If you are looking for a little insight as to whom the Kansas City Chiefs plan on selecting with the third pick in the NFL draft next weekend you have come to the wrong place. I’m not saying there won’t be anticipation, speculation or even some jubilation here at the Sports Page Network over the course of the next seven days, but don’t expect this football fan to take part in any of the pomp and circumstance. Don’t get me wrong, I will check in with the mother ship that is known as ESPN throughout at least the first two rounds but I will get neither too high nor too low with any selection. I try to look at the draft the same way as I look at the weather. I don't care if it is on television, radio or online, my theory is less is more. Just give me a few sentences on what you think might happen, a little bit about why it is happening and then a quick recap. I know that there is a chance it can be 75 and sunny (like yesterday) or 41 and rainy (like today). I am fine with it either way. Just don’t tell me you know for sure it is going to be one way and then be totally stunned when the exact opposite happens. It is time we stop trying to not only predict but control the wind.

To further point to the power of the shield, one needs to only look to the release of the NFL schedules last week. In Minneapolis, our local sports radio station literally changed its programming to add an additional thirty minutes in afternoon drive for the evening guys to breakdown the 2009-2010 Vikings schedule. Nothing points to the popularity and power of the NFL more than a successful sports news and entertainment outlet adjusting their schedule to talk about how many road games their team is going to play in warm weather climates against non-playoff teams in the month of December. Don’t get me wrong. I am not ripping the decision. In fact, I applaud the move and I listened to the first fifteen minutes of the program just to hear the schedule breakdown for a third time that day. I will also admit to going online more than once and checking my phone throughout the afternoon playing out scenarios to see if my squad had a legit chance of 12-4 or if it was going to be another 9-7/10-6 season per usual. Our hopes and dreams lie in the hands of Roger Goodell and his disciples so it is no wonder that non-events have become main events. As we do with everything that becomes popular in American society, we get way to excited and react to minor occurrences like a ten year old boy hopped up on Mountain Dew and Snickerdoodles at his Chuck E. Cheese birthday party who just won five tickets playing “Whack-A-Mole”

The irony of it all comes up whenever any draft analyst, expert or scout voices their opinion on what the Motor City Kitties should do in this year’s draft to help them not go 0-32. Or they specualte as to who has the easiest road to a division title next season. The new trend is for everyone to qualify their predictions with, comments like, “The draft is hit and miss guys. You really never know for sure….but with that being said….!” Or, “There is no such thing as a sure pick but this tackle out of Virginia is a can’t miss….now I said the same thing about a 6-6 Sports Illustrated cover boy two decades ago!” (This of course is followed by self-indulgent laughter by a bunch of guys who paid way too much for obvious hair plugs and who are getting paid more than 80% of the population to study nineteen year old boy’s bubbles.)

Here is a short list of a few of the things that I stumbled across when doing some quick research on the draft: There are multiple “NFL Draft ‘Machines’”. I refuse to click on any sports story that uses the word machine unless it is reference to a George Michael comeback. If you want to, you can “Discover your inner draftnik.”. Who wouldn’t want to do that? If you Google, “NFL Draft” you get 14,800,000 results. That is 300,000 more than a search for “Hilton Video”. (A friend told me that stat.) There exists such a thing as an actual draft glossary. I am willing to bet there are thousands of guys that will actually study this before next weekend. You can spend a week reading up on everything that is available on guys who will be in next year’s draft.  You can dig into actual combine databases and see everything the scouts, coaches and team Gucci’s see. These are just a few reasons that grown men will don Chad Pennington jerseys and wait in line for hours to go drink cheap beer and yell both enthusiastically or negatively at a stage in which their next hero or villain (who may or may not even be of legal age to drink by the way) puts on a dorky looking hat and takes the stage to shake the hand of the most powerful man in America.

I’m not telling fans to curb their enthusiasm when looking at next year’s strength of schedule. And I hope that I too can celebrate and think about how much potential my squad’s pick has to becoming a bookend tackle or a decade long shutdown corner. But I also know that teams who saw Miami and Atlanta on their 2008 calendar felt like they were starting the season  2-0 and that within the last ten years I have seen my team draft both a receiver who literally couldn’t catch and a guy who was literally crazy. I'm not sure which was worse.

Like I said before, I look at the NFL draft, schedule and everything that lies in between like I look at the weather. Ebby Calvin once said it best. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes it rains. Think about that for awhile.