Next Thursday night, Mike Greenberg will be in the lead chair of ESPN’s NFL Draft coverage live in Cleveland, Ohio alongside Louis Riddick, Booger McFarland, and Mel Kiper Jr.
This week, Greenberg was on The Adam Schefter Podcast with Schefter to talk about his preparation for hosting the draft. He told Schefter that hosting Rounds 1-3, means he has to know more about this draft than anyone before it.
“I love the draft, but I usually know about 20 of the players intimately. This time around because I am doing the first 3 rounds, I set a goal of knowing 120 players intimately. That takes a lot of work. By the time we get there, I will have not only done notes, but watched tape on 120 players with the hope nobody sneaks in.”
Hosting the draft brings back great memories for Greenberg. Back in 1991, his first ever assignment as a sports reporter was covering the Chicago Bears draft that season. He told Schefter he got paid $20 to cover the event from 8 AM-midnight, but he would have paid $20 to cover it back then.
Being a part of the NFL Draft isn’t new for Greenberg. He was the co-host of ESPN Radio’s Draft coverage from 2004-2006 when it was at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, but he doesn’t expect that his radio experience will be anything like TV.
“It couldn’t be more different. You can’t see anything on the radio. There was nothing to do but us talk. In this case, we are seeing these great pictures of the crowd reacting, the players and their families reacting. You want to let that breathe a little.”
Part of Greenberg’s research was to watch some past drafts. The producer of the NFL Draft, Bryan Ryder, sent him two of them, one hosted by Chris Berman and one hosted by Trey Wingo so Greenberg can look at the mechanics of hosting. In fact, Greenberg looks at advice Berman gave him that has stuck with him about how to host the NFL Draft.
“We’ve exchanged a lot of notes and the most interesting piece of advice he gave me was I’ve approached this like an NFL show, from the NFL team point of view. Now that I have heard him say that, you can hear it philosophically [from the past coverage]. You have the power structure of the entire league being re-shaped while at the very same time, the wildest dreams of 32 young men and their entire families coming true. When he said that to me, it really crystalized in my mind.”
So, what is Greenberg’s goal for a successful draft coverage? He hopes he can help the other people at the desk shine.
“I am facilitating our coverage of the draft. If everyone feels like the coverage was really good, I got everything I wanted and they don’t remember who was sitting in the middle of it all, then I did a good job.”
