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Did you know that there was a football draft this week? Neither did I until about thirty minutes ago, thanks to the magic of social media.
Today was, apparently, the first day of the Major League Football Draft. Today, the eight coaches of the teams that will comprise MLFB selected their "Franchise players" with their first selections, and the rest of the draft will take place on Thursday or Friday.
The name of one of the eight coaches will ring pretty familiar with fans of the Minnesota Vikings, that being Ted Cottrell. Cottrell was the Vikings' defensive coordinator in 2004 and 2005.
Here are the eight players that were selected as "Franchise Players" for the eight MLFB teams.
| Pick | Coach | Player | Position | Collete |
| 1 | Dave Campo | Joe Adams | WR | Arkansas |
| 2 | Charlie Collins | Chris Bonner | QB | CSU-Pueblo |
| 3 | Ted Cottrell | Taylor Belsterling | WR | Huntingdon |
| 4 | Robert Ford | Casey Pachall | QB | Texas Christian |
| 5 | Wayne Geis | Emmanuel Stephens | DE | Mississippi |
| 6 | Galen Hall | Stephen Garcia | QB | South Carolina |
| 7 | Larry Kirksey | Dan LeFevour | QB | Central Michigan |
| 8 | Chris Miller | Darron Thomas | QB | Oregon |
I've linked to the MLFB bios of all of the coaches. There are a few names that should be familiar to football fans there. There are a couple of familiar names on the draftee list, too. . .Adams was a part of the same offense as Jarius Wright and Greg Childs at Arkansas (and was actually drafted ahead of both of them), while LeFevour was drafted by the Bears a few years ago.
The MLFB website doesn't list the cities that the teams will be playing in, though it does hint at a couple of locations. It says that they're targeting "emerging and underserved markets" that don't have direct competition from other big league sports teams. They plan on running their league from April to June, and already have a television deal in place. . .a two-year deal, even. . .for all 40 regular season games, as well as the post-season.
I don't know how well this league is going to do, but it will be kind of nice to see spring football again. It's been a while since we've had a legitimate spring football league. . .and, no, even with as much of a WWE fan as I am, I don't think the XFL counts. Hopefully MLFB will gain some traction going forward. Who knows. . .we might even see some former Vikings find their way to the league somewhere.