1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - NFL Draft Process: April 30th, 12:25pm

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Breaking down what could cross GM's minds in the draft processAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

You're listening to one-on-one with D.P. Brought to by Canopy Street Market on 93-7 the ticket and the ticketfm.com. Oh, man. DP on Wednesday, one-on-one. Day number 22, 922. Thank you for hanging out. Old Dad says he's up to 18-4-13. That's a tomorrow's a big one.

18-4-14 is big. Got to get to it. From the text line, Ben says this. I mean, Talam evaluators only have available the information that's in front of them. I don't want old school NFL guys are missing on someone like Bart Starr. I think they absolutely got sure Sanders correct. Okay, so here's the thing. Having been on pro staffs, been on college staffs where college recruits were coming in,

having been on college staffs where recruiting was done and NFL draft projections were in play. it is literally the job of the professional at the highest level in the NFL talent evaluator. You're evaluating the most talent at the highest level. You can't afford, it's literally your job to get it right. That's your job to gather as much information as humanly possible. And I've said a hundred times that you can't measure, there is no star, there is no five, in the five star system, intelligence, character, and heart don't have star value. So if they don't, then what are we doing? You have a five star system that people's lives are based on and you don't include the thing that people think are the three most important things. But okay, that's fine, have that discussion. But to say that the evaluators didn't get, only have what's in front of them, in today's world, I've been a part of over 200 athletes being recruited.

So the process is there are coaches, elite coaches and talent evaluators who go the extra mile to find out who the parents are, who the ex-girlfriend is, who is your high school counselor, what courses you take. took, et cetera. And from that thinking, imagine that you saw that there's this guy named Shadur Sanders and his tape looks good. You're interested.

And then you recruit him without going to his house or meeting his parents or meeting his brothers and sisters. And then he shows up on your campus and you go, hey, I didn't know Dion was your dad. You failed. But in knowing

that Dion is your dad, one, you have, you can make an informed decision, but you also have to be able to process that information. What does it mean if this kid is Dion Sanders son? What has Dionne taught him? What benefit is there and what flaw is that? Evaluators along the way, the system is always flawed because people, humans, make those decisions based on what that human wants to achieve and accomplish. There are certain organizations that have a history of not having people in place who make solid decisions when it comes to making certain decisions. Again, I just ran through an era where the Browns picked poorly and the Saints picked quarterbacks poorly and the Raiders picked quarterbacks poorly. We can go through this. We can go through this. We can do this dance.

But the reality is we don't know everything. We cannot know everything. It's all a crap shoot, and then you get out there and you play. And there are tons of free agents who were evaluated, re-evaluated, assessed, re-assessed, worked out and still thought not good enough for me to waste a draft pick-up. And for all these free agents that I listed, remember that those teams brought in rookies that year. They brought in free agents that year, that they actually worked out.

And they said, we would rather have this than you. And then those people had a thing, an undefinable thing, that allowed them to outwork the people who were drafted, first, second, third, etc. And for them to prove the evaluators wrong, to prove the administrators wrong, the ownership wrong, the coaches wrong, They proved them all wrong. You were wrong. You looked at me.

You looked at my tape. You looked at my production. And you said, not good enough. Well, guess what? You were wrong. And it happened. It happens in every sport. When you think about it, our own Eric Strickland had to go the long route.

And we talk about the long route, the long route to get to the NBA, to prove them all wrong. That the undersized guy from Nebraska who didn't. win everything, right? And winning matters. You know, people will talk about that. But he didn't have certain boxes, pre-conceived, pre-made, pre-arranged boxes checked. But what could they not measure? The heart of Eric Strickland, the IQ of Eric Strickland, the motivation of Eric Strickland. We get caught up in stuff and you just go, wow, I'm pretty sure that there have been a ton of Nebraska basketball players who we thought. they're going to be great NBA players

and they're not. Or you thought that, well, that guy's not going to make it. And then, oh, he made it. Who had Ty Lou as a world champion coach in the NBA from his time in Nebraska? And you thought, that guy's going to lead men. We don't, we get so caught up and knowing,

