Monday, April 24, 2006 Updated: May 1, 9:17 AM ET Mocking the mock draft By Gregg Easterbrook Man, look at those legs! Perfect conditioning, ideal proportions. NFL draft fans can't wait to see more. I'm not talking about Reggie Bush's legs. I'm talking about the Rockettes! Tune in Saturday because, for the first time ever, the NFL draft will be held at Radio City Music Hall. And you know ESPN producers will use every possible flimsy excuse to show the gorgeous legs of the Rockettes as they accompany the top draft picks up to the podium to shake … WHAT??? Say what??? Sadly, although the draft is being held at Radio City Music Hall, the Rockettes will not be there. Tuesday Morning Quarterback is still reeling from this dreadful news. The NFL and ESPN have one of the greatest excuses in television history to show hours and hours of beautiful, scantily clad women -- and it's not going to happen. No Rockettes dancing with the draft picks. No lines of kicking legs while the commissioner fumbles through trade cards. No close-up interviews with the Rockettes as the draft drags on into the sixth round when the bell rings and a linebacker from Ohio University of Florida at Ohio is chosen. The draft is at Radio City but we won't see the Rockettes. TMQ will spend Saturday in mourning. In addition to being glam and gorgeous, the Rockettes are incredibly fit and athletic! That's a perfectly legitimate reason to have them at the draft! But no. Yours truly will be at Radio City on Saturday, and instead of flirting with the Rockettes, I'll be killing time with Mel Kiper. Jimmy Carter was right: Life is unfair. Three quick points. First, it's not your imagination that all Rockettes are the same stature. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. (click "Rockettes" then "auditions") specify that Rockettes must be between 5- foot-6 and 5-foot-10½ -- though they do not, perhaps because of New York state gender-discrimination laws, specify that Rockettes must be women. Second, the lack of Rockettes at the draft reminds me of one of the fundamental failings of the National Football League: Though New York City contains thousands of beautiful, theatrically trained young women who really can dance and are looking for their big break, neither the Giants How could the NFL screw up such a nor the Jets have cheerleaders. Third, ESPN thinks great marketing opportunity? you'd rather look at Mel Kiper's hair than the Rockettes' legs? This might be a harbinger of the end of western civilization. In other football news, around this time of year sports commentators make knowing references to the Dallas Chart, the table of equivalences used by many teams in calculating how to swap draft choices. The creation of this table is generally credited to Jimmy Johnson. (When he was coach of the Cowboys, Johnson made so many draft-pick swaps it was as if he was on commission and "churning" to increase his annual bonus.) The Dallas Chart is definitely handy. It ordains, for instance, that if the Jets, picking fourth, want to swap up with the Saints, picking second, Jersey/B would need to throw in 800 points worth of value -- and the Jets' second and third choices this year are worth 790 points, according to the chart. The chart works equally well on non-glamour picks. For instance, the chart dictates that a team wanting to acquire the final pick of the fourth round would offer a pick in the middle of the fifth round plus a pick at the top of the seventh. Now that most NFL teams have this chart, swaps are surely simplified: As neoclassical economics maintains, markets are most efficient when participants have the maximum information about prices! In the econ mode, next week TMQ will propose how to use the chart to "discount to present value" draft selections in future years. Now look at the Dallas Chart more closely. According to its logic, a team would need to trade 1,500 picks at the end of the seventh round to get the first overall choice in the draft. I submit that any NFL club would be much better off with 1,500 late-seventh-round selections than the first overall choice. OK, with 1,500 seventh-round choices, your voluntary mandatory minicamp would be a little crowded. But give me 1,500 seventh-round selections and I guarantee I will find you some quality NFL starters -- whereas give me the first overall choice and I can make no such guarantee. Or take the 16th overall choice, midway through the first round. The chart says a team should be able to swap the 16th overall selection, worth 1,000 points, for 