Speaking of draft assholes.
https://x.com/backaftathis/status/1252413012612247554?s=46
That’s my first draft memory. I was 8. First draft I watched. Watched it bc I was going to follow whatever team picked Barry. And so we’re here. 
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Cool story. For real. You remember the actual Lageman conversation?
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Pretty sure he just wanted to call my man Mel a draft asshole lol
Awesome story about Barry. I always wondered how many fans he brought to Detroit strictly by himself
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Vaguely. I remember my best buddy Dave and I being like “why is that guy with the big hair being so rude?” This was early in the GHW Bush term, before the internet and cable tv expansion into “angry programming”, so people weren’t often rude like that. We didn’t know who Mel Kiper was. I think it took us a couple more years, maybe his run in with Tobin to figure out it was a schtick. But then the 1989 Score cards came out with the combine/workout information on the back and we were hooked on the draft. We used to do mock drafts during our church service.
Oddly I don’t really remember Barry on stage which is weird bc it was the initial reason for watching.
To be honest watching the Holiday Bowl in December was likely the real reason I’m a Lions fan. I had never seen Barry play before that bc of how regional Sports programming was back then. And obviously he was just so obviously different. That was the moment I decided that he would be “my sports guy.” It had been Will.Clark up to that point.
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My early draft memories are pretty spotty. Mostly Mel Kiper being a dick, the tracking of the aftermath of the Hershel Walker trade and a few other nuggets (like I remember the Eric Swann saga somewhat well bc his profile was such an enigma.)
Probably wasn’t until about 93 or 94 that I really started having my own opinions about most of the first round guys.
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I have some Billy Sims, Superbowl at the Silverdome, and “Another One Bites The Dust” memories from my youth, but the first genuine interest in football didn’t exist until the Bears SB run with the Fridge and all the other characters involved.
That turned into watching every Sunday from the 1985 season until today, with my earliest team being the Broncos. Like hockey in those days, your local team produced one type of product, where the games broadcast on other networks showed other teams with a completely different product. Elway’s Broncos was as noticeably different from the Lions as Gretsky’s Oilers were from the Redwings. Must-see TV vs meh.
Fortunately what I most remember from that Bears SB is my Refrigerator Perry GI Joe.
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Coming back to your draft interest…
By comparison, I never cared about the draft until 2007, and that was only because I had been watching LSU that year and was excited that the Lions were in position to maybe grab Jamarcus. Eesh.
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I also thought Russell might be special 
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Count me as one. I was an Oklahoma State fan first.
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I dressed up as - or was dressed up as - the Fridge for Halloween that year. Stupid parents. Big boxy thing I kept falling down in and a Bears helmet! Ugh. Those pictures have been burned.
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We had just moved to Eugene and bc I was annoyed with all of the bandwagon 49ers fans I had encountered so I went looking for a new team but didn’t have a North Star to navigate by. Then the Holiday Bowl happened.
Dave and I were the Dog Pound one year. We had played a ton of Tecmo Bowl and liked the name Webster Slaughter (duh) and it just kind of evolved from there.
Btw, while $38 is a total rip off for a T-Shirt I kind of do want. Although that’s not from Tecmo Bowl that’s from Tecmo Super Bowl.
Oh I was a tecmo bowl fiend as well, but I was predictably a Bo Jackson guy. Not very inventive, but man he was awesome on there. I’m lucky I didn’t end up a Raiders fan. If Barry hadn’t happened in my backyard who knows where I would have ended up. I had the pleasure of watching live when he took the opening kickoff back for a TD, and I never stopped watching.
Raiders were my go to bc of Bo and setting Bo’s speed up with Marcus. The Bears we played a good bit bc Dave was a Bears fan. Cleveland was the other. The Giants were fun bc LT could block every kick if you timed your “L” correctly. We played all of the teams. We also used to do kick off return games where we would gamble trading cards based off of who could return the kickoff for a TD. Once you mastered the breakaway zig zag you were set. Just the return and then hit reset and go again. When he’d come and stay over we’d flip all of the wicker furniture over and construct a gaming fort. Simpler times.
The breakaway zig zag was the key to the game. The mastery of it allowed for some hilarious stuff, which was parodied in that commercial (with Bo no less).
Alas my friends at the time weren’t into football as much as me, so there was heavy Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, Pitfall (on the Atari) and other adventure games thrown in. We did play a lot of Mike Tyson’s Punch Out when it first came out, and we also played the hell out of Track & Field. That was a fun one. You couldn’t actually push the controller button to make your guy run the fastest, you had to like, tense up, and use the resulting tremors. At least until the turbo controller came out and everyone started cheating.
Did you have a Power Glove? What a crazy scam that was.
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The original was fun. Some of the power pad Track games were really fun as well.
I enjoyed all the games that you mentioned. Was a huge Mega Man fan as well.
Anyways, I’ll let us get back on topic now. My apologies for leading us astray.
That’s a total rip off because spiking the football would be such an unBarry thing to do after any play or touchdown. Did he do it in college?