The Draw Play

So any long time reader knows my hatred of mock drafts is well documented. I hate this time of year. It gets worse every season, too. The draft has turned into a complete content mill and it is the absolute worst with how it dominates the news cycle for months. It starts before the season is over and goes through garbage phases of early mocks, then NEW mocks as everyone does more in-depth analysis, then HOT TAKE mocks when writers need to get cute to keep interest because it’s only mid-March. Then we get back to the regular honest mocks as writers come to settle into their original opinions again, and now we are entering the nightmare era: useless mocks.

It’s too far away from the draft still to give us serious final mock drafts, but the content sites like Bleacher Report, SB Nation, SI, The Ringer, Barstool, PFT, etc, need to fill that content space and they’ve already mostly overdone it during March. So what do we get? The most useless articles imaginable.

If you read my twitter this might look familiar since I already bitched about it there but I saw an article on SB Nation this week that might be the worst thing I’ve seen yet. Look at this. Someone put the teams in a randomizer, wrote down the order, and did a mock draft out of it.

I have never in my life as a sports blogger, follower, and garbage content creator myself seen something so pathetically useless. This article provides nothing to the world. It is the most worthless piece of content I’ve ever seen. There is absolutely no value here whatsoever. This was written by “Senior NFL News Desk Writer”. SENIOR. This wasn’t even written by one of the poor nobody schmoes that sites like SBN and B/R use to churn out the usual cheap filler. This was written by someone who should have better assignments. I don’t even know who to blame here. Did he pitch it? Did SBN tell him to get something to page to fill an empty slot? SBN does a lot of silly content that doesn’t serve much purpose other than entertainment. This can’t even say that.

Seriously, I’m legitimately angry about this crap. I thought I was kinda over it, because at this point most of the media cycle is familiar to me and everything turns to mush so I can tune most of it. I hate draft season because there is still so much useless crap shoved out there every day that even tuning it out is impossible. But this. What?

I’m just stunned by how little value this article has in any way. There are a few types of general sports content. Important breaking news, which can get away with being sparse on info because the headline is what is important. The rumors, which are mostly stupid but can provide fun speculation and discussion, plus anticipation. Analysis, which is usually valuable reading. Journalism, which is few and far between these days but always worth your time, even if you disagree with it. Farce/Satire, which is normally out there simply to entertain (this is where I would place myself). Then we have the filler. Mock drafts, power rankings, this stuff is the filler. It provides nothing valuable but cheap clicks and attention to the brand. This article, and anything like it, is the lowest of this category.

I can’t figure out who this is for. What purpose does it serve? Mock Drafts, as meaningless as they are, have more purpose than this. They can offer thought experiments and prediction fun. They are a sort of very cheap analysis in some ways. This randomized shit can’t do that, because it is starting from a point of complete irrelevance. This isn’t the draft order. This isn’t how the draft is set up. At least mock drafts start from reality. This does not, so it automatically invalidates everything in the article as utterly pointless. I didn’t even read past the first pick, because why should I? Nothing in this article will be worth my time, or anybody’s time. Anything it might have to say about team needs or prospects is already covered in other mock drafts and analyses, the ones with a basis in reality. The only person who could have gotten remotely anything out of this is the author.

I’m not going to go out and say I provide valuable content here. I’m basically a shitposter most of the time, especially when I did stuff for KSK. I hope every once in a while I get out a good piece of content but generally I’d say a lot of my stuff is fairly disposable in the end and doesn’t say much. But even though I’m not aiming high, my content at least has a purpose to it: to entertain. I can at least claim that. How well it provides entertainment is up to you, dear readers, but every thing I put up here has that ultimate purpose. I don’t even know if this article can claim that. Content needs to inform, entertain, or spark discussion. This article did none of that and seemingly sets out to accomplish nothing. I’ve never seen a piece so fundamentally useless. I struggled with whether or not to even do this comic, because I don’t feel like this thing even deserves your clicks, but DAVE MAD, DAVE MUST YELL AT CLOUDS. I probably spent more time on this attack then the author did taking this dump. Maybe that makes me the true joke here.

Okay, so I’ll give it that. This piece was so worthless it got me mad enough to talk about it. It generated discussion. Fuck me. I just hope we don’t get more like it.

SBN, B/R and the like need to stay on your newsfeeds, so they do stuff like this to keep your eyes on them. It’s part of the cycle, and for the most part I understand and accept that. But to give us a snack that is basically just air, that’s still too much. If you have nothing to say, maybe you can try not saying anything.

If you guys want some true quality content I just re-uploaded all my KSK Dick Logos, so go check out them penises! Not at work. Don’t do it at work.