They call Mel Kiper the so-called God Father of the NFL Draft, but I listened to and read Joel Buchsbaum's material for years before I even heard of Kiper.
The problem Joel had was he had a face for radio and a voice for print, so that is why Kiper, who debuted with ESPN in 1984 gets credit as people forgot the likes of Buchsbaum and Paul Zimmerman, who was the first analysts they had on when they began televising the draft back on April 29th 1980.
True Story when I was in the military back in 1985, I took a day of leave to watch the NFL Draft. Back then it started on a Tuesday and I asked for a day to watch it at my apartment (
@Loyal will kill me for that) and people in my unit, could not believe I was burning a day of leave to watch a draft, not a game.
In fact, it started at 9:00am and around Noon time, my first sergeant came to my place, it was not far from base just to actually see me watching it, I guess he thought I was doing something else. For the record the Rams draft in 1985 started with Jerry Gray in the first round and included Kevin Greene in the 5th. Again, so many were amazed I took a day of leave to do that so I always felt I was way ahead of the curve.