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The Ups and Downs
The NFL Draft has come and gone and some team’s decisions left fans in euphoria, while others left fanbases scratching their collective heads.
Some teams always seem to draft well like the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots and others have shown nothing but draft ineptitude like the Cleveland Browns. The annual April extravaganza is never without its surprises and 2017 was no different.
Picks were made that boggle the mind and reek of desperation. Taking risks can have a major effect on a fanbase, the franchise’s stability and public perception as a whole.
The Backlash
Nobody takes a bad draft pick worse than the team’s fanbase, and they usually make it known. A cascade of boos has rained down on many a draft pick.
Emotionally, multiple horrendous picks can cause a life long fan to lose all confidence in their team and tune out completely. The patience of a sports fan is not something you want to test, if you hope to keep them coming through the turnstile.
Sooner or later even the most loyal get fed up with complacency. And when that happens the franchise pays for it at the gate. Gone are the days of fans supporting teams that appear to not even try, or consistently fail at drafting franchise players.
Becoming a laughing stock
Consistently drafting badly is the quickest way to lead to a franchise shake up. It’s no mystery teams like the Browns, who seem to not be able to draft a franchise quarterback if it killed them, have went through numerous head coaches and GM’s. Drafting horribly is what also kept the Detroit Lions bogged down for most of the 2000’s from bust Joey Harrington in 2002 to their picks of unproductive wide-outs from 2003-2005. Those mind numbing decisions cost team President Matt Millen his job and ultimately culminated in an 0-16 season in 2008. In short if you want to set your franchise back a decade, draft badly.
Alienating Your Audience
Lastly, controversial picks do nothing but discourage the casual fan and society as a whole from embracing the product.
Teams who draft players with questionable character or even a criminal history, severely tarnish the integrity of the league. A league with a stringent asinine drug policy has no problem with allowing half a doze teams to draft players with pending or resolved domestic violence cases. Fans are annoyed by the blatant hypocrisy. This was evident when Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon took the stage to a chorus of boos from the 3000 Philadelphia faithful.
Many believe Mixon, who was convicted of misdemeanor assault for an incident in which he hit a woman so hard she suffered broken facial bones, should not be drafted at all. Coincidentally, he was picked by franchise with a soft spot for criminals in Cincinnati.
It’s picks like this that lead society to believe the NFL is grossly misogynistic and cares nothing about it’s female viewers. The players worry on draft night whether their stock will rise or fall but, if the league isn’t tougher on these issues there’s a good chance theirs may plummet and go belly up.