9781422283066

with friends, relatives, and each other. Waynes was there with more than 25 other former star college players who figured to go in the first couple of rounds. Outside the Green Room, tens of thousands of NFL fans milled about in Selection Square in Chi- cago’s Grant Park. If they weren’t lucky enough to be in Auditorium Theatre watching NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell call the names live, they were roam- ing through exhibits learning about league history or mingling with other followers of their favorite team. And in homes and work places all across the United States, television sets were tuned in to ESPN or NFL Network, and computers streamed the pro- ceedings. Welcome to the modern NFL Draft, where col- lege players’ dreams are made, and pro teams’ for- tunes are won and lost—even if those results might be a few years down the road. Once a cozy gath- ering of a few dozen NFL insiders—team coaches, general managers , and perhaps an owner or two— the draft has now grown into a phenomenon on a Super Bowl scale. Let’s see how we got there.

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