The NFL Draft is one of the more fascinating, and all-too American, of American pastimes. There are people who actually sit and watch the whole thing. They make their own charts, they hunker down in their own war rooms and they spend six hours a day four two days watching football teams disperse the young talent amongst themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I like the NFL Draft. I watched a couple hours worth of it over the weekend. I watched enough of it to laugh hysterically at times. So, in the spirit of “After Further Review”, let’s take another look at NFL Draft 2003.

First of all, I know that some of the NFL refs say, “Upon further review,” but really, that’s a little pretentious. My good friend Merriam Webster says upon’s first definition is “on the surface of.” We intend to go deeper than that, my friends.

Thanks, Merriam.

Since we all knew that Carson Palmer had already signed with the Bengals and that Detroit was settled on Charles Rogers with the second pick, the only shocking early development was the bald head of Merrill Hoge. Hoge, the butt of many a hair joke the past few years on the NFL Matchup set wasn’t trying to set a trend in white man bald sheik. He is finishing up his chemotherapy in his treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Diagnosed on Valentine’s Day, Hoge said he was only one treatment from the completion of his chemotherapy, and that doctors expected to be able to declare him cancer-free at that time.

Things were poking along at their normal, leisurely pace in round one. Palmer and his cheesy mesh cap strolled onto the stage and hammed it with the commissioner. Charles Rogers’ name was called by Detroit, but he was in the bathroom…again. He’s got to lay off the water sometime.

Dennis Green was in the Jimmy Johnson chair and somebody needs to explain to Dennis what the thing clipped to his tie is. It’s a microphone, and it’s there so that you DON’T HAVE TO YELL ALL THE TIME!

Chris Mortensen was back from the isolation chamber they had him sit in last year. He got to sit at the big table, with the rest of the grown ups.

Mel Kiper’s hairdo was set on “stun” and he was in his glory. The joy of the draft is after round two when nobody else on the set knows who any of the draftees are. They just read the name and go, “Mel?”

Andrea Kramer was at some undisclosed location, joined by current NFL-ers, John Jansen, Corey Chavous, Deuce McAllister and Bill Romanowski. They sat in weird looking chairs under a neon ESPN The Magazine sign.

Chavous is a self-proclaimed draft expert and there wasn’t a single opinion he wouldn’t share. He’s wrong most of the time, but very entertaining. On day one everybody was dressed up. On day two, Jansen looked like he just came back from a backyard barbecue, Chavous and McAllister were dressed to go watch the NBA Playoffs at sports bar and Romo was the only one left in a suit.

Bill did manage to bring along the model of a jaw and the “shock absorbing mouthguard” he’s endorsing.

He said the most intelligent thing either day about Terrell Suggs’ fall from possible first overall to tenth overall pick. “Sure you can say his 40 time is slow and that defensive linemen don’t run 40 yards,” Romo said. “But his ten and his twenty times were slow too. He bulked up to 250 and lost his speed. That means he has to play at 240 to be effective.”

Berman was up to his “watch me guess the draft pick” tricks again. That was so old, the first guy who did that gag got pulled off the stage with a giant hook.

Chris Fowler was there to serve as the Craig Sager and interview the guys in the “green room.” The NBA does this better than anybody. Remember the classic Greg “Cadillac” Anderson crying in the green room because nobody would draft him? Remember last year when those two guys showed up, didn’t get an invite the green room and then came out of the crowd to shake David Stern’s hand when they got picked? Priceless.

The truly enjoyable moment in the draft came at pick number seven, when the Minnesota Vikings were on the clock. Mortensen and Berman joked about how last year the Vikings were too slow to get their pick turned in and got passed up when their time expired. Then they didn’t get to draft the guy they wanted. They were yukking it up and then the clock started to tick down, and incredibly, the Vikings hadn’t turned their pick in.

Suddenly you could literally see a guy run his team’s pick to the podium. Only it wasn’t a Vikings rep. The Jaguars jumped ahead of Minnesota and took Byron Leftwich. The ESPN guys were thoroughly confused. Had the Jags and Vikings traded? Did Minnesota screw up again?

Then, another pick was announced thirty seconds later. Only it was the Carolina Panthers selecting Utah tackle Jordan Gross.

Dennis Green was now literally shouting. If you thought he was loud before…

The best scene was a live shot of a Vikings draft party in Minneapolis. The crowd just stood in stunned silence. One guy, with a horned helmet and fake gold braids sticking out of it kept mouthing the words, “What the hell?” His half empty bottle of Miller Genuine Draft couldn’t even console him. Finally, the Vikings picked defensive lineman Kevin Williams from Oklahoma State. That just angered the Vikings fans even more. Welcome to the NFL, Kevin Williams. But then again, he got drafted by the Vikings, so he won’t actually sign a contract until October.

Things began to calm down and Berman said, “Wow, a dozen picks in just over an hour and 45 minutes. Who’s ever seen anything like that?”

Uh, about five million of us who watch the NBA draft every year. They manage to pick 64 guys in three and a half hours. But that’s just them.

Accustomed to having nearly 15 minutes to go over every pick in agonizing detail, Kiper and Mortensen looked lost for a while.

Kiper had ten minutes of planned material on how Jordan Gross lacks hip-flexibility and hurt his draft standing by dodging the Senior Bowl.

Mortensen had a whole monologue planned on Byron Leftwich’s broken leg, complete with x-rays and a cadaver he had shipped over from a hospital in Trenton.

Alas, we’ll only see those on the DVD version of the draft.

