You want to televise what?
Pete Rozelle was befuddled after fielding an unusual request from a fledgling sports network. It was an inquiry about broadcasting the NFL’s “annual player selection meeting”—or, as it’s better known, the draft.
Rozelle wasn’t the only skeptic. “There’s nobody there,” Bill Fitts, a producer at the time, told his boss. “It’s just a bunch of people on the phone. And they’re not even ‘name’ people—they’re nobody. It’s just a room with some people on the phone.”
But Chet Simmons, then the president of the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, envisioned the New York City ballroom where league officials presided and team officials sat at their respective tables.