Hey, just this once, let's hear it for New York! Jay-Z was biggest winner of the draft

I've always thought draft "grades" are as silly as recruiting rankings. Most sportswriters and commentators issuing them haven't seen 3/4 of the people they're talking about play, and even if they have they can't offer more than superficial knowledge on them. Having said that, you can look at what teams did and see if they seem to have met needs with players of reasonable quality. In that sense, I like Tampa Bay's draft. I'll be curious about Brian Price, because although talented his rep at UCLA was that he takes lots of plays off. Mike WIlliams in the fourth round does not please me, because while talented he quit on his team at Syracuse. Maybe he didn't like school, but I don't like bringing in attitude problems. I don't know anything about seventh rounder Erik Lorig, but ESPN's Adam Schefter feels the DE out of Stanford is going to be a steal. Flipping two seventh rounders for a future 5th was a nice move too. I wasn't as fond of the Jaguars and Dolphins drafts, but maybe they'll prove better than expected. Jacksonville's decision to take only one player from a BCS school and four from 1-AA or lower programs seems curious at best though.

The continuing national tantrums by analysts over Denver drafting Tim Tebow really mystify me. He was selected with the 25th pick in the draft! You know how many Hall of Famers have been selected at pick 25? Zero - the NFL voted defensive tackle Ted Washington the all time best player chosen at the position. There have been two quarterbacks taken at 25 in the past couple of decades - Tommy Maddox and Jason Campbell. How could Tim Tebow EVER be compared to legends like that? Even in Denver, columnists opine that Josh McDaniels future with the Broncos "hangs in the balance" on whether Tebow succeeds. No, his future with the Broncos will be determined by whether he wins. If he does so without Tebow, he'll still have his job. If Tebow becomes the starter in 2012 and plays well but the Broncos haven't gone to the playoffs in four years under McDaniels, he might very easily still lose his job. The reality is there are tons of QBs drafted in the first round who fail - Tim Couch and David Carr went first overall, and no gurus projected calamity as they did so. In one year Couch, Donovan McNabb, Akili Smith, Daunte Culpepper and Cade McNown all went in the first twelve picks. Find me the analyst who correctly predicted which two would succeed and which three would be disasters, and I'll listen to that guy. Otherwise, it's all guesswork with the player's success often based on things he has no control over (quality of OL, WRs, etc.) If Tebow's not a starting QB in three years, it was an unsuccessful pick for Denver. It could turn out that way, but I'm guessing plenty of other first rounders higher than 25 will turn out poorly too. So why is Tebow being drafted there such a big deal again?

The way people reacted to the Tebow pick, you would have thought Matt Millen made it as opposed to someone with credibility as an offensive mind. Millen still found a way to be offensive over the weekend, winding up apologizing to Polish people for a comment he made to Ron Jaworski. Millen has no business appearing on TV in any role related to anything other than in game analysis. He has zero credibility in any kind of personnel/coaching anaylsis role due to demonstrated and repeated incompetence. Why anyone chooses to employ him for anything other than color on a game is beyond me.

Millen does not have the most offensive comment of the last three days by a long shot. That goes to the imbecile morning show host at Boston's 98.5 the Sports Hub who compared Tebow's draft night party to "some kind of Nazi rally". Almost every shot they showed of a player featured mostly people with the same skin color. That didn't make them Nazis and Black Panthers, it made them people spending time with their families (who tend to be the same race as them). For the record "Toucher", the host in question, is not a sports talk guy. He and his partner were on the station when it was a rock format and were held over. This is the kind of "shock jock" crap that regularly embarasses my medium, but people who have guys like this on the air view controversy as good for business because it draws attention. If you're hacked off about it don't waste your time emailing or calling station management. I assure you they will not care. Advertisers sometimes do care, so if you're someone upset about this that's the place you should devote your energies.