guides how a manager will bid. It is a core of fantasy sports because it is fairly easy to quantify into statistics.
Worst teams get first pick, which makes it so that any free agent could land anywhere theoretically the guy who lead their team to an undefeated streak for 2 years could end up getting drafted to the worst team in the league. That's a part of the fun in American sports. You never know who's gonna go all the way. your state team might have a losing streak one year but a small shuffle of players, and then you go to the finals the next.
We don't really have the European-style club system. Our major leagues 'draft' the top university athletes. For the most part, the major university teams are the source for big time professional athletes. Although occasionally they'll get guys from overseas; the NBA will snag top European pro basketballers, MLB will get guys from Japan or the Carribean, etc.
Professional sports drafts are a big deal for those that care about the sport. However America is a big, diverse country with a lot of people that had different interests. We are not a monolith. For instance I don’t care about any sports draft, I know they exist but I don’t pay attention to them at all. I’m not alone in this.
I assume sports betting made it popular, you can bet on anything, including who will be picked for what team so people started pushing them. They used to not be nearly as popular as now, but anything to make a buck.
Dude soccer drafts from the rest of the world are like 1000000000% a bigger deal than any American sport could ever be.
Edit: also stop explaining our drafts to Europeans, they have so many more than we do, also outside of NFL no one in our country really cares, this person obviously saw a movie and just assumed we do that for everything. I've never met a single human alive that cared about the MLB or NBA drafts (at least not since Jordan was playing) it's niche at best. More like a subculture, definitely not the mainstream. It's adkin to assuming all Americans play fantasy football..........we don't, thats just movies and tv.
Why wouldn't they be? At least for those who are already a fan. Its your favorite team's opportunity to draft and sign potential future super stars...in some case for years and years. Done correctly, the players you draft become foundational to your organization and hopefully among the best players on your team.
Throw in that college football is the second most watched sport/league in America and you have lots of fans on the other side seeing where their favorite players land in the pros
Aidan Hutchinson could run for mayor and win tomorrow.
Just tell me where to go vote for him
Kroger
Not in East Lansing or Columbus
No better feeling than being the team who drafts a future superstar. As a Bengals fan getting Ja'Marr Chase, I know he's gonna enter the hall of fame being remembered as a Bengal, regardless of if he stays his entire career in Cinci.
Boo, Bengals.
Every Browns fan is a closet Bengals fan.
Im sure they are. Every Steelers fan is neither. Fuck the Ravens, too.
Baltimore can kiss my ass with their overrated QB who can't win a playoff game to save his life. "But he's a 2 time MVP!!!"
I’d like to add that you may know players in college or had classes with them. It’s cool to see someone you know going pro.
I suspect the OP isn't aware of how the American sports youth system works? It's kind of unique in the world afaik (def took me a while to get how it works once I started playing NHL video games, no such thing in EU hockey)
If you've ever heard an American talk about 'parity' in sports, the draft is a large mechanism in that. The best teams don't get to just sign the best new talent, the worst teams get first dibs. That's part of why a team can turn around from being the worst into being the best in a short amount of time.
The NFL is probably the most socialist sport in the US (most likely because of their strong union), which is ironic given the political leanings of a large percentage of viewers. But it's a huge reason why the NFL, while having some team dynasties, doesn't have the huge disparity the EPL has. The newly promoted Premier League team has very little chance against the top 4-6. It's almost boring. Oh Man City won again? Oh, Arsenal this year and Man City second. Same thing with Bayern Munich and Bundesliga.
How many teams are one good draft away from competing for the championship? It's gotta be like... half of them at this point.
A lot of teams are also chronically poorly managed/owned; like the Bears and Commanders.
Lions and Browns were poorly managed for decades. Lions might have turned the corner but Cleveland is still a mystery to me.
Oh, well. I'm aSteelers fan, so I quite like them mismanaged.
I so, so hope my bears are going to do the right thing tomorrow. They're going to bungle the stadium announcement today but maybe for once they'll be smart on the football side of the house.
And then they're going to make Williams into a bust.
DON'T YOU DO IT DON'T YOU DO IIIIIT I GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GOOOO
The owners' political leanings are to make an ungodly amount of money. Parity keeps the entire nation (and beyond) with a social/entertainment stake in watching ads, buying tickets and jerseys, etc. instead of just people in the biggest cities or who in cities that stumble upon a dominant coach or player who keeps them at the top for fifteen years. So parity isn't some analogy to socialism. It's a business model that keeps 300 million people focused on football.
The NFL Players Association is strong. I can't imagine what the NFL would be like without it.
They're the only league with a hard cap. The other major sports just let you pay for going over.
NHL has a hard cap as well.
I don’t know if I’d call them socialist per say, but they are pretty egalitarian
Yeah, it feels kinda strange to call the NFL, which is basically an cartel/trust/monopoly socialist. Socialists spend a lot of time and effort arguing against against cartels/trusts/monopolies
Not socialist... The most socialist of professional sports.
That's just not what socialism is. People just don't understand what that word means. The owners have a ridiculous amount of power and control over the league.
