The 2008 NFL Draft begins tomorrow, and what’s a professional sporting event without official branded swag-a-plenty? (Really? Team gear for the fucking DRAFT?)
Over the course of the weekend, the teams of the NFL will eventually work their way through several hundred college players, like choosing sides for the world’s largest game of dodgeball (which, in some sense, I suppose it is). Like dodgeball, the central operating assumption is that the best players are picked first, so to level out the choices the worst teams get the earliest picks (unless they have traded a pick to another team for cash or some other compensation…which is how the 18-1 Patriots get the #7 pick tomorrow). Eventually, though, the number of players to be chosen gets smaller and smaller until they finally reach the very last pick.
Speaking as someone who was always the very last pick for dodgeball or any other gym class competition, I have a great deal of sympathy for the guy who gets picked last in the NFL Draft. Apparently, though, I am not alone in this regard. Since 1976, a man named Paul Salata has organized a special event called “Irrelevant Week” (via) especially dedicated to paying some small degree of honor to the Ultimate Underdog. The event takes place in Newport Beach, CA and includes all sorts of fun activities open to the public, culminating in a special banquet to honor “Mr. Irrelevant” and to present him with the “Lowsman Trophy” (pictured above).
I hasten to point out that no Northwestern University graduate has ever been selected as Mr. Irrelevant. I also would like to point out that while the various past winners have, for the most part, gone on to unspectacular professional football careers, not every guy on this list or this one were necessarily superstars either.
