With the first pick in the 2013 NFL draft

Nobody Likes a Jerk selects...he'll it doesn't really matter who I selected. He's either going to be labeled a savoir or a washout depending on how the rest of the team plays behind him.

I took my one and only break from baseball season this weekend to catch a little of the NFL draft. It didn't hurt that the Mets had an awful series against the Phillies, so that freed up my schedule a bit. It also didn't hurt that the Jets had two picks in the first 15.

The draft used to be appointment viewing with Chris Burman and Mel Kipper going at it for 8 hours on a Saturday afternoon. Depending on which side of the coin you're on, that has now been reduced to 2 hours on Thursday night, 2 hours on Friday night, and some time on Saturday where no one is really watching unless you have a Geno Smith or Brady Quinn type in the Green Room beyond the first round. 

Speaking of Mr. Smith, those Jets drafted him in the 2nd round and I'm happy. He's a very athletic quarterback who has a strong arm and big legs. He kind of reminds me of Tim Tebow only with out the Christ complex and with an actual working arm. Mr. Tebow was released this morning by the team which brings the number of QB's on the roster down to a manageable 5 (there's a lot of sarcasm here). Actually if the team is really interested in teaching Smith and grooming him to be the QB of the future then put him down as the 3rd on the depth chart behind starter Mark Sanchez and back up David Gerrard and let him hold the clipboard this season and learn. We are not going anywhere and can put up with another season of Sanchez.

But all this talk of players and strategy takes me off the point I was trying to make here today. Did you watch the draft? Did you see the tables where each team's staff was huddled around just before making each pick? Did you notice something out of place on those tables? If you said "A Bottle of Gatorade", you would be correct! 

One of the NFL's biggest sponsors made sure to have their products placed in a high-eyeball area during the draft. While that's great for the world of product placement, does anybody care that a sports drink was being featured in an environment where there were more neck ties than score ties?

The Draft has it's fair share of corporate sponsors this year. Ad Age points out that among them are Visa, Verizon, and other companies that don't even have V's in their names. (http://adage.com/article/news/nfl-turned-draft-mcrib-sporting-events/241141/) But why was Gatorade the only one featured up on the tables? Did other companies just not give as much? What a great tie-in Visa could have had if each team went up to congratulate their newest acquisition and handed him a pre-paid Visa card with his signing bonus already loaded up!

I get that this is a prime time event with lots of the coveted "Males 24-40" demographic tuning in but I don't think that calls for this much of an insult to "our" collective intelligence. Do you think we don't know what Gatorade is? We've grown up with the "Be Like Mike" campaign and the 1986 Giants starting the Gatorade showers. We get it. What we don't get is why?  When I'm in the office and the pressure is on. Do you know what I reach for? If you said a big bottle of lemon-lime G2, you'd be wrong....coincidentally if you said whiskey, you'd be right! 

That's it! The 2014 NFL draft brought to you by Jack Daniels and Lazy Boy!