ESPN under fire for an NFL Draft broadcast focusing on "tragedy porn"

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The first two nights of ESPN's NFL Draft coverage has been criticized for focusing too much on the family tragedies of players as they are drafted. (Although this year's NFL Draft is technically a joint ESPN-NFL Network production, the draft mainly an ESPN production.) Or as Barstool Sports called it, "tragedy porn." ESPN not only kept focusing on the death of players' family members, but also questionable stories like a mom battling drug addiction for 16 years. As one Twitter user put it: "is this the NFL draft or an obituary?"

First-ever virtual NFL Draft was flawless, boring and everything we needed right now

"As a TV event, the NFL’s lockdown draft felt slapdash, a little weird and less eventful than those in recent years," says Oliver Connolly. "It was also the first time in over a month things felt slightly back to normal." He adds: "The draft went off, more or less, without a hitch, unless you happen to share a home with Aaron Rodgers. The technology worked fine. The broadcast networks did a commendable job of patching it all together. The teams sat and waited, no one was willing to mortgage their future to jump into the top 10 or shuffle up towards the top five with so much uncertainty over what the next season might look like. Given the downsized feel and general unease of the whole operation, there was a lack of zest running throughout the broadcast. Teams at the top of the board didn’t help; their decision-makers were altogether too sensible...The virtual draft removed all of the excesses and indulgences that make the event so wacky and wonderful in the first place. ESPN leaned into the human interest side of things – understandable given current circumstances – but it left little room for talk of football or team-building or what’s next and stripped an awful lot of fun out of an event that is, objectively, ridiculous. Remove the hilarity of the thing and you’re just left with Roger Goodell delivering his best humanoid impression as he reads 32 names. It’s a little dry."

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• NFL executives' weird houses saved the 2020 NFL Draft: "Just as the evening threatened to turn into the same old slog, there came a saving grace: footage from inside the homes of coaches, general managers, and executives," says Nick Greene. "These characters usually spend draft nights stationed in their facility’s 'war rooms,' but, thanks to social distancing, we got to see them in their more natural environments."
• Last night was nothing more than a self-congratulatory branding opportunity seized with great vigor: "You were meant to come away from all that soft narration and saluting of first responders with the understanding that the NFL is now the official league of Helping Us Heal During This Pandemic," says Tom Ley. "Just as you were previously meant to understand that the NFL was the official league of Supporting Our Brave Troops, and Supporting Our Brave Women, and Supporting Our Brave Social Justice Advocates. The irony of the NFL making uniquely eager sports fans sit through nearly 20 minutes of self-hagiography before actually giving them what they desperately wanted will likely never penetrate the league office. No sports league in history has never been more convinced of its own importance, or of its unique status not as an entertainment product, but as a civic institution."
• NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was relieved the first round went well, says he'll be back to announce Rounds 2 and 3 tonight
• Goodell made a mistake in announcing Las Vegas will host the 2020 NFL Draft, when he meant the 2022 draft

Tonight's NFL Draft is a welcome sight in a sports-starved world

"On the Great To See You Again scale, Roger Goodell ranks somewhere between your tax accountant and your proctologist," says Pat Forde. "The sight of him usually stirs up dormant annoyance. Few commissioners in any sport are beloved, but Goodell is well below the mean. Yet Thursday night I will gaze upon the boss of the National Football League like a long-lost brother. It will, indeed, be great to see you again, Rog. Goodell will announce the picks in the first round of the NFL draft Thursday, and the fallow sports landscape will bear its first fruit in weeks. For the first time since March 12, the day sports in America slammed to a halt, something will happen. We will have something to watch, and it won’t be a documentary (some of which have been great) or a replay of an old classic game. It will be present tense. We’ll have live and unscripted sporting drama, and it will be quite welcome. It’s a long way from the most important thing in our world right now. Way down the hierarchy of needs. But man, is this draft arriving right on time."

