Commentary: Mel Kiper Jr. might get some things wrong, but he was on the money on NFL Draft popularity

Mel Kiper Jr. has gotten plenty wrong over the years. That's going to happen when you make thousands of NFL draft predictions over a nearly 50-year span. But he nailed the most important pick of his career. The longtime ESPN analyst knew the NFL Draft could grow from meetings in hotel ballrooms to the colossal spectacle Pittsburgh will host April 23-25. He bet his career on the intersection between college football and the National Football League — the moment when pro teams vie to select the best young players from around the country. "I really felt like this was going to be a massively huge event …, " Kiper said recently. "I did believe when nobody else did." He had started putting out draft reports before the 1979 draft, which was held at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. The event wasn't even televised at that point because the NFL didn't think people would be interested. ESPN convinced the league in time to air the 1980 draft, and they found an audience. The event graduated from hotels to a theater at Madison Square Garden in 1995 to Radio City Music Hall in 2006. After nine years at that iconic venue, the draft hit the road — first heading to Chicago in 2015 and 2016, and then on to several more cities. Nearly 800,000 people attended the 2024 NFL draft in Detroit. Last year's draft in Green Bay pulled in an estimated 600,000 fans. This April won't be the first time Pittsburgh has welcomed the draft. The city hosted the 1948 edition, which took place in December 1947 at the Fort Pitt hotel. Many players chosen that year were also claimed by All-America Football Conference teams, so the 10 NFL franchises had to outbid teams in the rival league to hire their selections. There is little mention in newspaper reports of fans attending the event. The draft's return to Pittsburgh nearly 80 years later will look a little different. Pittsburgh officials predict between 500,000 and 700,000 people will attend. It's expected to be the largest event the city has ever hosted. "It was really vindication for me," Kiper said of the draft's exponential growth. "Because I'd had people screaming, 'Why are you bringing Kiper on? Who the hell cares about the draft?' … All those haters became dinosaurs. They went away. They couldn't fight it anymore." The draft's appeal seems obvious today. "Each year, as the popularity of the sport grows both in this country and around the world, as college football continues to grow, this is obviously the intersection of those worlds," said Peter O'Reilly, the NFL's executive vice president of club business, international and league events. The timing of the event helps. It's an otherwise quiet time in the football calendar. "What else are you gonna do in April except be craving football, wanting to see highlights of these players, seeing what players are going to impact my football team?" Kiper said. Evidently, the league took some convincing. In its fledgling years, ESPN, which was launched in 1979, wanted to establish a presence in football by televising the draft. NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle wasn't sure why people would want to watch names being read in a ballroom. "You've got to credit ESPN big time for saying, 'Hey, we want to do this. We can do it right. We can make this thing work. The fans are going to love it. Trust us,'" Kiper said. Once ESPN showed that the draft could be compelling television, he said, the league "kind of jumped on that bandwagon." While Kiper didn't work at the network when it first televised the draft in 1980, he had begun issuing his own draft reports as a teenager working out of his parents' basement in the Baltimore area. He saw immediate returns. Some subscribers — both NFL and college football fans — told him they looked forward to the draft more than they did the start of the season. Within about five years, ESPN hired him to work the 1984 draft. There's an emotional component to the draft's popularity. Only one team can win the Super Bowl each year, leaving fans of the other 31 franchises disappointed. "The draft represents hope to these fanbases," said Louis Riddick, an NFL and college football analyst for ESPN and a Pitt alum. "So they're all in. They're all in on, 'Let me see what my team is doing so that next year, maybe we're the ones hoisting the Lombardi.'" Riddick credits the draft for launching his career at ESPN. And he credits his colleague for making that possible. "There would be no NFL draft as presently constituted if it weren't for Mel Kiper," Riddick said. The draft was held in New York from 1965-2014. O'Reilly was involved in the NFL's decision to take it on the road. By then, league officials knew the event was popular. More than 45 million people watched the 2014 NFL draft, and fans would wait in line outside Radio City Music Hall the day before to nab a free ticket to the 6,000-seat venue. But officials weren't sure what type of reception they would receive for the 2015 draft in Chicago. The day before, O'Reilly remembered looking out the window of his hotel room and seeing fans in jerseys of many NFL teams, not just the Bears, peering over the fence in Grant Park to check out the draft setup. "You had that sense that the passion of NFL fans and bringing this on the road, it was going to work," O'Reilly said. About 200,000 people attended the two drafts held in Chicago. It just kept growing from there. The NFL brought the event back to its birthplace in 2017 — Philadelphia. The first draft had been held in that city's Ritz-Carlton Hotel in 1936. The modern version involved setting up an indoor/outdoor theater outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, featuring the "Rocky Steps" made famous by the Sylvester Stallone movies. Fans filled Benjamin Franklin Parkway in front of the venue. Riddick recalled hordes of people as far as the eye could see. Eagles fans went "berserk" each time their team was on the clock. They waved green glow sticks in the air and sang, "Fly, Eagles Fly." "It was absolutely nuts in Philly … ," Riddick said. "It looked like something from Woodstock." The 2019 draft in Nashville drew 600,000 people, who packed Lower Broadway in a scene reminiscent of New Year's Eve in Times Square. The COVID-19 pandemic banished the 2020 draft to Commissioner Roger Goodell's basement and limited attendance in Cleveland the next year. But the energy picked back up in 2022 (Las Vegas) and 2023 (Kansas City) before exploding in Detroit. The 2024 draft drew 775,000 people to downtown Motor City. The "sea of humanity in Honolulu Blue" is one of the indelible images of the draft for O'Reilly. In the much smaller city of Green Bay the following year, the draft still delivered 600,000 attendees. It drew the second-highest TV and streaming audience in the event's history, with an average of 7.5 million viewers tuning in each day. Growth of the draft is not just reflected during those three days in April. It's become a year-round obsession. Kiper helped popularize mock drafts, which now flood the internet. There are podcasts, outlets and many media members like him whose sole focus is the draft. "Everybody's writing about the draft, writing about prospects, writing about football," Kiper said. "Just to see the internet surge in terms of how many people are putting up mock drafts and rankings and ratings on every position and every player, is really gratifying." O'Reilly said the NFL wants the host city to be the "star" of the draft — building the event around an iconic location or central hub in the city and surrounding it with a free festival environment. This year's edition will be split across the North Shore and Point State Park. The draft theater will be set up outside Acrisure Stadium, with the crowd spilling out in the parking lots around the stadium. Point State Park will host the draft Experience, a fan festival featuring interactive activities, exhibits and more. The Roberto Clemente Bridge and Gateway Clipper Fleet will link the two sites. "We knew the rivers would be a character in the draft story, with activations on both sides," O'Reilly said. The crowd will be a character, as well. The draft and hundreds of thousands of fans are expected to transform Downtown and the North Shore into a living celebration of football. Tens of millions more will watch at home, as the NFL media apparatus descends on Pittsburgh. The entire event will be broadcast on multiple channels simultaneously. ESPN will provide several hours of live coverage before each day of the draft begins. Riddick said he believes the atmosphere will be "second-to-none." "Pittsburgh's the ultimate football town," Riddick said, "so I expect us to break records there."