Draft Days: The Pageantry, Strategy, Chaos, and History of the NFL Draft

ESPN’s Rich Eisen, host of The Rich Eisen Show and anchor of the NFL Draft for over two decades, explores our strange love affair with the draft in a definitive book that chronicles nearly a century of colorful history, strategic jostling, and insider secrets—with input from coaches, players, executives, scouts, analysts, beat writers, and historians.

The NFL Draft should not be one of the most popular televised sporting events in America, especially given that it doesn’t involve any actual sports. And yet a broadcast that consists of ten hours of people reading names off a list—and the rest of us reacting in real-time to the reading of those names—draws millions of television viewers, fuels a cottage industry of mock-draft experts, and attracts hundreds of thousands of people who flock like festival-goers to watch it live. How did an event that struggled for decades to attract the attention of even the most bored newspaper reporters transform itself into America’s most-watched reality show?

Draft Days is the story of America’s year-round love affair with football. It’s about hope, despair, pageantry, controversy, and the power of television—with cameos from legends, busts, and Mel Kiper’s hair. And who better to write the authoritative book on the subject than the man who’s become its resident emcee? Rich Eisen has had a front-row seat at the heart of the draft as it’s blown up into an annual phenomenon. Now it’s his turn on the clock. He’ll share his inside perspective on the indelible moments and riveting storylines that have transformed the NFL Draft into the league’s offseason Super Bowl—from the brilliant maneuvering to the regrettable choices to the sheer joy and unpredictability of one of sports’ biggest spectacles.