Monday Morning Sentimonies: Damn You Wichita!

 

Well my strategy of basing my March Madness bracket selections around team names that I found amusing certainly didn’t pan out. Thanks to my staunch support of the Wichita St. Shockers I set a new personal record for March Madness futility by having my bracket ruined before the end of the first night.

Fortunately I am in the company of people who attempted to bet sanely and chose the likes of Duke and Missouri. I can live with the fact that my bracket was done in by ridiculous betting logic. Not sure I could live with being done in by one ridiculous upset let alone 2 in the same night.

The closest thing I can find to football related news is the Peyton Manning Sweepstakes which appears to have been won by the Denver Broncos… yes the Denver Broncos. 

Personally I think Manning made a mistake by not going to the 49ers but this is coming from a guy who bet on Wichita.

Lucky for John Elway that Manning became available. Elway clearly does not like Tim Tebow and last year figured that he would let Tebow embarrass himself so the fans would shut up and he could cut him. Well that backfired in dramatic fashion as Tebow kept winning games in dramatic fashion and the fans love of him kept growing exponentially.  Manning was about the only out Elway had that the fans wouldn’t kill him over.

But it did get me thinking (which is scary I know), this whole situation came about because of Indy’s draft position. If they didn’t have the top pick Manning might still be in Indy and John Elway would still be cursing Tebow’s name. It made me wonder if something similar would ever happen in the CFL… and the answer is not likely.

You see the draft is simply far more important in the NFL than in the CFL. In the NFL, top pick means you get instant access to a franchise QB like Manning, Matt Stafford or Cam Newton. In the CFL you get instant access to a rotational D-line guy (Williams), a special teams guy (Muamba), a useless receiver (Bauman),  a guy who will end up stuffing someone in his trunk (Braidwood) or in the best case scenario a starting guard (Rottier or likely Heenan).

I mean you don’t see us cutting Durant just because we have the chance to draft Kyle Quinlan.

Yes building a solid core of Canadian talent is essential in the CFL but your biggest impact players usually won’t come through the draft. They will come from your neg list. By contrast the NFL Draft is the pipeline for talent into the league. Hence high draft picks carry a far higher value.

It’s also probably why the NFL draft has morphed into a 3 day media event while the CFL Draft has only recently evolved into a couple hour TV special from the conference call where you could draft people while on the toilet that it used to be.