Which NFL team will draft Caitlin Clark?

Tuesday Morning Quarterback mocks the mock drafts.

The NFL draft is almost here. Huge numbers will watch -- just like women’s college basketball!

Below: Everybody’s got a mock draft, only Tuesday Morning Quarterback mocks the mock drafts.

As TMQ annually observes, the NFL is so popular that more people watch its draft than tune in for any scripted network series. They come not to see football played -- merely hear it talked about.

The high selections will be exciting, and offer fan bases of beleaguered franchises hope for the future. Just not for this season!

No rookie quarterback has started the Super Bowl. There have been 57 Super Bowls, so 114 chances for a rookie starter behind center – and it’s yet to happen. Forty-four gents started in the most recent Super Bowl, Niners versus Chiefs. Nary a one was a rookie.

Draft picks of the next few days may help here and there, but it will be a couple years before any determine the outcome of an NFL season.

So don’t take this week’s draft too seriously. Certainly don’t take the commentary seriously. (“He has hip twitch, but lacks eye discipline.”) 

On the upside, it will be 2025 or 2026 before anyone drafted this week can become a bust. For the moment, it’s wine and roses, all is in the distance. You can believe your favorite team just selected future Pro Bowl stalwarts.

Grab a microbrew and enjoy the annual reenactment of choosing up sides in gym class.

Refresher course in Portuguese! Green Bay-Philadelphia in Brazil is the season’s second contest.

Note the game will be played on a Friday.

When television began to expand from oddity to national campfire, the NFL agreed, in negotiations for the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, not to play on Fridays, so as not to complete with high school’s Friday night lights; and not to play on Saturdays till the college regular season concluded.

Yet last fall there was an NFL game on Black Friday. Another Friday game approaches.

The league is using fine print to assert the Friday contests do not violate the 1961 agreement.

That’s a smokescreen. The NFL’s billionaire ownership class desperately craves even more money, as seen by the shield’s enthusiasm for gambling. Owners also want an 18-game season, another revenue boost.

And they want to start playing on Friday on a regular basis – ideally with a new broadcast or streaming partner, to bring even more of corporate America into the NFL lobbying tent.

Right now that’s Amazon, Apple (streaming NFL Network), Comcast (NBC Universal via NBC terrestrial and Peacock streaming), Disney (ESPN cable, ABC terrestrial and Hulu streaming), Fox, Google (YouTube airs Sunday Ticket) and Paramount (CBS). Walmart’s founding family now owns the Denver Broncos. Can ExxonMobil and CVS be far behind?

The more of corporate America that profits from the NFL, the lower the chance Congress or state legislatures will rein in public subsidies. Happy Friday!

Beware the three pair. No, not poker. There are three pairs in this draft who played the same position for the same schools and are both expected to go high – wide receivers Malik Nabers and Brian Thomas of LSU, wide receivers Rome Odunze and Ja’Lynn Polk of Washington and wide receivers Adonai Mitchell and Xavier Worthy of Texas.