The NFL Draft, A Tale Of Two Cities?

It appears possible that the NFL Draft will take place across two separate cities in the near future, per NFL reporter Charean Williams:

I wouldn't be surprised if the NFL holds the first round of the draft in LA and the rest in Chicago.

— Charean Williams (@NFLCharean) July 7, 2014

I could spill quite a bit of digital ink wondering why the hell you would bother having the draft split between two cities, let alone why you would do the first day in Los Angeles and the rest in Chicago, but we can have that discussion in the comments. Instead, I'd like to take a moment to recognize that the league really is going to pursue the idea of turning the draft into a marquee event.

We could see an NFL Draft in the near future that takes place over a week or more, split between two or perhaps three cities, with the actual drafting of players taking place over four to five days. It's worth wondering, as I have in the past, whether fans are going to put up with this, particularly if there are travel days between the actual drafting. All of that is speculation, of course, but the rumors about the draft get more absurd every time they crop up, so I'm fairly comfortable staking this position out.

The idea, of course, is that the NFL can chew up a week or more during one of the key dead spots in the schedule with an event that fans and analysts already spend months talking about. If they can ever figure out how to solve the dead zone in June and July, they'll really have America by the short hairs. I'm sure their top scientists are already on it, but in the meantime, we can look forward to an expanded, potentially multi-city draft.

What do you think of that?