Up Close

My phone just buzzed. It was my ESPN app reminding me that the second round of the draft is this evening and SHEDEUR SANDERS STILL HASN'T BEEN DRAFTED. On the golf course earlier, I opened Twitter to see that Andy Staples and Ari Wasserman were going live to discuss (and I quote) "Why did Shedeur Sanders SLIDE in the draft?" Mine is a very college football-centric Twitter feed, and all anyone wants to talk about is why Shedeur Sanders wasn't drafted in the first round.

Well, they don't really want to talk about that. They've simply done the math on all of us and found the lowest common denominator. If Deion Sanders tells someone on Twitter that his son will be a top-5 pick in the draft and then his son isn't picked in the first round, talking about that will bring the eyeballs and then the eyeballs can be dissolved into money.

Don't think I don't understand that from a business sense. The hotel room I'm saying in here in Cockeysville, Maryland (are we sure Deion Sanders wasn't born in Cockeysville HEY-OH) is not a wise investment. I will not recoup the cost of this hotel or rental car or flight. There's a reason I'm the only "reporter" here covering any of the 18 Big Ten teams. It's not even worth it for some Maryland website to drive 35 minutes north. There's no market for this.

There IS a market for the NFL Draft. Just look at the number of cameras inside living rooms trying to capture one photo of a player when his phone rings in the 4th round. I could tweet 25 videos of the Big Ten Golf Championships this weekend and one of a dozen photos of a single 4th round living room phone call is "worth" more. Don't think I somehow don't understand that and mistakenly got on a flight to Baltimore instead of Green Bay.

I'm here because I love it. The access offered here – the ability to watch a college athletic competition right up close – is unmatched. Imagine if you got to stroll the sideline at Lucas Oil as Illinois football takes on Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship game and then immediately afterwards you can just casually chat with Luke Altmyer and Gabe Jacas about the game. That's the experience here.