by Riley Bauling
Daily Lobo
I'm not one of those clowns who thinks we need to spend less time debating what's going to happen in the NFL Draft that takes place April 29 and April 30.
Without the arguments over which new quarterback's arm will be ripped from its socket and jammed in his mouth because of a lack of offensive protection from any of the teams looking to take a QB, we'd have tennis, golf and the start of the 419-game baseball season to placate us.
So what if we spend a little extra time talking about which of this year's running backs is going to go the Lawrence Phillips route? Phillips, if you recall, was taken sixth overall in the 1996 draft after a stellar year at Nebraska and then promptly committed every crime short of trying to eat a team member's foot. Guessing who is going to emulate him is precisely what makes the pre-draft buildup so fun.
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We don't know who is going to end up accounting for 27 touchdowns complete with a celebration where he actually dry humps a cheerleader like I'm thinking Reggie Bush will do this year, or who is going to end up pistol-whipping his coach, wife and wide receivers for their lack of respect - the path Marcus Vick is probably taking.
And this year we've got all sorts of interesting stories going into the draft.
The first such story has got to be what the Miami Dolphins are doing, because they've been my team since Dan Marino's cameo in "Ace Ventura." They showed promise last year by winning their last six games. And then just when we thought it was safe, Daunte "Where's the salt to go with my" Culpepper reared his no-good stinking mug. Now Miami has a man with the protruding snout of a Clydesdale running the offense, in addition to the fact that his knee couldn't have fared better last season if someone had jammed a hand grenade in it.
That's why I want the Dolphins to take a tackle like Southern California's Winston Justice with the 16th pick. Three-hundred-and-fifty-pound linemen seem to be the perfect protection for hand-grenaded knees.
The second is which quarterback we'll actually see succeed. Matt Leinart is overrated, and if you have been reading his Web log on ESPN.com, borderline illiterate. That in and of itself deserves a couple more words because he also scored a 31 on his Wonderlic - the test that is supposed to average a player's intelligence. Fellow soon-to-be draftee Vince Young scored a six. And I guarantee you his blog would be read more than Leinart's. Can you imagine what Young would write about? And even better, how would he do it? Would he turn in his first one completed in crayon and with the "g" in his last name backward? Would his writing be nothing but a rebus, you know, with pictures for all the nouns and verbs, but simply no articles because he can't convey "the" in a drawing?
That leaves the door open for Vanderbilt's Jay Cutler, who looks and carries himself like a quarterback. He might not light the statistical world on fire, but I guarantee as long as he falls to the Arizona Cardinals at No. 10 or another team with a running game and decent pass protection, he's going to be a winner. He reminds me too much of Brett Favre not to succeed.
The third and most intriguing is just how good Reggie Bush is going to be in the NFL. I watched him one time in college before I realized that I shouldn't miss one of his games. I haven't been so enamored with a player since Barry Sanders was making peoples' legs detach from their bodies as he shimmied to and fro. Football needs another Sanders. Let's hope Bush is the guy for the job and that he doesn't own a gun.
I hear pistol-whipping isn't the best way to a coach's heart.
