Draft Day Experience (part 1)

“What do you actually do there? Can you leave during it?” my mom asked. Before I could respond my dad added, “Personally, I’d rather watch paint dry than watch the NFL draft.”
“No mom, you can’t leave during it.”
“So you’re trapped.”
Despite my parents skepticism, my mind had been set in stone for months, and unless the entire Pittsburgh Steel Curtain defense from the 70’s attempted to stop me, I was going to be at Radio City Music Hall on April 28, the first day of the 2007 NFL draft.
The most difficult part of gaining entry into the draft is obtaining its highly coveted tickets. The average fan is forced to line up outside of Radio City Music Hall at the crack of dawn the day of the festivities. And although the NFL tried to restrict fans from lining the streets before 5 A.M. this year, I spoke with many exhausted fans who took their spot in line before three in the morning. Luckily, I was able to score tickets from a friend, Matt Ullmann, a rabid 49ers fan, who went to the draft with me.
Accompanying Ullmann and I were two good friends from the sleep away camp we used to attend. We met up with David Stein (aka Steiner), a fanatical Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan from Montreal, Wills Klein, a draft veteran and another truly dedicated Jets fan (myself being the other) from Scarsdale, New York and Jake Klein, Wills’ older brother, at an overpriced breakfast joint in Times Square called Roxie’s. At Roxie’s Ullmann and I ordered two pastrami sandwiches to go, planning to eat them in Radio City Music Hall due to the atrocious food Willis said it served. The stage was set for a perfect day to unfold, as fans of all 32 teams would claim that the draft had set them apart from all other teams, vaulting them to glory.
At about 10:30 we reached the end of the line outside of Radio City, one that not only snaked around the building itself, but the two adjacent blocks as well. This line was the lone place in the world where one could find Chief’s and Bronco’s fans talking peacefully, folks wearing Favre jerseys rationally discussing Calvin Johnson and Randy Moss with Lion supporters with C. Johnson taped over the original jersey name, and Baltimore and Indianapolis fans conversing without conflict. (Jets and Patriot fans still did not get along.)
Meanwhile, Steiner was busy talking to Tony Cacace, a huge Bucs fan (both literally and figuratively) sporting a XXL throwback jersey of Lee Roy Selmon, and a tattoo of the Bucs logo on his left bicep. Cacace was profiled in a foxsports.net article only days before the draft and Steiner was very impressed to meet a fellow Tampa Bay supporter. Suddenly, a middle-aged man with a grey goatee asked my friends and me a question that helped me reach one of my life goals earlier than I expected: “Can I photograph you guys for Sports Illustrated?” My head spun around and looked down to see that his press pass read “Sports Illustrated.” “Sure,” I replied, barely able to contain my excitement.