It is N.F.L. draft season. Or more precisely, it is N.F.L. mock draft season.
The draft gets more popular every year. Last year’s average viewership of the first round was 12.4 million, a record. And in the days before the event, it seems as if every sports outlet publishes one or more mock drafts, team-by-team predictions of how the first round will go.
ESPN actually televised a mock draft on Monday afternoon, complete with a podium, announcements and video clips of selections, as if it were the real thing. Walter Football, a site that collects mock drafts, already has more than 350 posted.