Draft fever has returned! As the eyes of the nation turn to the NFL Draft on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, BSM is once again tapping into the week by doing things in a less conventional way. We’ve had PD’s draft talent, talent draft talent, talent draft guests, and reporters draft all-time sports TV shows. We’ve even done a lazy sports radio draft among the BSM staff. While we recognize this is a big week for football fans, we see it as an opportunity to use our creativity to produce content that is interesting, entertaining, and connected to a topical event.

Having said that, this year we decided to do our first NFL Analyst Draft. The rules for this were simple, whether an individual talks football in a TV booth, radio booth, TV studio, or digital platform, if they’re exceptional at explaining the game and sharpening the minds of football fans, they’re eligible to be drafted.

As you review the results, you’ll notice that the draft order is based on the actual NFL Draft. We involved hosts in each NFL city or called upon a talent who has an affinity for the franchise picking in that spot. Some selections you’ll agree with, others you won’t, and it’ll likely lead to texts and social media interactions among industry folks. It may even become on-air content. I thank all 32 participants for making time to be a part of the process, and now present you with the results of BSM’s 2024 NFL Analyst Draft.

Enjoy!

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• 1. Danny Parkins, 670 The Score: GREG OLSEN, FOX SPORTS
• 2. Grant Paulsen, 106.7 The Fan: CHARLES DAVIS, CBS SPORTS
• 3. Andy Gresh, WEEI: TOM BRADY, FOX SPORTS
• 4. Dave Burns, Arizona Sports: LOUIS RIDDICK, ESPN
• 5. Rob Parker, Fox Sports Radio: RYAN CLARK, ESPN
• 6. Shaun Morash, WFAN: TIKI BARBER, CBS SPORTS
• 7. Dawn Davenport, 104.5 The Zone: JASON MCCOURTY, CBS SPORTS
• 8. Chris Dimino, 680 The Fan: PHIL SIMMS, CBS SPORTS
• 9. Marc Silverman, ESPN Chicago: KYLE BRANDT, NFL NETWORK
• 10. Brandon Tierney, WFAN: ROSS TUCKER, CBS SPORTS/Westwood One
• 11. Phil Mackey, SKOR North: BRETT KOLLMANN, UNDERDOG
• 12. Zack Bye, Denver Sports 104.3 The Fan: MARK SCHLERETH, FOX SPORTS
• 13. Q Myers, ESPN Las Vegas/ESPN Radio: AMBER THEOHARIS, WESTWOOD ONE
• 14. Matt Moscona, 104.5 ESPN: MARCUS SPEARS, ESPN
• 15. Andy Sweeney, 107.5/93.5 The Fan: DAN ORLOVSKY, ESPN
• 16. Bob Stelton, Seattle Sports 710: PEYTON MANNING, OMAHA PRODUCTIONS
• 17. Mia O’Brien, 1010XL: DANIEL JEREMIAH, NFL NETWORK
• 18. Mo Egger, ESPN 1530: MINA KIMES, ESPN
• 19. Allen Sliwa, ESPN Los Angeles: TROY AIKMAN, ESPN
• 20. Andrew Fillipponi, 93.7 The Fan: BEN ROETHLISBERGER, CHANNEL SEVEN PRODUCTIONS
• 21. Marc Hochman, WQAM: MICHAEL IRVIN, NFL NETWORK
• 22. Tyrone Johnson, 97.5 The Fanatic: KIRK HERBSTREIT, PRIME VIDEO
• 23. Judd Zulgad, SKOR North: NATE BURLESON, CBS SPORTS
• 24. Gavin Dawson, 105.3 The Fan: TONY ROMO, CBS SPORTS
• 25. Steve ‘Sparky’ Fifer, 1250AM The Fan: CHAD REUTER, NFL NETWORK
• 26. Jay Recher, WDAE: BOOGER MCFARLAND, ESPN
• 27. Jody Oehler, FOX Sports 910: CHRIS SIMMS, NBC SPORTS
• 28. Maggie Gray, Infinity Sports Network: BOOMER ESIASON, CBS SPORTS
• 29. Jim Costa, 97.1 The Ticket: MEL KIPER JR., ESPN
• 30. Ken Weinman, 105.7 The Fan: BRIAN BALDINGER, NFL NETWORK
• 31. Daryle ‘Guru’ Johnson, 95.7 The Game: CRIS COLLINSWORTH, NBC SPORTS
• 32. Carrington Harrison, 610 Sports: MICHAEL STRAHAN, FOX SPORTS

