The Rant offers the following scenario: One day while innocently cruising the internet, you stumble on a site called The Colon Guys. To your amazement, you’re on it under a byline that reads, What’s He Hiding? Apparently your forgot to schedule your colonoscopy. An unnamed source claims your spouse is frantic. A Colon Guru with no medical training but that has watched “hundreds of hours of colonoscopy tape” in his basement (fine, his mom’s basement) has somehow discovered video of your last procedure. He’s horribly concerned. “The doctors can try and spin this all they want,” Colon Guru solemnly intones, “but I’ve seen guys with three months to live with better tape than that.”
You frantically call the doctor’s office. Baffled by your hysteria, they schedule the procedure. Too Little Too Late? wonders The Colon Guys. A childhood friend posts a video remembering that you never took colon health seriously. Colon Guru has grave doubts about your medical team, “A D.O.? Really? How bad does this guy really want to live is what I’m hearing.” People in the Know flood the Colon Chats offering anecdotes about your convenience store snack choices and life insurance status.
A reporter stands in your driveway and offers constant updates on your Colon Prep Day: America Waits. “Not going well in there. An unnamed offspring, speaking on conditions of anonymity so his allowance isn’t cut off, says the profanity coming from the bathroom sounds like a Tarantino movie. Not that he’s seen one. Ever. Dakota told him about it.” Colon Guru lists Top Five New Dad Prospects in case of your demise, including Dakota’s recently divorced father, because everyone knows that situation with Tiffany will never last. You can read all about it on the Sad Dads site. Just navigate to the What’s She Thinking? subpage.
The day finally arrives. Your anxious family gathers in the waiting room. The Colon Guys livestream the results. The doctor emerges. All Clear. Nothing to worry about. Jubilation from your family, except for unnamed offspring, who thinks Dakota’s dad is really cool and would let him do whatever he wants. You issue a statement, “Thankful for all the thoughts and prayers. I just had to trust the process.” Meanwhile, speculation has already begun to run rampant over at Prostrate Prostates about your upcoming PSA test.
Congratulations! You just survived an eerily accurate facsimile of the NFL Draft. The Rant would argue nothing exemplifies the current zeitgeist1 like the NFL Draft, or rather the alternate reality draft machinations that seemingly influence and direct events while actually operating as an utterly meaningless exercise. Except for the millions it generates for a cadre of hucksters that doesn’t include you.
Need proof? The draft ended Sunday. On Tuesday, The Rant saw no less than a half dozen mock drafts for 2026. Only 363 days of hype to go. The Drafterati also enjoy going back in time and re-drafting that year’s players in a subtle argument they can alter the time-space continuum. And make you re-live the horrible choices your hapless team made. This serious nonsense began in 1979 when a high school senior named Mel Kiper, Jr.2 created a 150 page draft guide in his parents’ basement and sent it to every NFL team. Some called him after receiving it for further info and data, and the imaginary Draft Universe was created. Kiper started selling the annual guide to subscribers and began appearing on ESPN in 1983 with his vaunted Big Board of prospects.3
The Drafterati are relentless in their promotion of favorite players and astoundingly wrong each year. They value Potential over all things. Never mind that the left tackle they endlessly tout played only five minutes over their five-year career due to an endless string of injuries, legal issues, transfers, and a brief conversion to a cult, have you seen the tape on those five minutes! Drafterati love talking about tape and then bust out the buzz words: Look at The Length! The Footwork! The Handbreadth! The Motor! The Get-Off! The Set-Up! The Leverage! Then they quote a Source close to a Team that nearly turned the entire franchise over to the Chosen One during his mind-blowing interview. After draft day, the player is never heard from again.
