Where can you find wanna-be stars who aren’t yet real stars but are acting like, and being treated like, real stars? Need to endure useless questions being asked by softball media preceding equally brain-numbing, predictable answers? How about just a place to find some soon-to-be-rich guy in a goofy suit?
Well, I have the place for you.
Come on down to the 2016 NFL Draft’s red carpet, where future Hall of Famers and draft busts alike are given the royal treatment. Where one minute, Player X doesn’t care where he ends up — he is just “blessed to have a chance in the NFL” — yet later he magically has landed “exactly where I want to be.”
By watching, you learn nothing; you might actually become dumber.
Move along. Nothing to see here.
To be fair, all red carpets are stupid. The one before the Oscars, the one before the Grammys, the one in front of the front door at your grandma’s house (it clashes with the curtains) — they’re all stupid.
They are nothing more than look-at-me photo ops. Each is a chance for those on parade to lure personal sponsorships; a shot at getting the attention they crave, hoping it’s their name fans and talking heads are chatting about the next day — even if it’s to make fun of them, because any press is good press, right?
Adding a red carpet to the draft is like adding another hour to the NCAA selection show — nobody needs it; few, if any, want it.
There may be a select group who might genuinely long for the affair: network executives. But why would they want a red carpet march when no one else does? Well, the answer is: because we will watch it. It’s all our fault.
The NFL has somehow made sports fans watch “stars” make a meaningless hike down a red carpet. We should be red-face embarrassed. This is a red flag.
We are so addicted to the entertainment drug that is the NFL that we can’t turn away, even from the unwatchable.

