The original plan for the 2020 N.F.L. draft was Las Vegas. They weren’t going to roll out a red carpet at the Bellagio—they were going to build a red carpet on top of the Bellagio fountains, like the world’s most gratuitous pier. Players would arrive by boat, in loud suits, and come to a stage adjacent to Caesars Forum. The appearance of the N.F.L. commissioner would be met with the traditional boos. Diamonds, casino chips, high-powered sports agents—money, in other words, money everywhere, so much money. Plus a crowd in the hundreds of thousands at the various draft events, and millions more watching at home.
What we got, instead, was Roger Goodell’s basement, which looked the way you might imagine: wood-panelled walls, shelves stuffed with footballs, a few football books, a folded American flag, a Mike Ditka bobblehead. Goodell stood in front of a television. On a little table to his left, a pair of headphones made by Bose, an N.F.L. sponsor, hung from a stand. He wore a button-down shirt and a blazer. Partway through the draft, he changed into a sweater.
The broadcast included tributes to nurses, doctors, and first responders, and a fund-raiser for six organizations. (As of Friday morning, it had raised nearly four million dollars.) The theme of the night was “Hope,” as Peyton Manning explained before the Cincinnati Bengals, who had the first pick, went on the clock. “In football, the draft is when hope starts all over again,” he said, over a montage of fans, teen-agers, doctors, sports figures, and a baby with a football. “Hope,” he went on, “the deep and passionate kind.” Dr. Anthony Fauci made an appearance, commending the N.F.L. for holding a remote draft, and encouraging people to abide by social-distancing guidelines. “The best thing we can do now is hope for the best and hope that’s sooner or later—hopefully sooner—we can get back to some form of normality where we can all enjoy the sport that we love so much.” Brought to you by Bud Light Seltzer.
The Bengals, as expected, selected the L.S.U. quarterback Joe Burrow, who recently led the Fighting Tigers to a national championship. A temporary promenade above the Bellagio fountains could not have been more spectacular than the sight of Burrow sitting awkwardly between his parents against a background of heavy brocade drapes. In advance of the broadcast, fifty-eight of the top prospects had been mailed “technology kits” with fancy camera equipment. While the Bengals’ clock wound down, Joe and Mr. and Mrs. Burrow sat silently and stoically on the couch, staring at what was presumably a television screen with their own faces staring back at them. We also got a shot of the Bengals’ head coach, Zac Taylor, in his “war room,” sitting at a desk that looked like it might belong to an accountant. The camera in his room was set up at an angle, for some reason, exposing the scaffolding of the Bengals’ backdrop behind him. Perhaps it was an attempt to distract viewers from his home’s aggressive carpet choices.
That was the pleasure of this year’s draft, and it was very real, something that Caesars Forum could never offer: the opportunity to see human beings at home instead of humanoids on the sidelines. We could infer personalities from their surroundings, critique their lamps, and glimpse their dogs. A few cute kids popped up in some shots, and so did a few wonderfully weird ones, most notably the teen-age children of the Tennessee Titans’ coach, Mike Vrabel—one was dressed up as Frozone, and another was dressed up as a younger version of his dad. The Giants’ general manager, Dave Gettleman, had a makeshift desk tucked behind a couch. The New England Patriots’ Bill Belichick, wearing a sweatshirt, sat in his home in Nantucket, at a dining table inlaid with a harlequin diamond pattern, and traded out of the first round. San Francisco’s John Lynch seemed to have decided that picking up the phone and calling in a draft pick required a setup that could launch a spaceship. John Schneider, the general manager of rival Seattle, had torn down two walls to make room for twenty-five screens. The Arizona Cardinals’ head coach, Kliff Kingsbury, evidently lives on the grounds of the Getty Museum. The Cowboys’ owner, Jerry Jones, sat in what I was fairly certain was a billionaire’s bunker. It turned out to be his quarter-billion-dollar yacht, the Bravo Eugenia. The slender arm of a mermaid floated in and out of the camera’s view.
There were, alas, no technical glitches, at least none that I could detect; no one was unmuted at the wrong time. The only surprises came in the picks—notably the selection of the quarterback Jordan Love by the Green Bay Packers, who already employ Aaron Rodgers, one of the top quarterbacks in the league. And the only real stumble came from Goodell, when he mentioned that the 2020 Draft was meant to be hosted by Dallas. It was an enticing slip. Can’t we just get a do-over of 2020? If we can, let’s leave Vegas alone this time. The Strip has nothing that can beat Gettleman’s basement.
