The NFL Draft started in the 1930s as a quiet affair in a hotel ballroom with no cameras and little buzz. Over the decades, it has transformed into a worldwide media spectacle that will draw more than 1,800 reporters and photographers to Pittsburgh next week.
While the NFL’s headquarters are on Park Avenue in New York City, Pittsburgh will be the epicenter of all things football April 23-25, as pro teams select a fresh crop of college football players for the big leagues.
“Interest in the draft as an event has grown exponentially,” said Michael Signora, the NFL’s senior vice president of football and international communications.
He is one of myriad NFL staffers whose job is to keep the circus on point. The NFL already has had 600 to 700 people, including local staff and crews, working on-site in the North Shore. On draft event days, around 200 to 300 people will be also working in the Point State Park area, according to the NFL.
From being conducted in hotel ballrooms to being held and televised in Madison Square Garden to now rotating among NFL cities, the draft has evolved both in scope and spectacle.
Over the last 20 years, draft madness grows each year. That has been accentuated now that the event hits the road in different cities.
The 24/7 nature of fandom, including fantasy sports and growing interest in the trade market, has created a growing need for media coverage.
Signora, a Penn State graduate who oversees football media relations, said 655 media members covered the draft on-site in New York in 2006, compared to more than 1,800 media personnel expected to cover the event and its related activities in Pittsburgh.
He said the league was excited about the opportunity to “turn the camera around” and show the skyline, the Point and Downtown’s prominent bridges. With the open-truss design of the draft main stage, “there’s a nod there to those iconic bridges and the steel work of Pittsburgh.”
And while cranes rise and construction crews hustle to dress up the city, the same intensity is playing out behind the scenes in NFL offices and in living rooms across the country, where prospects and their families prepare for one of the biggest nights of their lives.
“We have a team here in New York as part of the NFL that’s dedicated to the overall experience for the prospects and their family members,” Jon Barker, NFL senior vice president and global head of major events and international games, told TribLive. “Let’s not forget this is a family affair for these guys.”
There’s no offseason for Barker and other NFL staff. Many league employees were heavily involved in the recent scouting combine in Indianapolis. But the NFL’s attention is now squarely on the draft in Pittsburgh.
“We’ve got a full team dedicated to it, focused on it,” Barker said. “Every moment is orchestrated, scripted, arranged logistically.”
That ranges from CAD renderings of site plans to coordinating with vendors to working with local leaders to plan for traffic, transit and public safety. Barker estimates that about 150 NFL employees are working on these and other matters.
That, of course, requires ever more tents, technology and people. Barker says the heavy lift is worth it.
Last year on the opening night of the draft, 13.6 million people tuned in — “a staggering number,” Barker said. The draft also was broadcast internationally in 25 languages.
The NFL recognizes that the large viewership offers a massive global stage to the draft’s host city, Barker said. For Pittsburgh, the league has taken pains to highlight local landmarks and culture and set the scene for visitors and viewers who might be getting a look at Pittsburgh for the first time.
“We want to make sure that we’re telling the story of Pittsburgh to the rest of the world,” Barker said.
Barker said basically everything “inside the fence line” falls to the NFL Events Department. But others — including the City of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, draft partner VisitPittsburgh and an assortment of vendors and contractors — are working to build out the draft and make it a success.
That includes people working on preparation at Point State Park and on the North Shore, as well as entities such as the University of Pittsburgh working on their own draft-adjacent events.
For Barker, Signora and others, though, the real highlight is making the night of those young men whose futures will be indelibly shaped by the draft.
“We’re doing everything possible so that they remember it for the rest of their lives,” Barker said.
Megan Trotter is a TribLive staff writer. She can be reached at mtrotter@triblive.com. Colin Williams is a former TribLive staff writer.