This is what I wrote on the first day of the NFL Draft back in 2005:
Actually, there’s one player whose interview really said something to me, and while I hesitate to make predictions about something so chaos-driven as the NFL, I decided something about Aaron Rodgers. Touted as a potential #1 pick, the quarterback instead had to wait over five hours as one team after another passed him by.
All the analysts agreed that it wouldn’t have been wise for many of the teams to take him – in spite of his considerable talents first-round quarterbacks are so expensive these days that there’s immediate pressure to have them compete for the starting job, so if you’ve got a starter you feel good about, drafting a quarterback in the first round is trouble. And yet they persisted in hyping it to the rafters – what went wrong? – as if the young man did something impeachable to bring this all about.
As the hours rolled they kept sticking cameras in his face and interviewing him, as if expecting him to apologize for not being good enough to make a team do something stupid and self-defeating by drafting someone they don’t need. And though you could see he was jittery and trying to stay cool, he did manage to toss off a truly excellent answer to yet another slack-jawed repetition of “How does this make you feel?”
He just grinned and said – “It’s building character as we speak.”
Rodgers got drafted 24th to the Green Bay Packers, where he will be mentored by Demigod Brett Favre. Between that and his perfect answer, I’m predicting the kid turns out alright.