Unlike almost every major pro sports executive you can name, Pete Rozelle didn’t come from a law background. He was a public relations guy. And during his three-decade run as commissioner of the NFL beginning in 1960, Rozelle’s P.R. instincts served him beautifully time and again. He remade the league into an absolute powerhouse.
But Rozelle, whose watch included the AFL-NFL merger, the creation of the Super Bowl and the creation of Monday Night Football, missed one mark: He didn’t think anyone could be made to care enough about the NFL Draft to watch it on television.
That seems almost impossible now, as we sprint headlong into another edition of the three-day traveling extravaganza the draft has become. It’s the Super Bowl for franchises that aren’t close to a Super Bowl, and most of all for their fans.
It is also something that the executives at then-fledgling ESPN foresaw — or, more accurately, something in which they saw the promise. It was ESPN back in 1980 that decided to broadcast the thing, try to make it into something an advertiser would pay for. Their execs basically talked Rozelle into it — and full credit to Rozelle for agreeing, even when his NFL owners unanimously disapproved, fearing that agents would run the show.
ESPN, with its ability to market, its dearth of other programming and its deference to the NFL, was the perfect partner. It was willing to do the legwork needed to make the event something worth paying attention to.
And why not? The little network needed the draft.
Still does, as it turns out.
There’s been some chatter that ESPN might lose its rights to the draft once they expire after the 2025 edition. Among other things, it’s possible that one of the league’s traditional network partners will go crazy with a bid designed to take the rights completely, or that a streaming service will outright buy the draft in order to gain wider entree to the sports audience.
If there’s one thing we’re sure of, it’s that today’s NFL never leaves a buck on the table, so we wouldn’t bet against those possibilities. But the draft has become such a quintessentially ESPN experience that it’s hard to fathom the two not being paired.
It’d be a mistake for both sides if they weren’t.
ESPN’s painful contractions as a pawn in the Disney empire no longer constitute breaking news. Depending upon your personal taste, you’ve probably seen one or more of your preferred on-air talents let go over the past few years, and especially the last year or so.
But the NFL Draft — that’s still an ESPN thing. We all know where to find it, because it’s been in the same place for more than 40 years. This year, you’ll also find it on ABC, the NFL Network and ESPN Deportes, but c’mon, you’ll head to ESPN first. That’s what you always do.
The network didn’t create the draft, but there’s no question it elevated it to a position that even the marketing-savvy Rozelle didn’t imagine. We now have broadcast/streaming access to all three days of the event, and since 2015 the whole production has been on wheels. Last year, the draft was in Kansas City; this year it’s Detroit. Green Bay gets its shot at hosting in 2025.
Occasionally, ESPN does something dumb related to the draft that reminds you the network is a money business, not a public trust. Laying off Todd McShay, an almost perfect foil to Mel Kiper Jr., was one such move, even if it was part of the larger firing pattern the network initiated last year at Disney’s order.
Still, the draft production has endured plenty of turnover through the decades without losing its ESPN-ness. It’s a little bit about the stage look, a little about ESPN’s statistical deep dives on players. It’s a little about Kiper. Whatever it is, the draft on ESPN is about as close to a tradition as anything in the entertainment world ever gets.
It’d be shocking if ESPN doesn’t come heavy during the bidding for future rights to the draft. Among other things, it is already part of a planned consortium sports streaming service — and nothing screams sports app like a round-by-round, team-by-team selection of future talent.
But this is also a moment for both the network and the league to reflect on what makes the thing work. ESPN remains an easy home for the draft, totally accommodating and, as ever, deferential to the league, and for its effort the network gets an anchor tenant for a full weekend of programming every year, plus a seemingly unending run-up of coverage.
The NFL? They get a little hint of the image they constantly try to export, one of tradition and history. That goes back to Public Relations 101. The late, great Pete Rozelle would approve.
Mark Kreidler is a national award-winning writer whose work has appeared at ESPN, the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and dozens of other publications. He’s also a sports-talk veteran with stops in San Francisco and Sacramento, and the author of three books, including the bestselling “Four Days to Glory.” More of his writing can be found at https://markkreidler.substack.com. He is also reachable on Twitter @MarkKreidler.
