Rodd's Ramblings: Basement draft was old school

The 2020 NFL draft is history, and provided history at the same time.

For the first time the draft was not held in a centralized location. It was held from the basements, kitchens, recreation rooms and living rooms of the homes of general managers, coaches and players. Even NFL commissioner Roger Goodell did his part by hosting the draft live from his basement in New York.

It had to be done, and it worked, thanks to newer technology.

It brought back a flood of memories as I thought back to when I first started at WKLK back in the 1970s. We had a radio version of the draft. Much like this year’s draft, it took place in a basement — in this case, it was Jim Hagen’s basement on Birch Street in Cloquet.

Jim and our sports director/program director, Steve Jezierski, would hole up in Jim’s basement, aka “draft headquarters,” while I manned the phones at the radio station, then located on 10th Street in Cloquet in an old bottling plant building.

The reason they used Jim’s basement was mainly because Jim was one of the few people in town who had cable television, which included a new network called ESPN. Since very few people had cable television, let alone ESPN, Steve and Jim decided to host our own local version of the draft.

It was incredible small-town radio.

The duo would stock up on all kinds of sports magazines including “The Sporting News,” “NFL Today,” “Sports Illustrated” and anything else with draft information. They would pore over notes. Not only would they stock up on draft magazines, but they also stocked up on Pepsi, ice and chips as part of their daylong coverage. Jim had a hankering for Pepsi, so he’d fill up a giant container and it was game on.

For the few years that I was involved I would be back at the radio station playing music, doing weather and news and then wait for the pair to call in after a pick was made.

Using our sports broadcasting gear — which allowed them to wear headsets and hear me back at the station — the dynamic duo would wait for a pick to get announced and then call in and do a report. They provided so much information on each player that it was fascinating to listen. In those days (unless you were lucky enough to have cable television), the only place locally to hear the draft in real time was with Jim and Steve live from the basement.

As I sat and watched the draft this year, I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the fact that all of these NFL general managers and coaches were in their basements, dens and offices. The ESPN guys were all at their own homes, most of them from their basements, just like Steve and Jim used to do back in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

While Jim passed away a couple of years ago, I was able to touch base and reminisce with Steve about those days. It was fun to kind of go back in time and compare what happened in the draft last weekend to what the Dynamic Duo used to do years ago.

Honestly, I thought — considering their limited resources — that Steve and Jim did just as well as Mel Kiper and the ESPN crew. That just spoke to the efforts the pair put forth and the amount of work they did prior to draft day.

Maybe the way the draft is held each year will change after this year.

Because the NFL had to find a new way of doing business this year, maybe they will utilize some of the technology in a different way than in past years. Perhaps the evolution of media will completely change as well.

Either way, I’ll be watching.

WKLK radio personality Kerry Rodd writes sports for the Pine Knot News.