NEW YORK — As the long, gray winter finally thaws, the American sports calendar does the same. After dreary months with nothing but the MLB hot stove and half of the NBA playing out the string, life for the sports couch potato gets good again.
NBA games get intense again; baseball games are there again. (That’s not a knock on baseball. The very best thing a baseball game can be is there.) For those whose tastes run a little freakier, there are a bunch of glorious one-off carnivals to gawk at. The Boston Marathon. The Kentucky Derby. The Penn Relays! There is even, I am told, something called hockey.
And yet, expanding every year like a star that will eventually engulf its solar system, there is one springtime ritual that towers over them all: The NFL draft, a sleepy allocation of largely unknowable prospects that drives about as much fan interest as the rest combined.
