Idiots Write About Sports

The San Francisco 49ers had the first pick in the NFL draft this morning. In essence, they have been on the clock since playing out the string against New England in the last game of the 2004 season. That’s given a little more than four months to poke, prod, and ogle potential prospects. You would figure that any doubts about who they were planning to select would have been resolved long ago, and that the only thing standing between them and a speedy selection would be a quick scan of the morning wire to make sure the No. 1 pick-elect had not been picked up on a drunk-and-disorderly the night before.

So what in the name of Bill Walsh were the 49ers doing taking 13 of their allotted 15 minutes to make Alex Smith the No. 1 pick of the 2005 draft?

Are 40-yard-dash times that difficult to read? Were they waiting for a college junior to declare his eligibility, thus expanding the pool of potential draft picks? Or maybe they were hopeful that one of their final candidates would crack under the pressure and remove his name from consideration, thus making their pick all the more obvious.

Or were they trying to work out some trade? I’ve got some news for the 49ers — if it didn’t happen in the past four months, it’s not likely to happen in the next 15 minutes. Al Davis isn’t going to burst in the door at the 14:30 mark and declare, “I simply must have that draft pick. Here — take this sack full of money and rare coins that I haven’t had time to count!”

Then again, considering who owns the Niners, it’s entirely possibly they thought the draft was next week and simply weren’t ready to pick.

In all my years of playing assorted roto sports, there has been only one time when it took me as much as five minutes to pick a player. That was in last year’s football draft, when I thought the draft started half-an-hour later than it actually did and spent the first-round finishing up my shower. Fortunately, Yahoo’s automated picking service was kind enough to select LaDainian Tomlinson on my behalf, thus adding a new element to my fantasy league draft strategy — always spend the first round in the shower.

Still, just bad clock management by the 49ers. I hope the other teams are a bit more swift on the uptake, or we’re going to be here all day.

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