25 Years Ago Today, This Rant by the Colts' GM Made Mel Kiper a Legend

This is one of those moments that did more than change the lives of the two men involved, it changed the game for millions. And I’d be lying if I said I would’ve guess it was 25 years ago because it’s one of those seminal moments that defies the passage of time. It could’ve been yesterday. It could’ve been 50 years ago. It could’ve been the Late Cretaceous Period, right after the asteroid killed the dinosaurs and made mammals rulers of the Earth.

The year: 1994.
The place: ESPN.
The circumstances: Thanks to their 4-12 record and a trade, the Colts went into the draft with the 2nd and the 5th picks in the 1st round. With Pick No. 1, Cincinnati took defensive tackle Dan Wilkinson. With Pick 2, Indy took Marshall Faulk, who sort of worked out. Picks 3 and 4 were QB Heath Shuler to Washington and Willie McGinest to New England.

There were two consensus top two quarterbacks in this class, Shuler and Trent Dilfer, in one of those 1A/1B scenarios. And with a 31-year-old Jim Harbaugh as the Colts QB, it seemed like the no-braineriest no brainers in the history of no brainers that they would take Dilfer with the 5th pick and consider their draft a win. A young, hair-helmeted ESPN draft pundit named Mel Kiper, Jr., who had already established himself as the cock of the Worldwide Leader’s draft coverage, certainly thought so. And the Colts instead took defensive lineman Trev Alberts out of Nebraska, he put the entire Indy franchise on blast:

And as you see starting at about the 0:40 mark, Colts GM Bill Tobin took Kiper’s gloved slap as the insult it was. And he got personal. Right away, it was pistols at 10 paces. And just as an added bonus, stay to the very end when Buddy Ryan takes Kiper’s side and gets in the perfect swipe of a football coach who never, ever, played well with others.

This moment, as much as any, put NFL draft coverage not just on on the map, but deep into the public consciousness. This was an old school guy of the Stopwatch-and-Whistle crowd who had built playoff teams in Chicago and Indianapolis being challenged by a Ph-balanced, designer-suited product of the basic cable 24-hour sports coverage age.

It was worlds colliding. Eras battling it out for supremacy. For the first time, the men who used to build rosters in a room filled with Lucky Strike smoke and whiskey breath were being asked to defend their judgment by men who had never been inside a War Room and they were none to thrilled about it. And it made for the closest thing live draft coverage has ever come to sparks flying.

As to who won and who lost, like with all drafts themselves, it takes time to truly evaluate it. And by that measurement, Kiper was the Mike Tyson to Tobin’s Peter McNeely. Trent Dilfer might not have been the franchise QB Kiper thought he was. But he did start 113 games over a 13 year career, whereas Alberts appeared in 29 games altogether, with 49 solo tackles and just four sacks and was out of the league in three years.

Tobin for his part, ended up in Detroit before his days as a GM ended for good in 2002, with that anti-Kiper rant the most memorable thing on his resume. And a quarter century later, Kiper is still the gold standard. The go-to draft guru media people quote when they’re too lazy to make their own assessments. If Tobin had just taken the high road that day in 1994 who knows how things would’ve ended up for either man. Life – and draft coverage – is now much better than it was then. But damn what I wouldn’t give for a little bit of this tomorrow night. Good times.