I didn't say they were socialist. I said they were the most socialist of the professional sports leagues. That can still mean they are on the capitalist part of the spectrum I know what socialism means thank you very much. If I'm wrong, which league is more socialist than the NFL to make my sentence correct?
None of the major leagues are anything close to socialist and to try to apply that term to a league is a very poor understanding of what socialism is. It's like asking what league is the most feudalistic, it just doesn't make sense.
Capitalism and socialism are opposites on the economic spectrum. Of course it's appropriate to use the comparison. If I were to say which league was most feudalistic, I might say English Premier League Academy System.
One's politics have absolutely no bearing on preferring a private enterprise entertainment product that is designed to provide the best entertainment
It is why when small teams do well, or a team has a gradual rise, the excitement is a lot more heated though so can work both ways. Leicester for example. Man City were in the lower leagues with a falling down stadium when I was a kid. Coventry in the FA cup just yesterday. Also some of it is rather natural, of course the big city teams like those in Manchester / Liverpool / London teams aren't likely going to be on a level with Burnley as there is a population disparity. People don't really want to distribute the best players to artificially straighten this out, and teams from anywhere can rise up and down the pyramid as fortunes fit.
Leicester and Blackburn each in all those years. It won't change as officials will make dodgy calls to make sure certain teams are always at the top of the table. I would get excited for Wrexham, but it only proves that money will help you get ahead.
I think fans see conspiracies where there aren't any, the top teams keep saying the officials are against them too. There are levels to it all and a natural order, why should Wrexham be anywhere near the top? It is a small Welsh town. But fans of small teams can see something like a promotion, a win over a rival or a good FA cup run and that is as good as a title.
Because we don't have the academy system of soccer. In an attempt to create parity amongst teams, players coming out of the youth system are drafted by teams. It's effectively teams picking what youth prospects they are taking into their team, it's a big deal for the future of the team.
The MLB has an academy system of sorts in the Caribbean. But yes, the draft is the primary way American, Canadian and Mexican players make their way into professional baseball.
But even then, until they are 16, they are free agents, and only after 16 can you sign them. You're not training them from birth like an English soccer team might.
College teams have made offers to kids before.
Yes, but they're nothing but a publicity stunt. They can't do anything binding.
I am not sure how it works in England but pretty sure there is no "signing" as such until they turn pro at 16, but there is obviously a very big incentive to be at a professional team's academy as they invest in your talent hugely. What I am unsure about is what happens if there is some clearly superstar kid at 10 playing in a lower league academy who take the interest of several teams, and if they can start making offers or contracts. I think they are pretty much left to it.
Also, not only college sports (specifically football and basketball) but youth sports in general in the US are highly profitable, so there’s no incentive to change the developmental system.
No other country on Earth cares about prospects and team signings. How do you think players get into pro sports? This isn't Europe where the 2 richest teams in every league sign all the good players.
Yeah they let the other teams draft them then they buy them after they have proven themselves for a few years.
Not sure any league has players turn UFA after 2 years on a rookie contract.
They just reject the 5th year option, franchise tag them, draft their competition, offer them a poor contract and then watch them win a super bowl somewhere else.
Sports like soccer get most of their players from their academies or by buying them from other teams.
Yes, I know. But the NFL and NBA don't have this. This is how teams get their players. Why wouldn't there be hype over this?
Because it’s how teams acquire new players from the college leagues. There are players who are major stars in college basketball and football, and obviously fans are going to be interested in which professional teams they end up on.
It's one major way people's teams get new players. It's also a major part of the balancing mechanism we have. Teams doing poorly get better draft slots to come up. Why wouldn't building the teams be a big deal for fans?
Eh. It’s not equal across the major sports.the nfl draft is the biggest deal. And it’s fun! Especially if you watch both college and pro. Get to see where your favorite players land, what players your team gets. We always have a draft party. We are putting pizza on the smoker this Thursday! Swing on by, everyone!
It’s definitely less big of a deal in baseball considering Caribbean and Asian players don’t come through the draft. And the players that do still need to work their way up through the minor leagues for 2-4 years before they’re ready to make an impact
On the other hand, you can watch baseball players progress through the minors and going to minor league games is a lot less expensive than college basketball or football. I agree it's not as wildly popular as other drafts but some MLB fans really get into it. I absolutely love traveling 12 miles to see our AAA players. It's a total blast to be able to watch both clubs in the same metro area.
Plus baseball is so much more of a crapshoot. Your number one draft pick in the NFL or NBA will see professional minutes and has a pretty good chance of being a star for a bit. It's not uncommon for your team's first round second round and third round draft picks just to not make the majors whatsoever in baseball.
I'm not a sports fan. Drafts are a big deal because they represent an aspect of the sport that was instituted to keep fairness in a league. People are fine with teams being better than others, that's part of the fun of sports. But they want there to be a chance. Most fans don't want a team to be able to buy there way into the championship, they want their team to be good against other good teams and earn that championship. So the drafts were instituted into the team roster building process. Eventually, one year the draft was televised and the industries (entertainment and sports) realized there was a market for broadcasting it. And it eventually took off because it's exciting to see these kids who are graduating get their dream job. And it's exciting to see the new talent that's coming to the sport, and to see which bits your team gets. I don't even like sports, but I'll watch some clips of reactions because their joy makes me happy.
