How interest in NFL Mock Drafts...Went from Zero to Infinity

by Mark Craig, Minneapolis Star Tribune (April 20th, 2024)

Found the link to this fascinating article on GBN Draft Report. A few passages that caught my eye:

"In Pittsburgh, the Steelers heard about a man named Ray Byrne, a local third-generation undertaker with an odd hobby of gathering information on college prospects. They hired him in 1946 with a written agreement that, "Ray can drop his football duties and become a mortician whenever necessary..." "

" "I started writing about the draft in the '60s for the San Francisco Examiner, and it was all I could do to get 10 inches of copy in the paper because nobody cared," said Frank Cooney, also the founder of NFL Draft Scout. "Little by little, it grew. Eventually, the idea of a mock draft came up. I remember thinking, 'What a stupid idea.' " "

"And a man named Jerry Jones — no, not that Jerry Jones — was so good at privately forecasting the first two rounds of the 1971 draft that he went public the next year with "The Drugstore List," which got its name from Jones' day job as part-owner of Horton's drugstore in Mariemont, Ohio."

"Bill Belichick tried to hire (Joel Buchsbaum) in Cleveland and New England. "Bill told him he'd pay him more money than he could imagine," said John McClain, a longtime NFL reporter in Houston. "Joel said, 'No thanks, I feel like I work for all the teams.' "


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