WHY DO 55 MILLION VIEWERS WATCH THE NFL DRAFT?

When ratings have plunged in sports and entertainment, the roll call of players is arguably the second-biggest annual event in American sports — even when it’s all about hype, hope and not much else.

     Think about this. Other than a State of the Union address, a terrorist attack on Manhattan, certain natural disasters and a debate in which a President-to-be refers to a Dead President Tweeting as “a clown’’ — twice! — no American news event commands coverage on multiple networks.

     So why the NFL Draft? Why did 55 million viewers watch last April, in the pandemic’s early throes, and 47.5 million the year before, when the streets of Nashville were jammed as if Dolly Parton was performing a strip tease during a hot chicken sandwiches giveaway?

     Oh, because the Draft is live reality television. And because it celebrates new faces and dreams in this country’s dominant sports league — and most popular and enduring form of broadcast entertainment. And, cutting to core truths, because the NFL is a monopoly that can televise the Draft on its own channel, then use Fox as a leverage pawn to force a scrambling Walt Disney Company to broadcast the show on both ESPN and ABC and, thus, remain in favor when 11-year rights packages are awarded.

     Never mind the absurdist overkill. Roger Goodell puts his spectacle on three networks and various digital platforms because he can. So he does.

     Once a mom-and-pop, landlines-with-cords operation conducted on fold-up tables in ballrooms — Hotel Lincoln, Hotel Sherman, Hotel New Yorker, Hotel Fort Pitt, everywhere but Motel 6 and the haunted Cecil Hotel — the NFL Draft now is on the same boutique plateau as the NBA Finals, World Series, Final Four, Masters and all else except its own mega-showcase, the Super Bowl. In a context of how interest builds over days, weeks and even months, one could argue the Draft is the second-biggest annual event in U.S. sports. It attracts hordes of mock drafters, nerds who like to ridicule Mel Kiper Jr. yet want to be just like him. It creates heightened mass intrigue, thanks to smokescreens from 32 franchises that guard information like the Russians. By bringing in the family element — this year, chosen players will celebrate with loved ones and friends backstage in Covid-shielded “``living rooms’’ — female viewership has risen. And in one of Goodell’s shrewdest moves in his tumultuous reign as commissioner, cities are selected as revolving hosts, with Cleveland psyched to rock out this weekend and invite 150,000 barking Dawgs into a downtown theme park over three days.

     Isn’t the NFL worried about, um, a Fauci superspread? Nah. This league is bigger than any ol’ infectious disease, as the executives will tell you, pointing to a 2020 season that survived without a game cancellation. Just ask Goodell, who is renewing his tradition of hugging newly anointed young men because he has been double-vaccinated — regardless of whether they’ve been or not. `”We learned so much from what we did at the Super Bowl,” said league official Peter O’Reilly. “``We have every confidence in our protocols that are in place. They’re the ones that got us through a season on the field and with the ability to host more than one million fans. … A year ago, we were hosting a draft in  commissioner Goodell’s basement. Now, we’re looking toward brighter days ahead and so thrilled that we can do a large scale live event safely.’’ So, after carefully distancing spectators in Tampa, the league thinks it’s prudent to let 150,000 roam from venue to venue in a town that treats football experiences like an AC/DC concert? The reason: TV optics and a feeling that America is alive again, even if the league kills a few folks in the process.

     By the time all three networks launch coverage Thursday evening — with Mike Greenberg hosting on ESPN, Rece Davis on ABC and Rich Eisen on the NFL Network — large swaths of the U.S. will be dialed in like Election Night. Oscars ratings were abysmal on Sunday night, mirroring the declines of other awards shows. There is no such thing as appointment TV anymore in a Netflix world. Yet a record 60 million viewers might watch this NFL Draft.

     I just have one question.

     What exactly is the redeeming substance here?

     Beyond the destinations of hundreds of athletes, many of whom never will he heard from again, absolutely nothing is determined. Hype is little more than hope, unrealized until the season begins, but Draft audiences tend to believe what the national media breathlessly report anyway. Fans assume Trevor Lawrence will be “`the best quarterback to come into the draft in nearly a decade’’ because Sports Illustrated says so, forgetting that some experts thought similarly of Joe Burrow last year. Are we certain Lawrence’s coach, Urban Meyer, isn’t headed for the same pro struggles as Nick Saban, snuffed out by NFL minds who can’t wait to subdue his ego? Zach Wilson has been described as a hybrid of Aaron Rodgers and Johnny Manziel, which is weird, and as a “riverboat gambler’’ by none other than Mark Sanchez, he of the Butt Fumble. It doesn’t bode well when an all-time New York Jets flop is warning the team’s next so-called quarterbacking savior about “a very different media market.’’ Yet once Lawrence sports a Jacksonville Jaguars cap as the No. 1 pick and Wilson pulls on a Jets jersey as the No. 2 pick, reality is shoved aside for Super Bowl fantasies — after all, it’s Draft Night.

