2006 NFL Draft - How A Draftees Name Gets Called

Last year, I explained the process of how an NFL draftee's name gets called. This year, I thought I'd show it. Here's the text from my report from 2005 and a video of a couple of NFL "runners" taking the name of a pick of the San Francisco 49ers to the NFL's main table.

First, the report on "How a Draftee's Name Gets Called" from my 2005 NFL Draft Report:


While I was next to the stage, I took time to record the process by which a name gets called to be the "whatever round" pick of a team. It works like this: First, the team -- let's say the San Francisco 49ers -- has 15 minutes (or a quarter in football lingo) to decide who they're going to select. Two giant football-style clocks count down the seconds. If a team fails to make a pick during that time span, they must pass and the next organization in draft order has 15 minutes to make a selection. This is called being "On the clock." Redskins' Team Table: One of 32


It's Starts With The Team Table

Second, the team's representatives, including (depending on the team) the owner, general manager, head coach, and player personnel staff, are not in New York at the Draft, they're at the team's headquarters. It's from here that they call in their selection to their representative at the team table. Washington Redskins team representatives are in the foreground in the first picture shown on this page. NFL Head Table


...Then The Name Is...

Third, the team's representative -- which range from a friend of the organization to a young employee -- write the name of the choice on a card. NFL and CSC events employees pick up that card and carry it to the NFL's main operations table. (NFL SVP Frank Supovitz is the leftmost person above.)

Fourth, from that table and to its left, the card is passed over to a bank of NFL staffers that enter it into a computer system to be recorded.

Now, here's the video of part of that process: