New Sport emerging

THERE’S A NEW ‘SPORT’ EMERGING IN THE NFL

By STEVE KING

For years now, the NFL Draft has been a sport unto itself.

There’s the NFL regular season and postseason as one separate entity, and then there’s the draft as another. No other major pro sports league has such a dual dynamo. Both are big hits, but the people who follow the draft may not always follow the regular season and postseason. A lot do follow both “sports,” but not everyone. Some of the draft people, once their big weekend is over, begin looking to the next year’s draft. That’s the real fun of it all. What these draft picks actually do in the league, doesn’t interest them much.

All this is why the NFL is, by far, the biggest pro sport in this country, and really the biggest sport, period. And that isn’t going to end – or even be seriously challenged – anytime soon, and perhaps never, at least in the lifetimes of you and I.

But a new entity – a new monster – is starting to emerge, and that’s the annual NFL Combine, which started earlier this week and will go through the weekend at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. It’s never going to rival the regular season and postseason, or even the draft, but it is gaining in popularity – and by leaps and bounds — each and every year.

The TV coverage of it, which is necessary for any sport’s popularity, is increasing rapidly. The TV people must have been shocked when, some years ago, they aired some snippets of the Combine and it got good ratings.

“Man, you mean that fans really want to watch this stuff? They want to watch guys running sprints, guys being measured and weighed, and quarterbacks throwing into a cover zero, as it were? Woe. Now we know how many die-hard fans there are.

“After all, the postseason ended only a month ago, and fans are still hungry for football – not some crazy start-up league kind of football, but rather the NFL brand. That’s when you know you have a great product.”

Indeed, and for further proof of that, I’m going to watch it some this weekend. Are you?