NEW YORK - NFL officials stood atop the Art Museum steps on May 18, 2016, looked down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and envisioned an unprecedented NFL draft.
The NFL first held its annual draft 81 years ago in a Broad Street hotel ballroom a 11/2-mile walk from those steps. It continued in auditoriums and theaters, including 50 consecutive years in New York from 1965 to 2014.
The league added an outdoor fan festival to the auditorium atmosphere during the last two years in Chicago. But they were emboldened to make it bigger. So they bypassed more traditional venues like a theater or arena, encouraged by Philadelphia's history of holding major events along the Parkway.