When Curly Lambeau built the Green bay packers The lists in the first years of the team, he just released and obtained the players he wanted. Fortunately for the packers, Lambeau was charming and convincing and he attracted a Lots of future renowned temple players to the isolation of Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Packers have never been very financially wealthy, which did not make them unusual in the NFF to nine teams, nor facilitates the attracts of players. The project was suggested by Philadelphia Eagles The owner and future NFL commissioner Bell, who considered that his team did not have the financial resources to compete with the others in attracting players. The other owners agreed with the idea and the first project took place in 1936 in Philadelphia. The nine teams selected in a pool of 90 players covered in newspaper stories, university visits and word of mouth.
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The very first player drafted by the packers, who chose the seventh, was Russ LetlowAn offensive guard from the University of San Francisco and Future Member of the Packers renowned temple. Letlow was appointed to the NFL decade team in the 1930s, but is not at the temple of professional football fame.
Four selections in this draft have become members of the renowned temple of professional football Joe Stydahar and Dan Fortmann, both from the Chicago Bears“Tuffy” leemans of New York Giants and Wayne Millner from Boston Redskins.
The choice of eighth round of the packers was back Wally Cruice, originally from Milwaukee which frequented the Northwestern University. Cruice refused to sign with packers, deciding rather to work for an oil company and first -year football coach at the Northwestern University. He became a scout for packers in 1946, Curly Lambeau at the Cardinals of Chicago followed in 1950 and returned to the packers in 1952. He stayed with the team until 1976.
From the start, the project was not a guaranteed talent supplier. Philadelphia, with the very first choice, chose the winner of the Heisman Jay Berwanger trophy of the University of Chicago, who rather decided a career as a foam rubber seller after being almost immediately exchanged in the Bears. In fact, only 24 of the 81 players written chose the NFL in turn. Not unusual decisions when you consider that professional football has not paid as well as other professions.
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But the teams decided that the project was always the best way to store stock lists and that it gradually increased as the deductibles developed screening departments and other means of identifying prospects. It went to 22 laps and 200 choices in 1939, and 32 laps in 1943 and 487 choices in 1976, most in these categories. Since 1994, the project included seven laps and 222 and 262 choices.
The project moved from city to city before the 1965 draft, Including the 1940 draft in MilwaukeeIn fact held in December 1939, the only time she was held in Wisconsin. From 1964 (the 1965 project) to 2014, the project took place in New York.
Steve Schumer, a member of the Hall of Fame of Fan Packers who lives in New Jersey, attended several sketches in the 1970s when they were detained at the New York Ambassador hotel. It was an intimate affair. It was not a television and there were perhaps 50 fans present. They were sitting in a balcony, perhaps 10 or 15 feet above the ground floor, which held representatives of the teams and the media. Schumer could look at the balcony and ask one of the football screenwriters if a player was a good choice or not and get an answer.
The NFL televised the draft on the new ESPN sports network in 1980. Although the NFL commissioner, Pete Rozelle, was skeptical, there would be an audience, it was a fairly important success to continue to be televised since. It was extended to three days in 2010 and In 2015, I hit the road For the first time in 50 years, when he quickly became the biggest NFL event after the Super Bowl.
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In addition to the move, the NFL added an outdoor festival which allowed fans of the 32 teams to mingle and celebrate all football. The project took place in an existing place, the theater auditorium of the Roosevelt University in Chicago, and the experience of the NFL was in Grant Park, a third of a mile of distance.
The project moved to Philadelphia in 2017 and the NFL built an outdoor scene for the first time, a practice it has followed since.
“What we have learned (from Chicago) is the energy of this scene and this theater really needed to be colocated with the experience of the festival,” said Nick Ewell, principal director of NFL events.
Green Bay Packers immediately carried out the possibilities and began to persuade the NFL that the draft should take place in Green Bay. It took 10 years, but on April 24 to 26, Lambeau Field and surroundings welcomed the second project of the Wisconsin.
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“It was not a difficult decision to come to the Mecca of professional football,” said Ewell. “It’s certainly a sacred field. It’s a bit like the football church, so it was an easy -to -make decision.”
The attendance varied from 160,000 in Cleveland in 2021, the year following the virtual recovery of the 2020s due to COVVI-19, at 775,000 in Detroit in 2024. Green Bay plans 250,000 for the April draft, which will be in and around the Field Lambus campus.
The NFL draft has taken place in these cities since its creation in 1936 and should be in Pittsburgh in 2026. The years listed are for the year of draft, not necessarily the year it took place:
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2020: Virtual due to the COVVI-19 pandemic
Contact Richard Ryman at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @Richrymanpg, On Instagram at @rrymanpg or on facebook at www.facebook.com/richardrymanpg
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: NFL draft created for parity, now the big event after the Super Bowl
