Chicago’s ‘Draft Town’ opens a new era for the NFL draft

CHICAGO — The days of the NFL draft solely consisting of 32 team tables, Mel Kiper’s set and a few thousand fans sitting inside New York’s Radio City Music Hall are dead.

Well, maybe not officially, but you certainly got the feeling a eulogy was in order after strolling down Michigan Avenue on Thursday afternoon to see thousands of football fans waiting to enter a mammoth football party in Grant Park called “Draft Town.”

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Once inside the free event, fans were greeted by a scene that was part-streetfest, part-rock concert, and part-tradeshow. That the first-round picks were being called across the street inside Roosevelt University’s Auditorium Theatre seemed only incidental to the entire scene.

Which, of course, is exactly how the NFL likely wanted it. When the league uprooted its selection show from New York for the first time in 50 years and moved it to Chicago this weekend, part of the reason was that it could stage a big expo in its own name and extend its brand past the fans crazy, silly and/or stupid enough to sit in a theater to watch names being announced for hours at a time.

And stage that expo they did in a scene that could be replicated in other cities in future springs. Los Angeles has been mentioned as a likely second stop on this tour and it’s not hard to imagine Super Bowl-style bidding if the first few versions prove as popular as the debut in Chicago seemed. The NFL, after all, has never passed up an opportunity to cram as much spectacle into its product as possible. Why confine itself to a Big Apple theater in a city where the draft is just one of the many interesting things going on?

So what was in this “Draft Town?”

There was “Selection Square,” a temporary amphitheatre of sorts that housed the picks table for every team and served as the spot where commissioner Roger Goodell announced Jameis Winston as the top pick. (Proving they were up to the challenge, Chicagoans loudly booed Goodell from both the park and inside the theater.)

There was a skills exhibition where fans could kick field goals, measure their broad jump and race against a life-sized video of draft prospects in the 40-yard dash. A skydiving “Sweetness” simulator advertised the ability to know what it was like to be Walter Payton sailing over a pile of tacklers at the goal line.

There were tents for all 32 teams where a crowd that sported a surprisingly wide array of jerseys could view memorabilia and other items of interest. Grouped by division, the popularity of the Cowboys area dwarfed that of the nearby Giants, Redskins and Eagles.

Finally — and this is probably not surprising — there were plenty of places to spend money. The line for the NFL shop was the longest in the park. The queue for $7 beers and $6 Billy Goat double cheeseburgers was sizable as well.

In the middle of it all stood a cigar-chomping Mike Ditka impersonator named Ray Hart who posed for pictures wearing the familiar Bears sweater vest, sport coat and sunglasses.

“You’d be surprised at how many people think I’m the real thing until I take off the glasses or break character,” Hart said. “Especially when I got to [Ditka’s] restaurant dressed like this.”

For this first-time draft attendee, the atmosphere and traffic outside was preferable to the scene inside the Auditorium Theatre at the actual draft. While Chicago fans got sufficiently amped for the Bears’ selection of West Virginia wide receiver Kevin White with the seventh selection, the rest of the night was mostly quiet with most fans coming to the sobering realization they were attending a TV event with no access to a TV (not unlike an actual NFL game itself).

The absence of the night’s two biggest stars — quarterbacks Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota — didn’t help matters either. But build this entire event big enough while providing fans an excuse to come together and talk football in the spring and the rest won’t matter as much. If not all NFL fans are enamored with watching the drafting of relatively anonymous college players, then the league will attract fans by celebrating the game and the draft themselves.

It’s a simple concept and one that worked pretty well in the Windy City on Thursday. It was enough to make the days of the relatively small gatherings in New York seem like a thing of the past.