HOORAY … it’s NFL Draft Day!!!
Yes, the day has finally arrived. The 2012 NFL Draft is here – kicking off with the first round tonight – and we couldn’t be more excited about it!
As you pore over Mike Mayock‘s one and only mock draft in preparation for this weekend’s festivities, keep in mind that pretty much none of these so-called “experts” have a clue as to how this draft, nor the players selected in it, are actually going to pan out. For all the scouting and testing and poking and prodding, the draft process is really all just a high-budget guessing game, and we won’t truly know the winners and losers for at least another three years.
Case in point … after JaMarcus Russell was selected #1 overall in the 2007 draft, virtually everyone whiffed on the kid, including Mel Kiper who declared that Russell would be the next John Elway. Enough said.
Meanwhile, the folks up in Bristol are all having a little fun and “Kiperizing” some of the ESPN anchors, like Trey Wingo, Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser:
PHOTOS AND VIDEO AFTER THE JUMP
Gruden to replace Kornheiser on MNF

Your new Monday Night Football team! (Photo: KissingSuzyKolber)
ESPN announced today that former Bucs and Raiders head coach Jon Gruden will replace Tony Kornheiser on Monday Night Football. Gruden will join Mike Tirico and Ron Jaworski in the booth, and hope to have a longer tenure than previous failed color commentators Dennis Miller, Joe Theisman, and most recently, Kornheiser. And even though Gruden has relatively little experience on camera, it would be hard to do worse than his predecessor.
From the beginning, the Kornheiser experiment seemed doomed to fail. on Pardon the Interruption, he brings incisive, cutting analysis to a wide variety of sports. On MNF, he was just another braying talking head, blathering on about almost anything except what was actually happening on the field in front of him.
So Kornheiser decided to step down from MNF, although he will still continue on PTI. But the reason TK won’t be calling games anymore might come as a surprise to you: it was because of his fear of flying!
I am totally grateful for the MNF opportunity that I truly enjoyed the last three seasons,” he said. “I feel we got better each year. My fear of planes is legendary and sadly true. When I looked at the upcoming schedule it was the perfect storm that would’ve frequently moved me from the bus to the air. I kept looking at the schedule the past month and wanted to find a way to quietly extricate myself.
So yeah, it had nothing to do with the fact that Kornheiser sucked ass. Even though John Madden made a career out of calling games and criss-crossing the country on the Madden Cruiser bus, Kornheiser simply couldn’t sack up and make it happen (or better yet, pop a Xanax and get on the friggin plane!). Yup, that makes perfect sense.





