Mel Kiper: ESPN's Weather Man

Hate him all you want, but Mel Kiper has earned his spot on NFL Draft coverages

With the NFL draft days away, so begins Part 2 of the NFL's elaborate offseason (with Part 1 being free agency). That got me to thinking about Mel Kiper, Jr.

What's an NFL draft without Kiper? After all, he's been breaking down the draft since he was a college kid. He created a niche for himself at ESPN for an event that was previously untelevised. This year will be the 30th draft that he has analyzed. Which begs the question...

Does anyone have a better gig at ESPN than him? Think about it.

His only job for ESPN is to break down the current crop of college talent that are pro-level talents. That's it. Sure, he gives his mock drafts and updates them accordingly, based on how certain teams may be viewing a guy or how a guy might have done at a recent combine.  But he doesn't even need to be right in his analysis to stay in his current gig!

Here are just a few clips/quotes of horrendous bits of analysis (hindsight being the decider in the word 'horrendous'). Quotes obtained through various websites (verified quotes through multiple websites):

Analysis of JaMarcus Russell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ZubYpplmzVk#t=49s "Three years from now, you could be looking at a guy who's certainly one of the elite top 5 quarterbacks in this league...his skill level is John Elway-like".

Regarding Mike Williams, USC WR who the Lions picked early in the 2005 draft: "I'll see you at his Hall of Fame induction." He was out of football by 2008.

Regarding Akili Smith, a high pick for the Cincinnati Bengals in the QB-rich first round of the 1999 draft: "...will be a great NFL player and would finally provide the Cincinnati Bengals with the passer they'd lacked since Boomer Esiason." Smith would go on to start only 17 games for Cincy before bouncing around other NFL stops, NFL Europe & the CFL.

There are plenty of other bad breakdowns that he's had in his time as an analyst, which is bound to happen when you're analyzing over 250 picks a year for almost 30 years. In fact, when the 2013 version of the draft is done (which features 254 picks), here are Kiper's stats. Sorry I do not have a 40 time or what his standing squat reps are.

• 30 years of analysis
• 256 rounds (from 1984-92, there were 12 rounds; 1993 featured 8 rounds. Since then there have been 7 rounds).
• 8259 draft picks
• At least one draft pick, Kiper was able to analyze twice (Bo Jackson was drafted #1 overall by Tampa Bay in 1986, but since he never signed there, he was eligibile for the draft in 1987, when he went to the Raiders)

At the current rate of about 255 picks per draft, Kiper would reach the 10,000 pick mark in about the 6th round of the year 2020. Now I should note, I am not aware of how ESPN did the draft in the early days - whether Kiper analyzed just about every pick back in the day like he does now is unknown to me. All I know is, that's a lot of damn players, so error on his part is understandable.

There's no question he's one of the best at what he does - he was the draft analyst pioneer. That's not to say he doesn't have his faults, as noted above. And some skeptics (like a football fan who I spoke with at a friend's party last weekend) believe that his role in the draft now may be more to boost the draft status of certain agent's players rather than provide solid, hard-hitting analysis.

You might be able to outpick Kiper in a 1st round mock, but you'll never get his gig.

I, like many other football fans, are a little jealous that Kiper has created the perfect niche for himself in the NFL, where his job consists solely of analyzing the draft prospects of pro-eligible college football players. I am even more jealous of a guy who doesn't even need to be right most of the time in order to keep his job, whether it be right with his analysis or his mock drafts (from memory, his mock drafts have been just as sporadic as the average sports reporter who fills one of these out).

The only other guy who can be this wrong is the ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi, but that's college basketball, so who cares - we're talking about the NFL here.

I may not like the guy, but I sure as hell respect him for getting this gig from the early days of ESPN through current time. Kudos to Kiper for being the NFL's version of a weather man.

Alls Well That Ends: The Wirtz Effect and How a Death Can Help a Business

News just broke that Al Davis has died. My condolences to him and his family.

As far as his business goes, it might not be the worst thing to happen. In fact, it may help them out greatly, if the Bill Wirtz Effect comes into play.

As many Chicago Blackhawks fans remember all too well, the mismanagement of their beloved team caused the team to be an afterthought at best in one of the biggest hockey markets in America, and of course, one of the Original Six teams. Wirtz, notoriously known by many as "Dollar Bill", was considered by many to be the lynch pin behind this terrible stretch of Chicago hockey.

This stretch of time he was president (over 4 decades), he banned home games from being played on TV - for fear of fans not going to the games if they were able to stay home and watch them. I never understood this reasoning, seeing as though just about every team in every sport shows their teams' home games (I know that the NFL has restrictions on showing home games in markets where a game has not sold a certain percentage of tickets). If he was so smart in the business world with liquor distribution and real estate, you figured he might have seen other pro franchises having no problem with this.

Anyways, we all know the Blackhawks' story - they've become relevant again. People actually want to watch them now. Through their actions, the Wirtz kids have amended their father's wrongdoings to the franchise by promoting the Blackhawks through the addition of home games to TV, the Winter Classic to Wrigley Field in 2009 as well as introducing a successful annual convention for Blackhawks fans to attend. This idea came from the bright mind of John McDonough, former Cubs and now Blackhawks president. They went from being to the worst ran franchise in sports to one of the best in a few short years thanks to the actions of the younger Wirtzes and McDonough. Winning a Stanley Cup for the first time in a couple generations didn't hurt things either.

Enter Al Davis. While he didn't have the extended run of no championships/championship appearances like Wirtz did, Davis has become significantly more irrelevant in the past couple decades. His run of success in the 70s and 80s has devolved into the 90s and 2000s Raiders that have been pitiful for the most part. Aside from their playoff appearances in 2002 (where their playoff run ended in the infamous "Tuck Rule" game) and 2003 (where they got slaughtered by their former coach and the Tampa Bay Bucs, not much but bad can be said about the Raiders.

Since that brief run of success, here's a list of QBs who have started for the Raiders: Rick Mirer, Marques Tuiasosopo, Kerry Collins, Andrew Walter, Aaron Brooks, Josh McCown, Daunte Culpepper, Bruce Gradkowski, Charlie Frye, and Jason Campbell. I feel like I'm missing someone...

Oh yeah, JaMarcus Russell! Say what you will about recent first overall picks being busts, but no doubt in my mind is Russell the worst first pick of all time. After three seasons with the Raiders in which he finished with a 7-18 record, he was released. But not before collecting a shit ton of money. I wouldn't be surprised if he's already burned through the money that he got from his $61 million ($32M guaranteed) contract from the Raiders in 2007.

Sadly, one of the best first round picks the Raiders made in the past 15 years was for A KICKER! Sebastian Janikowski, who recently tied the league record for longest field goal (63 yards) was a first round pick for the Raiders in 2000. A fucking kicker in the first round! This from the same team that drafted a punter (Ray Guy) as a first round pick - to date, the only punter ever drafted in the first round.

With Davis' death, I'm hoping that the Wirtz Effect happens and hopefully the Davis heirs are half as intelligent as the Wirtzes were following their dad's passing. The NFL is a lot better league when the Raiders are relevant. Davis was a great contributor to the NFL, but his time of relevance and success had passed.

Let's hope that his passing can lead to the Wirtz Effect for the Raiders and they can return to a proud franchise again.