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• Get ready for the most "complicated" NFL Draft broadcast ever: "With the nation shut down because of COVID-19, the NFL Draft will be a technological juggling act over three days over multiple networks," says Richard Deitsch. "It will feature staffers from multiple networks in different locations working together. There will be 180 remote video feeds across the country giving the production access to draft picks, coaches, general managers and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell from his home in Westchester County. Each of the people involved in the remote video feeds has been given individual video kits to connect with the production. We’ll see how it goes."
• Hopefully tonight's NFL Draft will be full of disasters: "In short, I want the league that is too big to fail, to fail," says Ray Ratto. "I want the first truly mockable draft. Not because of any moral or ethical issue (you can have a field day with that if you want; in the new dystopia, the world is chasing paper towels and yeast for amateur bakers), but because nothing in entertainment is better than abject collapse. The draft was thisclose to being fully Las Vegasized, so I’m all in on the draft turned into a third-grade classroom from the ’60s where nobody is listening to the teacher."
• ESPN showed the first televised NFL Draft 40 years ago this month, on April 29, 1980
• Check out NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's basement NFL Draft set

NFL Draft grabbed its best-ever ratings with 15.6 million tuning in for the first round

Thursday's first-ever virtual NFL Draft saw a 37% improvement over last year's draft across ABC, ESPN, NFL Network and SPN Deportes. About 11.1 million watched Night one of last year's draft. The previous high for an NFL Draft was in 2014, when 12.4 million tuned in to watch Johnny Manziel get drafted by the Cleveland Browns. ALSO: The first-ever remote NFL Draft was basically the meme Super Bowl.

ESPN apolgizes for a graphic emphasizing the mother of an NFL Draft prospect's 16-year battle with drug addiction

ESPN had been criticized for focusing on "tragedy porn" in repeatedly bringing up tragedies connected to players who were just drafted between Thursday and Saturday. One egregious example was Clemson wide receiver Tee Higgins, whose TV draft graphic stated: "Mom, Camillia, fought drug addiction for 16 years." While Higgins, who was drafted Friday by the Cincinnati Bengals, had no problem with the graphic, ESPN apologized on Sunday. "It was a mistake and we apologize for it,” ESPN vice president of production Seth Markman said in a statement. “We want our draft coverage to personalize players and, where appropriate, acknowledge the obstacles they’ve had to overcome on their journey to the NFL. This graphic lacked proper context.” In a separate interview with NBC Sports' Peter King, Markman adds that he's heard the criticism. "It’s not unfair," he says. "It’s something we should self-scout for the future. It’s something we can examine. We didn’t want to be Debbie Downer, but we wanted to show how some of the players overcame major issues in their lives. Maybe how Javon Kinlaw drew inspiration from growing up homeless, or a player overcoming a father’s suicide to achieve his dream.” ALSO: NFL Draft's Day 2 and Day ratings join Day 1 in setting new draft records.

The NFL has a "problem": Its virtual NFL Draft was superior to the old way

Next year, the NFL plans to go back to making the NFL Draft a glitzy affair with a massive stage and crowd in Cleveland. But this year's virtual draft showed the virtues of paring things down. "The NFL has a problem with this draft format: It’s better than the old way. Now the league has to figure out how to incorporate this authentic, not-too-perfect style into the glitzy extravaganza typical drafts have become," says Sam Farmer. The NFL sent "tech kits" to 58 players that included lights, microphones, tripods, and two iPhones — all for streaming video of the sheltered-at-home prospects celebrating being drafted, says Farmer. This allowed more draft prospects to participate in the draft. In an interview, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell -- who over three days did a TikTok dance with a draft prospect and wore a T-shirt -- was asked by Farmer what he learned from this year's virtual draft, which was the highest-rated ever. "We can accomplish things that we don’t think we can accomplish," he said. "The word I use is we have to adapt. You have to pivot, and you have to work the problem for solutions, and that’s what we’ve done. When we saw a problem, we fixed it. We found a way to accomplish it. It was different. We can’t hug the draft prospect. So what are we going to do to find something that’s as close and may even have additional benefits? The additional benefit for us was, we got to do it with more. I think I was on FaceTime with 70 or 75 players. We couldn’t have done that in the past. We could have, but we wouldn’t have thought about it."

ALSO:

• ESPN declined to show one prospect because of inappropriate social distancing -- he had 30 people in his room: "We felt at the time that it was probably inappropriate to represent that to the rest of the country,” said ESPN vice president of production Seth Markman.
• The best part of this year's NFL Draft were the backgrounds: From New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick's dog to Arizona Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury's Entourage-style house.
• Remote NFL Draft also highlighted the lack of diversity among NFL general managers and head coaches
• Virtual NFL Draft showed how interesting seeing families can be, especially when the moms block the cameras
• Here are five elements of the virtual NFL Draft that should be made permanent