     Mac Jones, for all anybody knows, will be a bust. When the aspirational prototype is Patrick Mahomes, a playmaking magician, Jones is regarded for accuracy and on-his-feet I.Q. but offers no running dimension. Who wants a modern-day Carson Palmer, right? Kyle Shanahan is expected to grab Jones with the No. 3 pick anyway, eschewing the more athletically gifted and aesthetically rousing likes of Trey Lance and Justin Fields. It means the San Francisco 49ers, only 14 1/2 months removed from a Super Bowl with Jimmy Garoppolo, are gambling the future of the franchise on a whim. They became the fifth team in the last 15 years to trade up for a top-three draft pick with the intention of using it for a quarterback. But know how many of those previous four QBs survived beyond five seasons with the teams that drafted them? Zero. Which makes you wonder why Shanahan and general manager John Lynch, with Garoppolo still on the roster, dealt three first-round picks and a third-rounder to trade up.

     “``You study historically how things work,’’ Lynch acknowledged. “But we have great confidence in this group of players that are up there, and now we hone in and continue to examine each and every guy. And ultimately do our best to find the guy who will be a great part of this organization's future."

     If Jones is a star, we can hear the Mac puns already in Silicon Valley. If he flops? He can share horror stories with the biggest quarterbacking disaster in Bay Area history, JaMarcus Russell.

     On Draft Night, these are the story lines that sell, even if definitive answers don’t arrive for months and years. Lance played only 17 games at North Dakota State, which used to be known fondly as the program of Carson Wentz … until Wentz regressed into a flop himself. With Matt Ryan aging but hardly ready to retire when he’s EIGHT YEARS YOUNGER than Tom Brady, would the Atlanta Falcons bypass one of the most exciting weapons in years — shock-and-awe tight end Kyle Pitts — to gamble on Lance? “`He’s a unicorn,’’ said Dan Mullen, who coached Pitts at Florida. “`How are you going to deal with him?’’

     “I feel like, at the end of the day, I’ll be the best to ever do it,’’ Pitts said at his pro day.

     Except Lance, he of the Mahomes arm and Lamar Jackson speed, might be the league’s next great quarterbacking sensation. If the Falcons don’t take him, won’t flames burst from the draft rooms of Bill Belichick, the QB-phobic Chicago Bears and the Denver Broncos? Suddenly, Belichick will have a chance to put away his Brady voodoo doll and trade up for his next QB. And maybe it’s not Lance but Fields, the best dual-threat operator in the draft, though his work ethic has been unfairly smeared as lax and his epilepsy viewed as a detriment instead of a sign of perseverance. “I get very frustrated," said Ryan Day, who coached Fields at Ohio State. “I feel like there are a lot of people in the draft (where) some guys get a pass — and some guys don't. Certainly, people have taken shots at Justin."

     If Fields and Lance are available about an hour into the draft, every football fan in New England and Chicago will tune in and drive up the ratings. Can you imagine the shrieks if the Bears trade up for Fields and Belichick for Lance? Wouldn’t Belichick use Lance and Cam Newton on the field simultaneously, as Sean Payton did in New Orleans with Drew Brees and Taysom Hill? Unless … Belichick reacquires Jimmy G in a deal.

     This is why the NFL Draft thrives when live pandemic sports have fizzled. It’s unscripted madness, made for draftniks and gamblers and common folk alike. It doesn’t matter that one of these five quarterbacks will be Ryan Leaf, one of them will be Peyton Manning and the other three will settle into various modes of success and failure. It doesn’t matter that Kiper himself says on his ESPN platform, “All five of these guys are not going to be really good. There's going to be a bust, and there's going to be a disappointment. Now, good luck having your crystal ball to figure that out."

     The crystal ball is exactly why tens of millions watch. The NFL Draft is a game of chance where all teams and players are winners, until the fall, when they’re not. You just wonder if Goodell is plotting how to coax every network to join the crapshoot.

     Tucker Carlson would slam the media for bias.

     Don Lemon would cry racism when Lawrence is taken first.

     And Trevor Noah? He’d just make fun of it, as I am.

     Jay Mariotti, called “`the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ is the host of ``Unmuted,’’ a frequent podcast about sports and life (Apple, Spotify, etc.). He’s an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and radio host. As a Los Angeles resident, he gravitated by osmosis to movie projects. Compensation for this column is donated to the Chicago Sun-Times Charity Trust.