I've said before that parents are often the worst enemies of their own children.

We have two wonderful (or awful, depending on how you look at it) examples of how true that statement truly is.

The first is the story of the NFL Draft—the fall of Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders.
Sanders fell from a top 10 overall pick to the 5th round for very few things that had to do with football.

It started shortly after the college football season ended when Deion Sanders, Shedeur Sanders’s dad and his head coach at Colorado, went public with comments that made it clear that not everyone was welcome to draft his son.

Deion said live on the radio with Dan Patrick that he had a “do not draft me” list.

“There's teams I didn't want to play for,” Sanders claimed. “So why would I want my kids … come on, man, I'm a dad. I'm a real dad who has a lot of information about the NFL.”

As the days drifted away from the draft, we’ve heard more and more teams that were turned off by their interactions with the player.

He was described as “disengaged” and “aloof,” and there have been media members in the college football universe who reported that he didn’t show up for their pregame TV production meeting interviews that the quarterback of a Division I football team is expected to be at and fully participate in.

Now, is that all his fault? It is not.

If dad is in the public speaking openly with the brashness that “Coach Prime” has been, you can imagine what the conversations at home are like. Son got the message that he was elite, and he believed in what his dad was telling him—and who can blame him for that?

And, in the same vein, who can blame an NFL team’s front office for saying “No thank you” when it came time to turn in their card and turning their future over to this kid?

Football teams are not looking for more people who are likely to cause discourse and dysfunction. There are plenty of people to do that already.

No one wants to add that kind of person from the start without some sort of guarantee that he would help their team, as there is serious doubt about him.

And so, 143 players were chosen ahead of him. He ended up with the Browns, who seemed like a sensical destination for him about 135 players earlier. But the Browns took another quarterback ahead of him.

Of course, there were cries of collusion and racism over Sanders’ free fall through two days of picking players.

The truth is, Papa Prime is truly to blame for his son’s situation.

In reality, he probably cost his boy about $40 million to start his pro career.

We have another instance of parents behaving badly that hits closer to home.

The Pacers dominated Milwaukee in their first-round NBA Playoff series last week.

The Bucks were playing without star guard Damian Lillard, who played very little in the five games of the series and had no impact on the series because of injuries.

It was helpful to the Pacers, for sure, but that was a first-round matchup that had “classic” written all over it. We didn’t get that.

The Pacers were down six points in the final minute of Game 5 and were facing the prospect of having to go back to Wisconsin for Game 6. The Bucks turned the ball over twice, and Indiana turned them into one of the most memorable come-from-behind wins in franchise history.

The game-winning shot came on a drive to the basket with less than two seconds remaining by Tyrese Halliburton. The Bucks had no timeouts left, and their desperation heave at the buzzer was wide to the left.

Soon after the echo of the buzzer was drowned out by the roar of the Indy faithful at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Halliburton’s dad runs onto the playing surface waving a towel with his son’s picture on it.

John Halliburton ran to a spot about 10 feet from Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo and waved the towel at him.

Giannis is a superhuman basketball player, and in this moment showed superhuman patience and restraint. His season had just ended in the first round in a series where the trainers played as much of a role as the coaches did, and some person whom he doesn’t know is now taunting him in front of everyone.

I do not condone violence, but I think we would all have understood if Giannis had lost his cool and at least physically confronted the man standing in front of him.

To his great credit, he did not.

A few minutes later, he and Mr. Halliburton were literally in the same space. Nose to nose. Giannis was doing the talking.

First of all, where on earth was the fieldhouse security staff?

By all reports, Halliburton’s dad is a sweet man who is known and loved by the Pacers and fieldhouse personnel.

So what? He has no more business being there than I would have.
Tyrese sees the video later and seeks out Giannis to apologize for his dad, then does the same publicly.

The punishment is that John Halliburton is not allowed at Pacers games for what the league describes as “the foreseeable future.”

Parents, think about these things when it’s your child. Don’t make it so they have to apologize for you.

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The NFL Draft has become a spectacle unlike any other non-game-related event in the sports world.

Over 750,000 people gathered in Detroit for seven rounds of choosing 257 players over three days.

It’s an incredible scene where fans anxiously wait to see who their team will select for the sole purpose of making that team better and lead them to the NFL championship.

That’s what is supposed to be, anyway.

But like there is nothing guaranteed in life but death and taxes, there is nothing guaranteed in the NFL Draft except that teams chose players, and no one forced them to choose anyone.

And in the NFL, there are no players who are guaranteed to be good, let alone great. Even those who are drafted higher and appear to be the most talented and, therefore, most likely to succeed, are also much more likely to be a bigger disappointment.

The two words that are in play here are “if” and “should.”

Let’s say a player is chosen by a team we will refer to as Team A.

Team A needs a significant upgrade at a given position on the field, and they decide to use one of their draft selections to fill that need.

Their team name comes up on the board, they see a player available who fits their need, it makes sense to take that player in that place, and they send in the card with that player’s name on it to the podium to be announced.

That’s how the draft works.

When all the selections are made and all of the players still available after the draft is over have been signed as undrafted free agents, Team A and all of the other teams hold a few days of practices to allow their coaches and players to get to know each other better and let their coaches see their new players interact with and compare their skills with their returning players.

That’s when those two words pop up.

“If” they chose the right player for the way they go about winning games.

“If” Team A surrounds them with the right people to give them enough success early on to build their confidence.

“If” they chose a player who is willing to do what the team asks them to do, especially when it might not be exactly what the player had done to earn them their draft status.

“If” they avoid the added rigor of being a football player in the National Football League and stay healthy.

“If” their agent and their friends and family stay out of their way and let them play football.
“If” all of that comes together for that player and that team, that player “should” reach their full potential in the league and make that choice to draft them be a wise one.

But, “if” any of that doesn’t follow the script of the common draft, then all bets are off.
Think about that. All of these things — every single one of them — has to come through or the cracks in the dam start to leak water. The cracks get bigger, and bigger, and it all falls apart.

Sounds discouraging, doesn’t it?

I can be if you buy into the process as it is currently constructed.

I don’t.

You will not catch me looking at draft recaps that include any sort of “grading” scale or “ranking” of teams by division, alphabetically or by their team colors.

Why?

Because no one who grades or ranks how a team did in their draft choices has the first clue how it’s going to work out for them. No one does! It’s impossible.

Let’s use the Bears as our example.

They traded up to get quarterback Justin Fields four years ago. It made total sense at the time, and everyone praised the Bears for making a bold move up to get a clear talent at the most important position in football. And they made the move just a few years after doing the same thing for Mitchell Trubisky and having it not work out.

Fields may be a bust in the final analysis, but we don’t know now, and we won’t know for sure until it’s all over.

Is Caleb Williams destined to be a star? We don’t know.

And that’s my point: No one knows. We have to wait and see.

I have been a Bears fan for all 56 years of my life, so I hope that what the Bears did last weekend will be exactly what they need to put them in the discussion for winning a lot of games and advancing deep into the playoffs.

But what all that teams and their fans have now is hope — hope that they picked enough players that walk the tight rope to success, and it comes together to make a winner.

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