122 mid-seventh-round picks, which the chart says are worth 8.2 points each. (Love that pseudo-scientific decimal place.) An NFL team would be much better off with 122 mid-seventh-round selections than with one mid-first-round pick. Want another example? The chart says the 10th overall selection, held by Arizona and valued at 1,300 points, is worth the same as the entire fifth round, whose picks have an average value of about 35 points. I double-dog dare you to claim a team wouldn't be better off with every choice of the entire fifth round than with the 10th overall selection. In more football news, the Brett Favre melodrama has become ridiculous. What's next, an all-Brett 24-hour cable channel? ("Today, Brett talks to us about what he might talk to us about tomorrow.") Favre addresses the United Nations General Assembly? ("I thank those nations whose names even their own citizens can't pronounce for inviting me here today to dodge questions, fudge the obvious and say nothing -- just like when world leaders talk to the United Nations!") But annoying though the melodrama is, you can't fault Favre for playing the system. Don't fall for that country-boy act; the Green Bay quarterback has long been at the forefront of understanding how to exploit modern media. Endless inconclusive evasions about whether he will retire keep his name in the news, increasing Favre's value to advertisers as an endorser. All the build-up, in turn, assures that whatever he ultimately does announce about playing or quitting will receive 10 times the attention it would otherwise merit. Don't be surprised if Katie Couric leads the CBS Evening News with Favre's decision, assuming he makes up his mind within the historical period of Homo sapiens. In other football news, Reggie Bush will go very high in the draft. Truth or falsity of the house flap aside, Bush sure did look good in college, he seems to be a fine young man and he's leading a charge against the Illustrated Man fad in sports, so that's all to the good. (In the classic Ray Bradbury story, the "Illustrated Man" was not only covered with tattoos, but the tattoos moved; anyway, Bush doesn't have any tattoos.) But Bush weighs 200 pounds, and in recent annals few have been successful every-down NFL tailbacks at that weight -- Warrick Dunn, Thurman Thomas. In his final collegiate game, when USC needed two yards to win the national championship, not only did Bush not get the ball, he wasn't even on the field. Pete Carroll waved Bush to the sidelines when the championship was on the line. Something to think about if Reggie goes first. In still other football news, everyone's got a mock draft. Right now the Priory of Sion is huddled in a secret underground abbey, trying to predict whether the Rams will trade up. Although everyone has a mock draft, who actually mocks the draft? Tuesday Morning Quarterback, of course. Below, my annual mocking of mock drafts. And while everyone predicts the first choice in the NFL draft, only Tuesday Morning Quarterback annually predicts the last choice! For years, Tuesday Morning Quarterback has skipped the prestigious top of the draft and gone directly to forecasting the lowly seventh round. My annual seventh-round forecast follows, too. Finally, on a personal note, I'd like to share something I've been waiting three years to say: Yikes, this Page 2 yellow is bright! Maybe I should write the column in the dark. Anyway, I enjoyed my time at NFL.com, where I learned so much football that I now practically know what I'm talking about. But somehow the football gods always meant for Tuesday Morning Quarterback to be a part of ESPN. So when my NFL contract expired recently, I journeyed alone to a distant mountaintop -- OK, to a distant parking lot -- and asked the football gods for guidance. They told me to wish upon a star! Here is the rest in song: Like a bolt out of the blue fate steps in and sees you through. When you wish upon a star your dreams come true. TMQ's Mock Draft 1. Houston Texans: Dick Cheney, novice marksman, Ducks Unlimited The Texans will switch to the shotgun formation. Instead of "Hike," Houston quarterbacks will yell "Pull!" Ducks Unlimited says its members "celebrate the traditions and the heritage of sport hunting as an integral part of sound wildlife management." So Cheney wasn't trying to kill ducks, he was engaged in sound wildlife management. 2. New Orleans Saints: Hans Brinker, Dutch 8-year-old Alone and frightened, Brinker spent the night with his hand on a levee breech to save the town of Haarlem.