During last year's NFL Draft, the league attempted to avoid tipping picks, but that went to hell pretty quickly. The nonstop tweeting of picks by NFL reporters like Adam Schefter before the pick was made pretty much killed any drama the draft had, and the TV broadcast eventually just gave up and went back to their old tried and true ways of showing sobbing college players on the phone moments before they were picked.
This year on NFL Network, the league is going to try to control tipping picks. Key word: "try." Pro Football Talk has the quote from NFL Network coordinating producer Charlie Yoon.
“We’re trying not to tip the picks,” Yook told USA Today. We want to show the element of surprise for the viewer, even though we’ll clearly know in-house. And it will be OK for analysts to speculate.”
So essentially, the analysts are going to "speculate" by looking at Twitter and seeing what reporters are saying the pick will be five minutes before it's made, and look like geniuses? I don't even know why they're even trying anymore. It doesn't even seem feasible to watch the NFL Draft when picks pop up on Twitter minutes before they're revealed on TV, but last year's draft was the second-most viewed ever. Pick tipping or no pick tipping, the Draft still brings in eyeballs by the bucketload for ESPN and NFL Network.
