We’re back with more Thursday Thorns, as the NFL Draft starts tonight. We already discussed Cam Ward, the well-traveled college quarterback, although that wasn’t an official “thorn” piece. And we already explored the two Colorado Buffaloes players who are expected to be first-round picks when we did our Heisman analysis way back when. We also don’t have strong feelings about anyone else in the draft, either.

So, what’s the story today? The draft itself.

Maybe it’s ESPN’s fault for turning the event into an annual spectacle, and we certainly have despised Mel Kiper, Jr. since the 1980s. Yet we have seen many first-round busts over the decades, despite the hype and predictions. There is no sure thing in any draft, really, even if some of those players with that label have panned out (Peyton Manning, for example). And there are excellent examples of gems in the late rounds.

Thus, why so much emphasis on this event? If the New England Patriots could turn a sixth-round quarterback into a seven-time Super Bowl winner, what does it all matter when a player actually is selected? It’s just more noise for the sports media, which is now a 24/7 enterprise, to fill airtime, really. Because when one of the more-successful franchises can unearth Brock Purdy in the seventh … yeah.

The draft becomes less significant, in terms of hype on when a player is selected. It comes down to money only, really, in terms of what round someone is picked and how that informs the first contract they sign (“the rookie deal”). No matter where the player is chosen in the draft, they will earn amazing money if they deserve it. Thus the real drama at hand is which teams do the best job at evaluating players and their cost.

As Purdy and the San Francisco 49ers have demonstrated in the last few seasons, there is no irrelevant pick in the draft anymore. There also are plenty of players that do not get drafted, for whatever reason, who sign with teams as free agents before going on to have significant careers, too. In the end, one could argue the draft is a crapshoot, so why does it even matter that much to so many people to allegedly watch it live?

ESPN was trying to tell its viewers just now that 250,000 people (“superfans”?) will descend on Green Bay, Wisconsin, this weekend for the draft, and the population of Green Bay is only 107,000 as of the last census. As much as we like football and the NFL, we would never attend the draft in person, let alone watch it live. That’s something we did in the mid-to-late 1980s when there was nothing else on television to view.

In the end, we assume we are not “superfans” despite our decades-long enjoyment of the sport. We just know the reality that the draft, again, is a literal crapshoot, and what happens over the next three days is less significant than what happens over the summer training camps, the preseason exhibition games, and the actual regular season—not to mention the playoffs. As usual, we reject the notion that this is important.

It’s just hype.