With less than five hours until the NFL Draft, it’s time for us to get ready for three days of non-stop coverage. It’s been a major change since the drafts of decades past. It wasn’t a primetime event and it didn’t encompass three whole days. But that’s the change in the landscape of football.

The NFL has become king in this country. Anything and everything NFL is going to be eaten up by the consumer. We want NFL information all the time. Spreading the draft to three days was an obvious inevitability. And I am glad it happened.

One of the best things about the draft is all the scrutiny and analysis and mock drafts that come with it. Everyone has an opinion and everyone wants to share their input. It’s a pool of unpredictability, yet we try to predict it anyway. We have ideas of what a smart pick would be and what a dumb pick would be. Sometimes we are right. Sometimes we are wrong.

The draft is not only an even for the 32 NFL teams, but it’s our own little game. We watch it to see if we’re right. We hope that our favorite team lands the player that can take the team to the next level. The dreams of these prospects are realized and we can say we saw them when they took their first NFL steps.

The NFL is a storyline. It has become one. We know so much of these players even before they hit the field. We hear their stories, we see their journey. We follow them on social media and we watch every interview they have. Analysts destroy or build their stock and we can’t turn away. We see them before the game. We see them during the game. We see them after the game. Their lives are our entertainment.

There is an intrigue about the draft that is so different from any other draft in the other major professional sports. Part of it is the spectacle the NFL has made it to be. But it’s only because we want more and we need more. And we’ve been given more.

The story continues on in the NFL and today is a major episode. From this point, we see new characters to our ongoing storyline of the NFL. Our guesses and predictions may be correct or completely wrong. It doesn’t matter. What we want to see is now here. I can’t wait.