It’s that time of the year again. I’m so excited! One of my favorite parts of spring has always been NFL Draft Weekend.

Not because I’ll be camped in front of my TV watching it — I mean, I can track the picks online at my own leisure. And it’s not because it gets me excited about the upcoming football season (only three months until training camp!).

No, I’m just glad that the time-vampire that is draft coverage will finally be over.

Of all the overblown, overhyped and inane sporting events we sometimes have to suffer through (I’m looking at you NASCAR), the NFL Draft is the worst. Just when I think I can finally forget about football for a while, ESPN’s talking heads start speculating as to who the Lions might take with the first pick.

It’s sickening.

Every night since the Super Bowl ended, I haven’t been able to turn on ESPN without hearing something about former Georgia QB Matt Stafford’s legitimacy as a top overall pick. I can hardly log on to CBS Sports or open Sports Illustrated without reading about Percy Harvin’s off-field problems or someone’s 40 meter time. East Coast bias aside, sports media is just annoying right now.

It’s almost as tedious and soul-sucking as watching the Badgers run the ball on third-and-long for a 2-yard gain.

Back in the good ol’ days, the NFL Draft was a closed-door affair, with grumpy old men in a smoky, poorly lit room in some hotel. Or so I imagine.

Now, thanks to Mel Kiper Jr. and ESPN, the draft is a nationally-televised event. Coverage Saturday will start at 6 a.m. — if you count the hours of SportsCenter that will precede the actual draft. Then, between in-studio analysis and footage of the picks being made, ESPN and ESPN2 won’t quit showing draft-related programming until 10 p.m.

See, Kiper thought it would be a good idea to provide in-depth analysis of the draft and info on prospective players. There’s nothing wrong with that. My beef is with ESPN shoving the draft down my throat. Like most people, I don’t care who anyone else picks, so long as my team gets the player it needs/thinks it needs.

What also annoys me is that Kiper essentially made a career out of guesswork. I can’t even find a summer job mowing lawns. I mean, sure, he scouts players, watches film, reads reports or whatever, but in the end all he’s doing is guessing who teams are going to pick. You know who else makes a living guessing things? That guy at the state fair standing by the scale who swears he knows when your birthday is. Kind of puts it into perspective, huh?

Truth is, Kiper doesn’t really know all that much more than you or I about who Houston’s first-round pick will be. I don’t care if he has contacts within the Texans organization. With all the smoke and mirrors teams put up in draft season, I doubt even Houston GM Rick Smith has any idea what’s going on.

At the core of the problem is all the hype and glitz and undeserved excitement draft season brings. It’s bad enough that analysts are teasing fans with pipe dreams about Aaron Curry making 500 tackles next season. What about the players?

I would imagine all the attention and gossip must go to some of these guys’ heads. Mark Sanchez’s USC-born ego is already big enough; it probably doesn’t need any more fuel. Heaven forbid the chance Sanchez turns out to be another Ryan Leaf. Every potential first-round pick is made out to be a Pro-Bowler at some point during the season. Joey Harrington-esque busts aside, a lot of these guys are going to be decent NFL players at best.

You can argue this is one of the few times in football when every team can have legitimate hope for the future. More often than not, though, it ends up being false hope, which as it turns out, is my least favorite variety of hope.

In the end, once the draft is over, there’s always someone your team should have and could have taken that was a much better pick. Since the first-rounder is going to be a bust, all that’s left to do is pray for a Tom Brady or Joe Horn to be taken in the fifth round. It might be a little anticlimactic, but that’s what you get for spending 12 hours watching a televised job fair.

Maybe it’s just my opinion, but people should be getting excited about baseball or watching the NBA or NHL playoffs, not listening to Kiper’s over-styled dome wonder if Harvin really failed his combine drug test. Hell, it’s the end of April; forget watching TV, go outside and enjoy yourself. That’s how I’m celebrating my favorite part of spring.

Adam is a sophomore majoring in journalism. Love or hate NFL draft coverage? Got any picks for draft busts or sleepers? E-mail him at [email protected]