In fact, an hour later when the Bears traded down one spot with New England to take Texas A&M tackle Ty Warren, the guys were talking about how he’d fit into Bill Belichick’s defense, when suddenly Mortensen looked up and said, “Picking up Warren when they already have Ted Washington and Keith Traylor, probably means the end of one of those guys in Chicago.”

Hello, Mort! We’ve got a live TV show going on here! Try and keep up.

The Bears took Penn State defensive end Michael Haynes with the 14th pick. Haynes is best remembered for playing cornerback on the Raiders Super Bowl team in 1983 and for playing wide receiver with the Falcons in the late ‘90s. Huh? Those are actually three different guys? Really? Whew. I thought the Bears just drafted the same one after he got old and fat.

The worst part of the Haynes pick was that it literally kicked off the Willis McGahee watch portion of the draft coverage. Suddenly every pick was prefaced with, “But they might be the team to take a flyer on McGahee.”

We got way too many shots of McGahee and his agent, Drew Rosenhaus sitting by the phone. Rosenhaus, the only man to write a book that every football fan knows the title of (“A Shark Never Sleeps”), though no one’s actually read it, had his hair so greased back he looked like they tapped an Iraqi oil well with his head.

In fact, with the pick right after Chicago, the Eagles traded with San Diego to take McGahee’s college teammate Jerome McDougal. McDougal just happened to be standing in the same house that McGahee was in. The ESPN cameras zoomed in on McDougal and I think he thought the Boston Celtics had just drafted him.

He had a Larry Bird jersey on and a Celtics cap. I kept waiting for him to talk about how great it would be to play with Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker. Actually, Jerome’s probably better than Vin Baker.

I was pretty sure that Jerry Angelo’s draft plan was falling into place. He wanted to take the best defensive lineman available with the 13th pick, and actually got another pick as part of a trade with New England to move down one spot. Then he landed Haynes with that 14th pick. I was certain that he’d draft McGahee at number 22 and then take whichever quarterback was left between Rex Grossman and Chris Simms at 35.

Kyle Boller went to Baltimore with the 19th pick and within moments the smug, smiling, visage of Brian Billick was beamed into our homes. Oh, make it stop. Kyle Boller is Polish for Chris Redman.

Everybody was making a big deal out of Boller’s ability to throw the ball through the goal posts from the 50-yard line on his knees. You know who else could do that? (I’m not making this up.) Dieter Brock!

If you’re going to take a guy from Cal with the 19th pick, his name had better be Tony Gonzalez.

Denver took George Foster with the 20th pick and I beat Chris Berman to the 50 home runs joke by about two minutes.

The first Irishman came off the board at 21 when the Cleveland Browns took angry, young Jeff Faine. Butch Davis had better keep an eye on Faine. He’s a good player and mean cuss, and Davis likes to stir his players up with a lot of macho garbage. Likes to challenge their manhood. Butch might just find his manhood at the bottom of a rugby scrum with Faine around.

Then it was time for the Bears to pick. On WSCR radio, Hub Arkush was acting like a putz (no shock there) and trying to let everyone know that he knew who the pick would be, but couldn’t divulge it, because it would compromise his source. Oh, shut up! Hub had no idea. Why does anybody listen to this guy, ever?

Much to my surprise, the Bears took Grossman at 22. You could immediately tell that Hub was surprised, which betrayed his boastful little comments of thirty seconds earlier.

I was so hoping for Mel to crack out his Bill Tobin-esque, “It’s obvious that the Bears don’t understand what the draft is all about.” But he didn’t. Actually, Mel had Grossman ranked pretty high.

If you wanted venom over the Grossman pick, you just had to hang on for a while when the Score started taking calls from fans. Yikes.

Everybody and their brother compared Rex to Cade McNown. If not Cade, then they said things like, “None of those Florida quarterbacks can play.”

Here’s the thing, though. None of those other Florida quarterbacks was considered first round material. Shane Matthews has been released more times than a four pound bass. Danny Wuerffel wouldn’t have even been drafted had Mike Ditka not been allowed to pull the trigger in New Orleans. Kerwin Bell was a USFL stud. Wayne Pease backed up Warren Moon for years in Houston. (The famed Warren Pease pairing.)

Grossman’s different. He’s good! He’s got an arm and everything.

The biggest knock on Grossman was that he likes to party (who doesn’t?) and that Bill Walsh said in a Sports Illustrated article that he makes “catastrophic mistakes”. This, from the man who just hired Dennis “Mr. Catastrophic Mistake” Erickson to be the Niners head coach.

The defense rests.

The most aggravating part of the two days were the interviews with head coaches and general managers. Not only did both Chris Berman and Suzy Kolber do the “let me ask you a question but answer it for you before you get a chance” thing, but the coaches and GMs never say anything.

Just once I want to hear a coach say, “Honestly, I don’t know why we drafted this guy. We looked up, the clock was running out and we panicked. We really think he sucks, and to be honest with you, we just screwed up.”

If not that, how about this? “We weren’t shocked that this player was still on the board when we picked. The Vikings were drafting in front of us and they haven’t made a smart draft pick in four years.”

Or, the mother of all answers: “We thought this guy had first round talent, but he’s addicted to crack, scored a four on the Wonderlich and went to Florida State, so you can tell right now he’ll be a bust.”

But one thing you’ll never hear a general manager or coach say is, “I don’t have delusions of grandeur. I’m looking at a player’s floor as much as I’m looking at his ceiling.”

Oh, wait. Somebody actually said that.

Yup. Jerry Angelo.