NFL Draft

In this week’s blog I am very excited to get back to writing about the NFL. The big news that everyone has been anticipating this time of year is the NFL draft. Every year the media is promoting the draft more and more. It is very definite that they have definitely stepped up the promoting this year. For the very first time, the draft is being held on prime time hours for television viewing. The media has many intriguing stories that the audience is very excited to hear about. Some of the main stories of the first round of the draft were Sam Bradford going first overall, and when will Jimmy Clausen and Colt McCoy get picked? Some of these stories have already been answered. As the title stated Sam Bradford did go number one overall to the Rams. Jimmy Clausen surprisingly dropped all the way to the 16th pick in the second round to the Carolina Panthers. As of right now, Colt McCoy has not been taken yet. The media is all over this story because many people thought he would be drafted much higher. For absolutely every player the media has a story to tell about them. The Radio City Music Hall, which hosts this event, is absolute chaos during the NFL draft. The venue is filled with fans, reporters, Hall of Famers, Commissioners, and players nervously waiting for their name to be called. Along with promoting the draft, the media gets a lot of attention for covering every step of it. I have been keeping up with the draft in various ways. I have been watching the draft on ESPN 2, reading about it on various websites, and keeping track of who has been taken on my IPod Touch. If that isn’t covering all forms of media, I don’t know what is!
I have been watching the draft pretty closely to see what my favorite team (Minnesota Vikings) would do. During the first round they had the 30th overall pick. I waited all night to see who they would pick, only to find out that they had traded their pick for more picks in the second round. I guess it paid off because I feel they got two very good players in the second round. First they picked Chris Cook, and then they picked running back Toby Gerhart. This made me pretty excited considering Gerhart was this year’s Heisman runner up.
Overall, the NFL draft is a very important media magnet for the NFL. It is unbelievable how much coverage the NFL gets for this event. This year’s draft is filled with great stories, and it will be very fun to see how all of them play out.

Tiger

Many people may be sick of hearing about Tiger Woods in the media. This is because the media has been having an absolute hay day with Tiger Woods ever since he crashed his car. I know that I cannot turn on ESPN without hearing something about him. Even though there are many other important things that could be talked about, (NBA playoffs, MLB season, NFL draft) Tiger Woods still seems to be what is on everybody’s mind. In the past Tiger Woods has been able to keep a low profile. Ever since all of the news came out about all of the women he has been with, he has not been able to get out of the spot light. All of this has to do with the media and public relations. Tiger Woods is not only a golfer, but a business. He has to sell himself to the public and to his sponsors to make money. Recently Tiger has been making the news for his return to golf. This return has been talked about in the media for a long time for a lot of reasons. One reason was to see how the fans would react to Tiger after what he had done. I watched his opening drive on ESPN and it seemed like the crowd was pretty sympathetic towards Mr. Woods. I was expecting to see a much more hostile environment, but on the contrary the fans were very nice to Tiger. While I was watching ESPN I saw a commercial featuring Tiger Woods looking directly into the camera while his dad’s voice is scolding him. I learned in my media class that this ad was not for advertisement at all, but for public relations. The ad was sponsored by Nike, which was one of the sponsors that held on to Tiger through this public relations nightmare. Many of Tigers sponsors dropped him because of his behavior. Even though Tiger definitely did some very bad things, it seems like he is trying to take the right steps to improve his image. He has gone to several weeks of counseling, and he has said that he will have more respect for the game of golf. It is yet to see if Tiger is really making these changes to improve himself as a person, or if it is just public relations to improve the image of Tiger Woods the business. It will be interesting to see what stories the media will come up with for Tiger in the future. Tiger is definitely giving the media stuff to cover. Hopefully, in the future he will only be in the media for good things and not for bad.