Last week I went to Cleveland for the NFL Draft. I have been to the NFL Draft a weird amount of times for someone who doesn’t actually enjoy the Draft. Don’t get me wrong, I love football, I just don’t really watch college football so I don’t really know who the players being drafted are and I don’t like learning about them because if they go to a team I don’t like I don’t want to be attached. It’s also generally a fairly boring experience to watch someone read off names once every 15 minutes. So why have I been so many times? Did I mention I love football?

In 2008 the Dolphins had the #1 pick in the Draft and I had made a few friends who were Dolphins fans in NYC and we camped out overnight to see the Draft at Radio City Music Hall. It was honestly a blast to stay up all night and just talk shit with other football fans in the middle of the off season. After the first pick we didn’t really have anything to do, but it was a cool enough experience to do it again the next year. This time the Dolphins had a good season and a low draft pick… We also had started a fan club and instead of a few of us it was a couple dozen of us and the pre Draft smack talk became even more fun and it became a great way to tell other Dolphins fans about our fan club, Dolfans NYC.

Eventually the Draft left NYC and I took a few years off before the Dolphins invited us to be part of the “Inner Circle” in Dallas which is a small section of fans that represent each team in front of the Draft stage. Dolfans NYC has become the biggest Dolphins fan club on the planet so it has given me some cool opportunities around the Dolphins world. It was a very cool experience to be up front and center after years of us sitting in the upper decks of Radio City. I also got to make it rain on our first round draft pick. The next year I got asked to be part of the Inner Circle again, and this time it was in Vegas so of course I accepted, but unfortunately Covid ruined that trip. I still got to sort of be part of it because they had a bunch of fans on TV behind Roger Goodell as he made the pick. 

A year later I got the email from the Dolphins again. The Inner Circle was still an option but only 12 fans per team were allowed to be part of it and they had to be vaccinated by two weeks before the Draft. They told us it was first come, first serve. Fortunately I happened to be holding my hand in at the time and emailed the team back immediately and a few weeks later I was headed to Cleveland of all places. 

I spent three days in the city most celebrated for not being Detroit and attended two days of the Draft. I only took pictures on the first day because I figured I got enough stuff and I was sick of dragging my camera around in the clear plastic bag that is required for attending NFL events (Thanks Boston bomber) but I did make it to almost all of the second day as well. It gets pretty damn boring after the first round, but we had two picks in the second and one in the third so day 2 wasn’t too bad. Plus my favorite band whose entire catalogue sounds like a car commercial, Kings of Leon, played an entire set for some reason. I thought they were gonna play like two songs, but they played 8 or 9 and I thought I was going to lose my mind before the second round of the Draft even started. 

On the first day we got a little music as well from Ann Wilson of Heart who kinda crushed the National Anthem, but the first day was all about something else, a comfy chair. Last year’s Covid Draft was a hit because you got to see players, coaches and GMs in their homes with their families and pets and inexplicably the NFL took from that commissioner Roger Goodell’s chair. They shipped his living room chair to Cleveland and had on fan sit on it for each pick. They just brought up a fan and they got to sit in it on stage. When it happened I started getting Tweets from friends who were joking about me getting to sit in the chair, but when the Dolphins selected with the 6th pick a guy sitting two rows behind me got the nod. I didn’t expect to get the chair but as I started looking around I realized I might actually get a chance. 

Of the 12 Dolphins fans in the Inner Circle there were 4 fans who either were not dressed up in Dolphins gear or strangely enough were not Dolphins fans. There were also four fans who were just in standard Dolphins jerseys and another guy who had already been picked. I realized I probably had a 1:3 chance of going up and one of those three was wearing a “JETS SUCK BILLS SWALLOW” hat so I figured they probably wouldn’t put him on TV (I was wrong, he ended up in the chair on day 2). A couple picks before the Dolphins second pick (still the first round) I got a nod from a producer who asked me if I wanted to sit in the chair. Normally this wouldn’t be something I would be super interested in, but I was at the Draft to promote Dolfans NYC so I was all about it. I shoot hands with Goodell and he put me in the chair and I tried to just be as chill as humanly possible because there were a lot of people and a lot of cameras looking at me. Another person from the NFL came up to me and told me that I would be handed a jersey after the pick and I should walk over to Goodell and hold it up. When Goodell walked out again to announce the pick he showed it to me and then asked me if I liked the pick. I nodded, he read off the name and I held up the jersey. Not super exciting, but for some reason Slate interviewed me about it which was real hilarious. 

Anyway, I was on TV a couple of times on top of the chair thing and I got a lot of texts and DMs and the whole thing was funny enough for me to devote 1000 words to this post, but I think it’s time we all moved on with our lives and looked at some photos. I love documenting any fandom, no matter what it is. As long as people are passionate about something, I want to photograph it, but when it’s something I am also weirdly into it’s even better.

Click here to see my photos from the 2021 NFL Draft in Cleveland, Ohio.

 

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