Murphy: Going home for the NFL Draft
Brian Murphy went back to his home town for the draft and was reminded of a lifetime of sports memories
By Brian Murphy
DETROIT -- This wasn’t going to be an ordinary homecoming the moment I walked into Nemo’s Thursday afternoon.
Five hours before opening night of the 2024 NFL Draft, this iconic downtown sports bar was already throbbing with day drinkers and pregaming superfans, their snouts buried deep in the trough of the planet’s premier entertainment-sports-marketing-industrial complex.
There were first-round betting odds on the widescreen television above face-painted, mohawked Eagles fanatic, Jamie Pagliei, who was doing shots at the bar with his similarly bedazzled crew and several roasted Lions fans – brothers in arms all toasting “Dallas Sucks!”
A welcoming pinch of Kumbaya in the Age of Perpetual Grievance.
Real-time gambling, binge drinking and hating America’s Team are among the unifying virtues the NFL can offer a fissuring, screaming society that cannot agree on the time of day. And it meant more for Motown than anyone else.
Three months after the Lions knocked on the Super Bowl door, Detroit was the center of the football universe, featured in glowing headlines as a model of civic unity, growth and potential not seen or felt in these parts since Ike was in the White House.
More than 770,000 people descended on this once-crumbling, typically corrupt, recently bankrupt metropolis to bask in the balmy weather, cheer their voices hoarse and provide a well-oiled peanut gallery for the most popular three-day business meeting in sports.
Campus Martius was the perfect setting for the main stage and sea of humanity that poured into the heart of Detroit. Images made indelible by nationally televised aerial views showcased this 323-year-old city’s gothic architecture, sun-splashed riverfront and sprawling stadium and theater district.
Dude-bros and face-painters mingling with toddler families and their strollers. Long but acceptable lines for food, beverages and portable restrooms. All the energy of a tailgate party and big game without the seedy undercurrent of angst and blackout drunks.
Imagine Bonnaroo and its feel-good vibes without the mud.
“Oh my God, it’s an incredible thing to see those fans as far as you can see, literally,” Detroit Mayor Michael Duggan told the Detroit Free Press. “It is hard to believe the visual impact you see. You can’t help but react to the fans.”
Attendance was twice as large as Kansas City and Las Vegas the last two years and blew away the previous high of 600,000 who came to Nashville in 2019. The bar has been set impressively high.
It was an incredibly organized, universally friendly, genre-bending, perception-shifting weekend for a perennially dissed and dismissed town thirsting for vitality in one of the country’s great sports markets.
Free advertising to more than 50 million viewers who tuned in to watch an historic run of six quarterbacks selected in the first 12 picks, among a record 23 offensive players chosen in the first round.
Green Bay is on the clock for 2025. Minneapolis and the other 20-something franchises who have yet to host must be salivating at the rivers of revenue that are flowing out nine years after the league took the draft on tour.
Destination Detroit was an oxymoron for decades. Now, it’s a hashtag. What a long, strange road it’s been.
I left the Motor City for the Twin Cities 24 years ago, but always figured the profession would bring me back home. Didn’t count on an East Side St. Paul girl to ground me right where I need to be. But nobody ever truly leaves their hometown.
We all have our lifetime crew of friends who know your vulnerabilities, your virtues and where all the bodies are buried. Where everyone falls back into roles shaped decades ago and can pick up the conversation from the last get-together, no matter how long ago or far-flung it was.
Mine formed at Wayne State University 35 years ago and has been defined ever since by career ambition, sports, music, movies, politics, parenthood and random pop culture. Especially sports.
Twenty bucks then could net you a bleacher seat at old Tiger Stadium, a bag of peanuts from the corner wino, a cold hot dog from the bilge of a vendor’s steamer and a warm Labatt Blue. Ditching class never tasted so good.
Many of us were Lions season-ticket holders in the 1990s. We were blessed to watch Barry Sanders rock the Silverdome in his prime and cursed by organizational malpractice that drove another hall of famer into early retirement and lingered like a disease until the Dan Campbell renaissance.
Time and jobs have scattered most of us around the country, with a guys trip here and there servicing our sporadic reunions. Chicago, New York, Nashville, Miami. Never Detroit.
About six weeks ago, our Tennessee and California ex-pats suggested a mashup at the NFL Draft. Within days, FOMO was raging. Five more out-of-towners signed on. Add in a few free agents and the traveling roster was set.
The originators already had their VIP passes. That required a nine-hour commitment to stake out their cramped place close enough to smell Rodger Goodell’s breath.
