Tuesday, 4/22/97 ESPN’s Mel Kiper lacks experience but adds
humor to draft process Analyst’s fiery, assertive speech puts him
in hot water
As if the NFL draft, that annual orgy of trades, controversy and
hype, wasn’t bizarre enough, ESPN – our beloved fountain of sports
– had to hire as one of its draft personalities a verbose,
big-haired guy called Mel Kiper Jr. The fact that this man is even
on the air in the first place is curious enough. Most of the color
personalities ESPN uses have some sort of background in their
respective sport – Joe Theismann at football games, Cliff Drysdale
at tennis matches. But Kiper has zilch. The man didn’t even play in
college. Giving Kiper a microphone on draft day and expecting
expert analysis is like putting an accountant on the 18th hole at
the Masters and having him say how the greens are breaking. The
Kiper-ESPN corroboration is nothing more than a fantasy
broadcasting experience going horribly awry. It’s actually hard not
to feel sorry for this guy because he’s in a no-win situation. No
one is going to pick the draft selection right, and he has to give
it a shot as part of his job description. The sympathy factor is
reduced, however, because Kiper really puts stock in his selections
and expects everyone else to as well. The trouble is, he rarely
gets it right. If we go to the tape, stats from the combine show
that this year, Kiper picked the right draft number for the right
player in the first round exactly four times, based on his April 7
preview. That’s four out of 30. Average on the year? .133. Not so
hot for a front-line analyst. Kiper actually does a good job
picking the players who will go in the first round, but he gets
square-peg-in-round-hole syndrome after that, which just makes him
look worse. It’s like someone who studies endlessly to prepare for
an exam where all the questions are matching, and, while they
memorize all the answers, they don’t draw the lines right. Then
this poor schlub gets his wrong answers read out over the airwaves.
Every pick, the pundits at home are scanning their Kiper Draft
Previews watching him go down in flames while he has to rationalize
why a team went the way it did. That’s a pretty mediocre job. The
guy spends his entire year gearing up for one weekend when he can
strut his stuff … and he blows it. Again and again, he looks like
a heel on television and has to discuss his career shortcomings
over the course of a Saturday morning with an entire country.
Probably the only thing that keeps Kiper from blowing his head off
when the Steelers take Jim Shmo instead of Joe Shmo is the chance
to vent on the team that went contrary to his recommendation. When
that happens, Mel goes off the deep end, telling general managers
on the air that they just put their franchise back in the Stone
Age. The nerve of this guy, telling execs from the Saints that this
time they really screwed up when they’ve been doing a fine job of
screwing up for years. Now that we all have the lowdown on the
sideshow that is Mel Kiper’s career, let’s give the Mel Kiper Jr.
television personality draft analysis to Mel Kiper Jr. and see just
where his career will end up. Pros: has the hair down pat, right up
to the Lavinesque use of hair gel; consistently nails the perfect
Windsor knot in his tie; has an authoritative voice that can
temporarily overshadow acute lack of any meaningful speech; can
watch lots of football while neglecting family. Cons: constantly
wrong on national television; does not know when to keep quiet; is
a serious health risk because one day, all those execs and players
that he has insulted over the years are going to kick the crap out
of him. Outlook: has the superficial skills to fool the casual
observer; may soon slip to CNN or ESPN2; needs to leave the draft
analysis to ex-football players who know equally little about the
draft; came out way too early, needs more seasoning on pee-wee
football and anger control. Shapiro is a Daily Bruin columnist and
men’s tennis writer. E-mail responses to mshapiro@media.ucla.edu.
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