Howard Balzer is beginning his 49th year covering pro football and currently covers the Arizona Cardinals for cardswire.usatoday.com. He has been a Hall of Fame selector for 20 years and is co-host of the weekly Pro Football Hall of Fame show on Sirius/XM NFL Radio. You can follow Howard on X @HBalzer721. Howard was an analyst on the first nine NFL Draft shows on ESPN and shares some memories for today’s guest column:

The call came to my desk at The Sporting News in St. Louis several weeks before the 1980 NFL Draft.

I had been with the publication for two years and had started writing a weekly NFL notebook (even in the offseason) the year before. That was a leap for the venerable Baseball Bible at the time, but I convinced then-managing editor Lowell Reidenbaugh that we should expand our coverage of the NFL.

But a bigger leap was what ESPN wanted to do.

The decision to televise the draft had been made in February of that year amid a certain level of skepticism. In fact, when ESPN president Chet Simmons first approached Pete Rozelle with the idea, the commissioner wondered, “Why would you want to do that? Who the heck would want to watch the NFL Draft?”

Eventually, the league’s vice president of broadcasting, Val Pinchbeck, convinced Rozelle it would be a good idea.

So it was that about six months after ESPN had launched in September 1979, the call from a producer at the network came.

ESPN was quickly figuring out all the nuts and bolts of the broadcast, and the question to me from the producer was whether they could use our mock draft on the show.

I assured him that was fine, but then explained the pitfalls. Not only was the mock draft finalized 11 days before the Tuesday draft, but once it invariably blew up in the early part of the first round, it might not be very useful.

Having some experience on St. Louis radio, my bold suggestion was that we coordinate a phone hookup, and they could bring me on at different times to discuss what had happened and what could be coming next.

Not a bad idea, I was told, and they said they’d get back to me. Which they did with the shocking (to me) question, “How would you like to come to Bristol, and be on the broadcast?”

We didn’t even have a production meeting before the telecast and I’m not sure I even knew who else would be on with me until my arrival in Connecticut. That turned out to be host Bob Ley, former Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Vince Papale and Upton Bell, a former Patriots general manager and son of former NFL commissioner Bert Bell.

As can be seen from the featured image, the four of us were seated around a coffee table with papers strewn about and newspapers visible on the floor.

We just talked when they came to us from New York where host George Grande was with former NFL general manager Joe Thomas.

Ley told The Athletic on the draft’s 40th anniversary, “When we got off the air I think everybody realized not only did we survive, but that was pretty damn good. While you’d never want to be a prisoner of your reviews, they were positive and I think even the most hardened and objective of us would say we hit a nerve and seemed to have done OK.”

Most significant was the decision to run it back in 1981.

Who knew that now, 44 years later, the draft would be must-see TV, telecast on three networks and would have cities bidding to host it every year.

As executive producer Bill Fitts told The Athletic, “There’s no possible way I could have imagined it would turn into this. I wasn’t even sure we would make Year Two.”

There certainly were seminal moments along the way as more highlights of players from their college career were available and talent was sent to different venues to report.

In 1981, Paul Zimmerman of Sports Illustrated joined the show and famously said after quarterback Rich Campbell was selected sixth overall by the Packers, “They lied to me. I’ll never talk to them again.

Dr. Z was accustomed to being told the truth during his pre-draft discussions with teams, but all bets were off with it now being televised.

