Greg picked me up Wednesday at six-thirty for what he called draft night, and like a fool I thought he meant the carpenters’ union local.
He drove me instead to a brewery’s “private event space,” which is a phrase that should not exist in nature, and twelve grown men were already inside, and one of them was wearing a headset.
There was a trophy. Engraved. Three feet tall. Sponsored — and I want to be very clear about this part — by a vape shop in Grandview called Cloud Authority. The commissioner, a guy named Brennan who does something with supply chains for a living, had a laminated rulebook and a clipboard and the bearing of a man who recently completed an online certificate.
Coach DiMaggio used to draft his offensive line on the back of a steakhouse placemat in about nine minutes flat, and the only commissioner involved was the high school principal, who came by to make sure no one was drinking. Brennan has a Slack channel. Brennan has a Slack channel with custom emojis.
The actual drafting takes four hours. Four. Each man has a laptop. Most have two monitors. They all have what they call a “tier sheet,” which used to be called a list. There are projections. There are projections of the projections. A guy named Dustin paid forty dollars for a subscription to someone’s newsletter and read aloud from it during his picks like it was the Sermon on the Mount.
I stepped outside during a commercial break — they have commercial breaks now, between rounds, also sponsored by the vape shop — and called Ray Kowalczyk. Ray asked if anyone in the room had ever actually played football, and I told him one guy was wearing a Crocs charm shaped like a football, and Ray hung up on me. He called back four minutes later to hang up on me a second time.
Greg drafted a kicker in the eighth round, which I am informed is a felony in certain leagues. The room went still. A 32-year-old orthodontist put his head in his hands. Brennan made a note in the laminated rulebook. Greg explained that the kicker had a “soft schedule” and “leg upside,” and I would like to state for the record that I have heard a great many phrases across fifty years of pressboxes and locker rooms, and “leg upside” is the one that finally cracked the foundation.
The buy-in was three hundred dollars. The loser, I came to understand, has to spend a weekend at a Days Inn outside Sandusky and post photos from it. There is a punishment Instagram account. There is a punishment Instagram account with 4,200 followers and a sponsorship inquiry pending from a beef jerky company.
One of the men, a perfectly nice guy named Trevor, asked me who I was “targeting late.” I told him my targets are mostly the back porch and a cold beer. He laughed and wrote something down. I think he thought I was negging him into a sleeper pick.
The thing that got me — and I did not expect to be gotten, I went in armored — was the kid in the corner, maybe twenty-six, who had clearly read more about Cleveland Browns running back depth charts than I have read about anything in my entire adult life. He had handwritten notes. He had two pens. When his turn came he was so nervous his hand shook. There was a small, terrible piece of me that respected it. I would not tell him so under oath.
At the end of the night Brennan presented Greg with a participation koozie, also from Cloud Authority, and a printout of his “draft grade,” which was a B-minus. A draft grade. From whom. Issued by what authority. Accredited where. Brennan would not say.
Greg drove me home and asked if I had fun. I told him it was the longest funeral I’d ever attended. He laughed. He thought I was joking.
Denise is bringing chili. She says it’s from a podcast.