Well I was going to start this by going right into the draft, but needless to say, events of last night changed that. I think this is a story that would require you to have been there but here are the highlights. This evening was the 2007 induction ceremony for the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame. Your inductees were Will Clark, Jennifer Azzi, Jerry Leonard and JERRY RICE. My organization gets a table to the event each year and they had an extra ticket this year. When they found out I was a big 49ers fan, they invited me along at about 4:30 this afternoon. So I get there and go up to the pre-event VIP reception. At the reception: All 4 inductees, Eddie DeBartolo, Carmen Policy, John York, Jesse Sapolu, Roger Craig, Eric Wright, Keena Turner, Steve Bono and a HOST of others.
Needless to say it was absolutely amazing. I got a chance to introduce myself to DeBartolo (I've got the most surreal story ever and somehow I'll figure out a way to tell it here but let's just say it lead to me and a friend clowning with Roger Craig over the "incident") and Carmen Policy (who was quite the friendly guy). Jerry Rice was chatting with a bunch of people and at one point he was by himself for a few seconds so I went over and introduced myself. After I mentioned loving the team as a child, he mentioned that they're definitely coming back and for the next 2 or 3 minutes we talked about the draft, who they'll take in the first round and when they might go after receivers. To quote George Costanza, "I'm bustin Jerry! I'm BUSTIN!" Simply put, it was the most surreal moment of my life.
Now that I've got that out of the way, we're a mere day away from the 2007 NFL Draft, clearly one of the most important in a long time for this franchise. With that in mind, I've decided I will be live-blogging the ENTIRE first day of the draft and at least half (if not more) of Day 2. I know some of you have said you'd be joining me for the day and hopefully we'll get a nice crowd in here for draft day fun. I've never watched the entire first day, so this will certainly be an endurance test.
The draft starts at 9am pacific/12pm eastern with ESPN's lead up starting at 8amPST/11amEST. I'll be spending the lead up getting ready (including some breakfast) and then it'll be all draft all the time. I want to get coverage from both ESPN and the NFL Network so we'll jump back and forth as I get bored with one network's coverage. I'm thinking that for now I'll post short updates every ten or fifteen minutes, with some more frequent than others. Every selection will be posted in bold, along with any 49ers related news (trades, rumors, etc).
The plan will be to keep open a single thread with my newest posts at the top of the thread . If we reach 400 comments I'll open a new thread but otherwise we'll keep all comments in the one thread. As the team makes selections I'll work on getting scouting reports from New Era Scouting and ESPN primarily. The only analysis on other team's picks will be if I find them particular poor picks or if the player has something of note about them.
Other than that we're just here to have some fun on a long, but important day. If you have any ideas or suggestions for draft day I'd love to hear them.