The date was April 23, 2005, a simpler time when tweeting was only a thing birds did. In the NFL it was also a time when the draft hadn’t thrown itself fully at the dazzling lights of prime-time television yet.
On a Saturday afternoon young men waited to hear where their football careers would begin. That’s still the custom now, of course, with family and close friends nervously huddled around a green room table, twitching at every cellphone buzz.
But on that day over a decade ago, the order in which those highly touted prospects walked across the stage was different.