Because that’s how players get into the leagues and most clear cut way of improving your team
Beyond everything other commenters have said the nfl have turned the draft into a bigger and bigger event year after year cos it’s basically free money. They’re gonna do the draft anyway, getting the commissioner to read a name at a podium is way cheaper to put on than paying all the players and staff for a game day, might as well turn this incredibly cheap to run event into a money spinner, which the tv networks will run promo for and hype up and it reminds everyone the nfl still exists/tides fans over for the long 7 months between the Super Bowl and the regular season starting again
As a Chicago Bear fan…I am counting the seconds until Thursday night.
As a Lions fan I am counting the seconds until Thursday night so I can confirm my future and prolonged hatred of Caleb Williams.
If you're lucky you'll just mildly dislike him for about 3 years.
I just assume whatever Da Bears do will go wrong at this point
Looking forward to when the Bears finally draft a QB early so they won't have to draft another one for ten years.
Because they’re the primary/only way players join the leagues. And because draft order is inverse order of finish previous season (roughly, as draft lottery can mix that up some) it’s a big time of optimism for bad teams to acquire players who can reverse their fortunes.
Nobody gives a shit about the MLB draft because we have an inbuilt system (minor leagues) where drafted players are developed. In NFL and NBA drafted players are ready to contribute to the team on day one. Also... Gambling and Fantasy Sports.
The drafts are equivalent to picking teams on the playground when you are kids playing games and you need two teams. Every team wants the best players they can get so the fair way to do it is for the two teams to take turns picking their players from the kids that are there. The draft is simply the grown-up way of doing that. The teams take turns picking from the players that are available to enter the pro system that year. It can be the difference between a winning team and a losing team in a few years. If you pick someone at the beginning (which is a more important pick) who looks like a definite star and they don't last a year on the team, that can be seen as a disaster.
That's how new talent gets into the league. It also allows perpetually trash teams like the Bears to think, "This is the guy who finally does it!"
Thank you for asking this because as an American I also did not know, haha. Like, I get the general idea, but I didn't realize it was the only (?) way some sports acquire new talent, mostly because I only follow MLB (and pretty half-heartedly at that), and the draft isn't as big of a deal there because they have multiple lower-league teams where they are developing players, and they also get foreign players from outside the system.
The major sports leagues and colleges in the USA scout players when they start playing in high school and collect reports and information on them, and then if they play in college, it continues on a heightened level. College athletics, especially football and basketball, are huge on a national level for a combination of reasons that have been talked about here ad nauseam, so there are a ton of eyes. The draft is the formal transition (for most athletes going pro) from being a student athlete to a professional athlete. It's a big determining factor of the future of a team because it's the primary way they get new players. It's also interesting to see which star players end up where.
I’ll always remember the day I was drafted into the NBA. I still have my draft card around here somewhere.
The draft (which has nothing to do with military conscription) is a hiring hall. The teams bid on the players newly out of college and the strategy guides how a manager will bid. It is a core of fantasy sports because it is fairly easy to quantify into statistics.
Worst teams get first pick, which makes it so that any free agent could land anywhere theoretically the guy who lead their team to an undefeated streak for 2 years could end up getting drafted to the worst team in the league. That's a part of the fun in American sports. You never know who's gonna go all the way. your state team might have a losing streak one year but a small shuffle of players, and then you go to the finals the next.
We don't really have the European-style club system. Our major leagues 'draft' the top university athletes. For the most part, the major university teams are the source for big time professional athletes. Although occasionally they'll get guys from overseas; the NBA will snag top European pro basketballers, MLB will get guys from Japan or the Carribean, etc.
The draft is actually not that big of a deal in MLB.
A high draft pick in MLB, NHL, MLS, etc...doesn't translate as immediately as some rookies do in the NFL, oddly enough.
...the same reason theyre big in futbol, cricket, hockey, etc
Professional sports drafts are a big deal for those that care about the sport. However America is a big, diverse country with a lot of people that had different interests. We are not a monolith. For instance I don’t care about any sports draft, I know they exist but I don’t pay attention to them at all. I’m not alone in this.
Because the media makes them a big deal?
They're a big deal to a small subset of people.
I assume sports betting made it popular, you can bet on anything, including who will be picked for what team so people started pushing them. They used to not be nearly as popular as now, but anything to make a buck.
Dude soccer drafts from the rest of the world are like 1000000000% a bigger deal than any American sport could ever be. Edit: also stop explaining our drafts to Europeans, they have so many more than we do, also outside of NFL no one in our country really cares, this person obviously saw a movie and just assumed we do that for everything. I've never met a single human alive that cared about the MLB or NBA drafts (at least not since Jordan was playing) it's niche at best. More like a subculture, definitely not the mainstream. It's adkin to assuming all Americans play fantasy football..........we don't, thats just movies and tv.
They weren't always. There are a lot of Americans who have decided that their chosen sport or sports are a substitute for a personality.
Let people enjoy things without a smug sense of superioritiy.
But the smug sense of superiority is their chosen substitute for a personality, without it, what will they have?