The rest of us wanted no part of that. More precisely, we wanted no part of hemorrhaging cash directly into the NFL’s titanium blood funnel.
So we dropped anchor a couple miles north at Z’s Place, our old two-for-one bar on campus to do what almost everyone else does – eat fried food, guzzle booze and watch the draft on TV.
The move was as prudent as it was obvious. More than 100,000 people were turned away from the venue an hour before Goodell was predictably booed and the unpredictable first round commenced.
I told all the Wolverines fans around me it was a fait accompli the Vikings would take Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy. Unless the smartest guys in the room did something stupid.
That room wasn’t in Eagan but in Atlanta, where the Falcons brass have it all figured out. Just ask them.
Reach for a quarterback they didn’t need.
Hedge against Kirk Cousins, their shiny new $180 million free agent, and put him on notice before he ever throws a pass.
Handcuff Michael Penix Jr., weld the top prospect to the bench for several years and wait for him to mature in his 30s.
Appease nobody.
As PR disasters go, you have to stand back in awe at the Falcons’ clown show.
The slow-motion train wreck in Atlanta sent a jolt through the bar as the Vikings and general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah were running out of quarterbacks and time to reset the franchise.
It was actually tense seeing Adofo-Mensah aggressively protect his flank by trading up one spot to No. 10 and secure McCarthy, coughing up pocket change to prevent an unmitigated disaster.
Reality TV bliss for every fantasy football grifter who struggles with their identity for four-plus months until they kick the ball off again. The only thing left for Day 1 was the Uber sticker shock and preparing for a marathon Day 2.
It’s tempting to ponder life decisions when you’re podcasting hungover from your parents’ suburban basement, where bad decisions in high school continued. But there is something comforting when mom cooks you a made-to-order breakfast and dad agrees to chauffeur you back into the belly of the beast.
The gang reconvened Friday for a matinee Tigers-Royals game that was on no one’s radar except football fans who wanted to double dip. This time, the seats were 40 bucks and the peanuts $7.50, but the gourmet burger was warm and the craft beer ice cold.
Sitting under a 65-degree, cloudless sky while sipping suds with your best buds and not working is high-level beating the system. So is running into your octogenarian uncles, retirees who, like my parents, have been beating the system for years.
Mike and Cici Murphy are a couple blue-collar kids who love family, sports and Nemo’s. Cici was at a Red Wings game the night before I was born. Mike took me to see the Bird pitch in ’77.
Cici’s older brothers, Mike and Pat, have attended and forgotten more sports than I’ll ever remember. So it was an unexpected joy when all four came to Comerica Park to complain about the Tigers’ hitting woes and the strike zone like it was Memorial Day 1986.
Sports may be a vapid waste of time, energy and money, but they are the connective tissue that binds families across generations and friends across the map.
Those bonds are especially tight in legacy sports towns like Detroit, which taught the immigrants who came to work in the auto factories and steel mills to build a better life what offsides and icing mean, when to bunt, who to throw to on third down and how to post up in the paint.
Nostalgia and laughter are good for the soul. So are parades. A Super Bowl jaunt remains high on my family’s bucket list. We’re so close right now we can virtually taste the Stroh’s.
The ballgame in the bag, it was finally time to cram ourselves into the NFL’s gaping maw, just as Friday happy hour was kicking in.
How surreal it was to stroll with thousands of pedestrians to Goodell’s circus down blocked-off Woodward Avenue, the backbone of Detroit’s once-thriving, since-gentrified commercial district.
The shuttered storefronts, despair and ample gunfire that defined this area and the national media narrative of the late 1970s and ’80s looked like Disneyland’s daily parade, sounded like Mardi Gras and felt like a hippie music festival.
The crowd was mostly young, highly diverse and refreshingly jovial. The stage music was heavy on Motown, hip-hop, disco and rhythm and blues. You couldn’t walk 15 yards without catching a football.
It looked like the talking heads on ESPN and NFL Network spent as much time taking selfies from their broadcast platforms as they did on 40-yard dash times and wingspans. When the Buffalo Bills finally kicked off Round 2, the party was in full swing and stayed upbeat throughout the moonlit night.
This wasn’t heaven. Or Ray Kinsella’s Iowa cornfield. It was Detroit.
For one weekend at least, football’s ugly duckling became a swan, shocking this ex-pat to his toes.
Hell yeah, “Dallas Sucks!” Pour me another.
Bravo, Murph, Bravo!!!!
Murph, you nailed it again! Great story, especially loved this:
"Sports may be a vapid waste of time, energy and money, but they are the connective tissue that binds families across generations and friends across the map."