The intrigue of this year’s draft was the presence of a family that believed they had cracked the code: quarterback Shedeur Sanders and the Sanders clan, led by his father, transcendent NFL athlete Deion (don’t forget the MLB side hustle) now turned content creator and college coach. Shedeur and his brother Shiloh have only been coached by Deion, and Deion has been masterful in seizing the NIL moment to create an aura of athletic superiority around his family and team, the Colorado Buffaloes, that has to be true because they say it is. The commercials, memes, GIFs, and TikTok don’t lie. Celebrities, the media, and recruits eat it up, even if the product on the field has often been meh. Incredibly entertaining, but meh.
The Drafterati believed everything Team Sanders told them about the greatness of Shedeur, and Team Sanders became convinced the NFL believed the Drafterati. Sanders skipped practices at All-Star games. He allegedly sandbagged interviews at teams he didn’t want to play for. His carefully orchestrated workout for teams fell flat. But no matter. The Big Board and Kiper anointed Shedeur the No. 1 QB prospect of the draft class and No. 5 overall.
In the waning days leading up to any draft, there must be a Great Reconsideration. Some player formerly branded can’t-miss starts to hear whispers of impending doom. New buzz words followed by head-shaking: Character Issues. Can’t Command the Huddle. Ceiling Reached. In Shedeur’s case, Draftniks started taking NFL scouting to heart. The Rant could go grab a sandwich while Sanders spent an eternity in the pocket; the offense he ran was incredibly vanilla; no one knew what would happen away from the guidance of Deion. Shedeur started to slide down mock drafts into the second round. Provocateurs went as far as round three.
And then Shedeur Sanders appeared to become much more than a draft prospect. He transformed into a Cautionary Tale. NFL teams appeared to pass over him in spite, selecting lesser talent; he became the victim of a prank call (by the son of an assistant coach of the Atlanta Falcons, some tomfoolery that ended up costing the team and coach $350K. So hilarious dude.) informing him he had finally been drafted; Kiper had a meltdown on-air, at one point shouting the NFL had been getting QB picks wrong for 50 years. Easy Mel. The hair doesn’t have the power it once did. Finally, it was over in round five, only it wasn’t. Sanders was drafted by the Cleveland Browns, who had already drafted another quarterback earlier, and has notched such stellar QB achievements as drafting Johnny Manziel and giving accused serial sexual harasser Deshaun Watson an unheard of $230million guaranteed contract. Watson has played 19 mediocre games in three years and will probably never play again after multiple injuries. So Sanders was drafted by a NFL-adjacent franchise. Cautionary indeed.
The NFL makes billions of dollars for the media, its players, and its team owners. A game that isn’t a game that in the end is just a game. The hype and pronouncements are just entertainment we are told, everyone in on the gag. But tell that to Shedeur Sanders. He has been told his entire life that achievement can simply be called into being and streamed online. It worked until it didn’t. Deion produced a hall of fame career and then cashed in. He deluded himself into thinking he could save his sons the trouble of the production part.
This endless maelstrom of chatter around the actual work of fielding a competent team is hardly unique. For years The Rant has listened to people telling us the squalor of opinion from the internet, Fox News, and sycophants from both parties was merely spin and a game adjacent to the real business of governing. Now suddenly there exists an army of incompetence at the levers of power. They have no experience, no skills, no record of production. Just the arrogance that all of their shouting will now magically come into being devoid of any practical strategy or system of governance. They will grow rich, we will suffer, and the whole process will start over with new voices of irrational certainty to fill the void. Cautionary indeed.
- Zeitgeist is a German word that loosely translates as “what all the kids are talking about, doing, and feeling.” For your steady anger at understanding none of it, SEE: Angst.
- If you don’t know Mel, you almost certainly know his hair. A magnificent beast cut only by his wife Kim, the hair has multiple X accounts of its own. Alas, Mel’s hairline is fading faster than a fourth round draft pick.
- The Rant laments that Kiper no longer mimeographs his draft guides and the Big Board is digital, not a cardboard construction that always looked like it was frantically completed by an ESPN intern the night before the draft. I guess we just don’t understand the zeitgeist.
