- Courtesy NFL
- The Draft Town fest in Grant Park features areas where fans can watch the draft for free.
Back on December 2, 1963, the last time the NFL draft was held in Chicago, there was no television coverage. Nothing on the radio either. And there certainly wasn’t a fan festival like the Draft Town event happening in Grant Park this week, which takes place while the league’s teams make their selections across the street at the Auditorium Theatre.
The modern NFL draft features 32 teams and seven rounds that stretches over a span of three days. (This year, round one is on Thursday, rounds two and three on Friday, and rounds four through seven on Saturday.) Each team is given ten minutes in the first round, seven minutes in the second, and five minutes the rest of the way to make their selections.
Most of the draftees sat in a locked room with nothing but a phone and a “babysitter”—team officials who hung around the draftees to protect them from representatives of the American Football League. AFL reps were known to try to persuade good players to sign on with the rival league. Warfield told Cimini that the Buffalo Bills, once part of the AFL, attempted to sign him as he was walking off the field after his last college game.