The next year, I was “promoted” to New York and while sitting at our small table, I heard a distinctive voice with a New York accent, say, “Hey Paul, keep your eye on Jeff Bryant. He’s moving up on everybody’s list.”

That voice was the reclusive Joel Buchsbaum of Pro Football Weekly, who had been rarely seen in public. Late in the broadcast, with his scraggly hair and Notre Dame sweatshirt, he was interviewed on the broadcast. Had Joel been a tad more telegenic, there might never have been a Mel Kiper, who was on for the first time in 1984 from Bristol. Oh, by the way, the relatively unknown Bryant was selected sixth overall by the Seahawks.

My nine years on the broadcast included two years in Bristol, four in New York, one at 49ers headquarters when there was a power outage in the facility that kept us off the air for a while, one at NFL Films and one in Anaheim at Rams headquarters for what was my final appearance in 1988.

My final year (1986) in New York was memorable. I was at a large draft board that had player rankings with Chris Berman, but no one knew who had put the board together. One of Berman’s funny lines came when he commented on mine and Kiper’s hair!

Following the draft, I suggested to Fitts that if they planned to continue with the board, Kiper should be identified as the architect because that was the essence of his expertise.

Sure enough, he was moved from Bristol to New York the next year and Mel’s Big Board was born.

The actual board might not be as big now as it was then, but the draft itself only gets bigger and bigger over three days with two in prime time.

It’s humbling and gratifying to have been there at its birth.

If you read this site with any regularity, you’re familiar with the term “wagertainment.” It’s how everyone that works at BetQL describes the network’s content philosophy. While the idea of making betting content welcoming to all listeners was the plan all along, the term came from Nick Kostos.

He approaches the network’s afternoon show You Better You Bet, with simple goals. He wants to give people information, he wants to make them laugh, and he wants them to come back tomorrow.

Kostos got his first taste of radio at WFAN as an intern. Between then and now, he has called a lot of brands home. He contributed to Bleacher Report, Sports Illustrated and SiriusXM. He moved to Florida to be a part of CBS Sports’ digital properties. 

In 2018, he noticed the tide shifting and attitudes on his betting content changing. It’s also around the time he met with Mike Dee, Audacy’s President of Sports Programming. He and Nick thought similarly about what gambling content on sports radio and podcasts could be, and he also happened to be starting a new network that would focus on the topic.

The latest conversation in our Meet the Bettors series, presented by Point to Point Marketing, focuses on Kostos. We talk about who brings the best out of him, the surprises that have come along with legalized sports betting, and why regulations are not as helpful as alignment for gamblers.

Demetri Ravanos: The BetQL Network is built around your term, that idea of wagertainment. So how did that come to be the case? 

Nick Kostos:  I think for me and Mike Dee, it was really like a meshing of our ideas. Now, he loved the wagertainment concept immediately, I think he would say that. So, I don’t think I’m betraying anything to say they really liked the idea.           

Now I will be careful to say that I think there is a lot of really good sports betting content out there, my show among that. I think there are a lot of people who do really good work. The idea of wagertainment is there can be really entertaining betting content, and that’s great. And there can be really smart betting content, and that’s great too. But ideally, obviously, you want a combination of the two. You want to be able to educate people and have high-level conversation, and this does not mean that your pick has to win. You can have a great handicap of the game and then the game starts, and someone gets hurt, or the ball bounces a certain way, or the referee makes a bad call.           

Smart betting content does not mean that you give out a winner all the time. We’re trying to win, right? We just give you a smart conversation about betting markets and handicapping games combined with a segment that will entertain people. So, you kind of get the best of both worlds to make people laugh and also try to make them smarter about sports, about handicapping the games, etc.           

That is wagertainment in a nutshell. I think that You Better You Bet, obviously I think this I’m a little biased, but I think that we pull this concept off on a daily basis and do it very well. 