I say this all the time. It's not my job in this field to have all the answers. I do aspire to get to the right question. And the system is set up, one, to create conversation. Mock drafts are simply for you to consume content. And you consume content for a variety of reasons, mainly among them, is to feel like you're connected and informed about the sport that you love

or the team that you love or the player that you love. They're parents who finally get a star high school player who's getting recruited, and then they have to figure out, well, wait a minute, my son's really good. And they go, well, compared to who? And then they go on a deep dive and they think, well, they figured out how college recruiting goes. No, they only know what they know. They have no idea what they have no idea about. And the same thing applies from Mark Drafts and otherwise.

Right, Mikey Moore, yep. Tony Farmer. There were guys here who had some success. Situation and circumstance matter, right? Catching lightning in a bottle matters. You know, who had Kyle Perry playing for the Savannah Banana is making a living in baseball? Right?

And I can tell you, I can tell you, I'll give you a really good example of how sometimes the system gets it wrong and then you outworked the system. Hey, but the first day you met me, Do you ever think I'd own the station? Not necessarily. It's not what was on my mind. It wasn't on you? It wasn't.

And you were informed because you had been at the ticket for a while. Yeah. Pretty good idea about what the ticket was at the time. Right? Yeah. Situation and circumstance. To go through and go, we could hire, we get offers for people who want to do shows on a daily basis. and I have chosen the group to work from.

Right. The group to work, the group I want to work based on what I want to get here. And Bach has a list. Anybody that comes to Bach go, hey man, I love to work a ticket. Bach would have a list in his, he could give you the elevator pitch for, well, here's what DP wants, man. This is what, I know what you think radio, sports radio is, but here are DP's rules. But my rules aren't the same as some other folks and some other stations.

And if you don't understand that one of the big things that I make decisions on is, do I want to work with you every day? You could be the best radio guy. I have to make a decision based on that. But compared to who? And making those decisions, that is a part of sports, whether it be radio, whether it be recruiting, whether it be coaching, whether it be developing talent, whatever it is.

You have to pick people that have some understanding of what it is that you want to deal with on a daily basis and be able to effectively produce that. And what I know about Bach is that Bach is reliable. Bach loves what we do. He loves preparing. He never stresses about, hey, let me go deep dive, let me find some information, let me do my research.

I don't have issue. I don't have issue with anybody who does their research. above and beyond, and they show up to work because they love showing up for work to do the thing. I can work with a whole lot of other stuff. Bach doesn't have to be an NFL player for me to want to work with him. But that's what happens in this. And we get so caught up in the cosmetic part of it and the perceived idea of it. Bach's not a social media guy.

That's not really his thing. Okay. But if it was his thing, okay. There are people that work here who love being on social media. There are people who don't. There's room for both. In order for me to cover all the bases of what's required for sports radio to happen to cover all of the sports, did anybody here know gymnastics?

Or did we had to go learn? Had to go learn. Did we know bowling? Had to go learn. Swimming, died. Had to go learn. Wrestling, had to go learning. Women's volleyball, had to go learning.

What we know versus what we need. need to know in what we think we know. Sports, especially in this vacuum, is that to understand that nobody, and I mean nobody, has all the answers. Nobody gets it right every time. It's just who you want to ride with.

Who do you want to ride with? How do you feel about this thing? It's a simple thing. It's a simple thing. Kmart Steve says, I bet a lot of people would be very surprised by how hard it is to talk about sports for three hours every day. And, hey, Steve, we do every day. We do seven days a week.

But around here, you have to know sports, talk sports, and defend your sports take, your knowledge of sports, far longer than three hours a day. And some of y'all would be stunned. that some of the conversations between Jay Foreman, Eric Strickland, Adam Kerrig, Austin, Orban, Jake Bockover, Nick Sater, Jake Sorensen, over in the back hallways of the ticket. But that's how I know I have the right people because they would do this for free, but I don't ask them to. they get to do it because of that very reason. We'll go to break. We'll close up one-on-one, hand it up to the Capitol show.

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