DR: So that audience that is looking for wagertainment. Let’s talk about that group of people that maybe, if it were not for the entertainment factor, is not necessarily coming to your show. We have seen the NCAA president say he wants to limit or eliminate prop bets on college games. Various commissioners in the wake of these scandals have said they might revisit the idea of prop bets on their games. How much would that hurt that particular audience when it comes to their interest in betting?

NK: It’s more content for us to talk about, right? I just I feel like the tide is so strong at this point now that I kind of don’t think there’s any stopping it. So yeah, sure, Charlie Baker can say that, and the NCAA can kind of do what they want. Ultimately there’s still going to be a billion things to bet on. So, it’s not something that I really concern myself with.           

I think they’re nuts to say they don’t want people betting college props. Look at all the interest in all of Caitlin Clark’s point totals and other women in the women’s college basketball tournament. Let’s say that goes away. There are still a million things you can bet on. There’s still the game itself between Iowa and LSU or Iowa and South Carolina. I mean, I guess it’s something that you don’t want to see happen, but I also don’t think it’s anything close to the end of the world if it does. 

DR: Since PAPSA, which state has surprised you the most with how it has taken to sports betting – whether that means anecdotal evidence or in raw numbers? 

NK: I think kind of like all of them have done really well. I do radio in a lot of different cities where Audacy has stations and I see where it’s a really big deal.           

I know like Ohio was pretty recent to legalize sports betting and it was a really big deal there. Whenever I’ve gone on The Fan in Cleveland, it’s always been “We get asked so many questions about this stuff. People are so interested in it.”           

I think that everyone’s kind of going to be really into it. I think it’s going to do really well everywhere.           

I live in New York, so when you bring up kind of like the legalization, candidly where my mind goes to is what I can’t bet on. I can’t bet on awards in New York, the way that New York has it is you can’t bet on something that’s a predetermined outcome. Sports writers decide on season awards. So, it’s just a pain for me. Like, if I want to bet Joe Flacco to win NFL Comeback Player of the year. My buddy in Connecticut has to put the bet in for me. It’s ludicrous because I live in a state where sports betting is legalized.            

I think it’s going to be everywhere. I think there’s going to be interest for it everywhere. I wish that there was more uniformity in terms of what can I bet on in New York versus anywhere else.

DR: We’ll circle back on some of those radio hits in just a moment, because I do want to ask you about that, but you mentioned that you can’t bet on awards in New York because it is a predetermined outcome. I know you’re a wrestling fan. What did you make of the WWE’s efforts to make betting on their events legal? 

NK: Yeah, I think it’s awesome. I love it. As someone that’s been a wrestling fan for his entire life, I just think it adds more excitement to the event.           

Now, look there are there are some matches like the main event for Night One of WrestleMania that doesn’t make sense to bet. So you know, it was a tag team match with the Rock and Roman Reigns against Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins. The result was going to determine how the main event for Night Two worked.

DR: Right. Night Two doesn’t work if Roman Reigns doesn’t win Night One. 

NK: Correct, so you can have a betting market for it, but there is no price big enough where I would bet Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins because it makes no sense. It’s not real life. If Vince McMahon or Triple H ran the NCAA Tournament, like you would never have Cinderellas happen. It’s not how things go, right? You would never have the number one seed get knocked out early because you would want the number one seed there at the end for drama. But now with pro wrestling, you can control these sorts of things.            

I love wrestling, but it is predetermined and that’s okay. So you know, like of course the Rock and Roman Reigns were gonna win. Once you get into matches where there is some doubt though, and look, I felt that Cody was going to win on Sunday night but it wasn’t a guarantee that that was the case. Like if Roman Reigns had won that match, I don’t think anyone would have been super duper shocked and they would have figured out a way for Cody to win eventually. You put a couple bucks on Cody Rhodes.           

I mean, think about how much fun that match is to watch when you have no money on it and you’re just enjoying the drama of it. It’s like a regular sporting event, right?      

I am a lifelong diehard sports fan. I’ve been watching sports my entire life. If sports betting went away, I would watch sports and still love it. I’m a sports fan first and foremost, and I think most bettors are sports fans first and foremost. You were able to watch games for a long time without betting, but now you bet. It makes it even more fun and it’s a new added wrinkle to it. I think it’s the same thing with professional wrestling. I really like the idea of doing that. 

DR: So when you do those local radio hits, who are some of the hosts that you think bring the best out of you? 

NK: Well, first and foremost, I would bring up WFAN in New York with Sal {Licata] and Brandon Tierney. Sal is someone that I’ve known for a really long time, about 20 years. We came up at WFAN together. I interned there when Sal was there, and Brandon’s been really welcoming. I love the conversations that the three of us have on the air about New York sports and betting on football. So, I would say that they definitely stand out.           

I love my hit on The Score in Chicago with Mully and Haugh. I think they do a tremendous job. 

The Greg Hill Show in Boston, I am on with them Friday mornings during football season. That was really fun because it is a lot of sports betting talk and we’re also able to have a lot of fun with it. It’s more like a variety show, so I’m able to kind of show off a little bit more of my personality as opposed to just like a straight 15 minutes of “here’s the line of the game” and “what’s your analysis of the betting market.” I kind of like to flex some different muscles sometimes and they give me the opportunity to do it. I like all the hits that I do, but those are some that stand out. 

DR: So, what is the key in those hits to preventing your time on air from turning into the old school fantasy expert just taking calls over and over again about one dude’s team?

NK: From my perspective, I kind of look at it from what I can control. So, I can give my analysis on what I think someone should do with their show, but ultimately that’s their piece of real estate. I have my real estate four hours every day.           

What I can control is no matter what questions are asked, whether they’re good or bad, and just to be clear, like for the vast majority, I think it’s really good, but let’s say I do a radio interview and the questions are not great and really milquetoast where we just kind of go one by one down the games with no personality involved. “Up next the Eagles, a three-point favorite against the Giants, total in the game is 48. What do you think?” Even if that’s the line of questioning, it’s my job to make that palatable for the person listening, to make it entertaining, to make it knowledgeable.          

I don’t go into an interview thinking, “Wow, I hope the people ask me…” This is my job. No matter what happens, I have to make sure that my performance is good no matter what I’m given to work with. That’s what I can control. That’s why I get paid when the red light goes on. I have to perform no matter what. 

DR: Obviously, there are BetQL affiliates all over the country and most of them carry your show uninterrupted every day. But let’s be real. It’s not ESPN, it’s not CBS Sports Radio, it’s not Fox. So, I would guess there were a lot of people hearing you every day for the first time on the podcast. How much effort do you make to make sure the content works both for people listening live and people listening on that podcast replay? 

NK: It’s a really terrific question and something that we have given a lot of thought and consideration to because as the show evolves, obviously and I think I mentioned this, when I did an interview with Peter Schwartz for you guys, I kind of see the show becoming like a television show that also exists on the radio and exists in podcast form. One where we can please all masters, right? We can please the audience that’s looking for analysis of games that night and we can bring on really great guests.           

The guests we’ve been able to pull on the show recently have been nothing short of outstanding: 80 plus guests, not only from the world of media, but having like the head coach of Oakland, Greg Kampe, on the day after they beat Kentucky and he comes on the show and says that he hears the Bet MGM sponsored sports betting minutes that I do every day and is like why haven’t I mentioned Oakland? It just kind of just goes to show the reach of the show and candidly, like the power of radio. Radio is still extremely powerful.           

So to get back to the original question, we’re always going to have evergreen content because it is a sports betting show, right? We can talk about current matchups and future playoff matchups in a variety of different ways. So, because sports betting is what it is and it’s always kind of looking forward. There’s always something right now, but it will always dovetail and lead into something moving forward.           

We never have to really try that hard to make sure that we please the audience. We’ve got their picks that night and also kind of like more of a longer form conversation, so the content doesn’t die right when we go off the air. There’s going to be something there that’s going to matter for the next day, for a week down the road, for three months down the road.