The 1st round will be Thursday night in prime time
The 2nd and 3rd rounds on Friday night in prime time
The 4th through 7th rounds then will be on Saturday.

As long as they keep the rounds moving at a good pace, I'm happy.

I'm still not sure what I think of this. I absolutely love the draft...one of my favorite events of the year. But three days? I'm not sure that's necessary.

I don't like it. I often don't get done with work till late on weekdays. Course it's not about me

HATE IT BIG TIME!

The first round wont be over till like 11!! on thursday night!!!

I gotta be up and out my house by like 4 A.M. to get to work. Sucks

OK, at this point, we have had one poster, pointing out the fact, and three posters who (apparently) hate the idea.
OK, the next question is: will you watch?
Sure, on here, right now, you'll vow not to. Fine. When the draft happens, what will you do?
I'll probably watch, and I'm not really upset at the breakdowns of rounds.
Seriously, this is a great decision by a league that is very aware of public hungers and public awareness. I'll probably watch- at least until the Packers pick their player. So will countless NFL fans until their team picks their player.
I don't understand the apparent outrage. After all, its not as if the NFL had given naming rights patches to players- right now in exhibition games.

I hate this kind of stuff.

They are now moving the draft's first round to Thursday night.

So now it will be over three days. My God, they used to do 17 rounds over two days, now its seven in three.

I was fine with Saturday and Sunday. But the greed of the NFL knows no bounds. Anything to get more programming for the superfluous NFL Network.

I wonder what this is going to do to team trades. Between days 1 and 2, teams will have a lot of time to discuss and try to find a way to grab a player they might covet in the middle rounds.

So you want to put the NFL draft up against "The Office", "CSI", and other Thursday night shows that draw in huge amounts of viewers, why? Wouldn't the NFL be better off going Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? Maybe I'm crazy but I think this decision will make them lose viewers not gain them. I love the draft but now I must decide between Michael Scott and the draft.

Wow! I hadn't thought about that, but you're absolutely correct. This could make the draft even more interesting!

Quite honestly, I have never watched a single minute of either "The Office" or "CSI". We have pretty much abandoned traditional television. For me, the favorite is the NFL Channel. For the inimitable one, the Food Network. However, if I were to be interested in both the draft and a television program on another channel, I'd simply use the "Recall" button on our remote. Besides, couldn't you TIVO the program and watch the draft? Or vice versa (sp?)?

EDIT: This initially followed another post. As of now, it seems a bit out of place. This is not a response to the above post.

I would disagree with that notion. Is anything that is directed by profit motive automatically considered greed? It's tighter economy, and this generates a bit more revenue. I'm not sure that this is a move that is somehow bad for the fans. Personally it makes it a bit harder to host my annual draft party, but I don't think it is prohibitive. I'm probably more likely to have to work during the weekend than I am to have to work Thursday/Friday night. If this helps generate profit without alienating the fans, then I think it should be alright.

I don't like it. I feel sorry for the fans in the Mountain and Pacific time zones with the early start during the week. I always loved to make it a NFL draft weekend.

We will see if the move is worth it ratings wise. It will be real late Thursday night on the East coast if your teams are drafting late in 1st round.

Yeah, there should be a ton of new trades. Suddenly, the picks at the top of the 2nd round become more valuable.

I don't really like it. I enjoyed watching the draft coverage over the weekend. It's not going to ruin my life or anything, but it's a minor annoyance.

I like it. Saturday and Sunday get sooooo. . . . long. Now we get the first round quickly after work on Thursday. Then we get rounds 2 and three after work on Friday. Then you don't lose your whole weekend.

ya it depends on how you see it. You see it as long and boring and losing a weekend. I see it as my favorite weekend of the year. But o well, i will watch. I shouldnt get fired.... after all im sure my boss is going to be late that friday too! lol

I don't really like the idea. I was always a big fan of watching day 1 then partying and debating the day then watching day 2 as we all napped and ate junk food to nurse the hangover from the previous night's partying. The longer it is spread out the less practical that is.
Also, I don't think it changes all that much for the teams other than they just take a break now a couple times. As long as they don't increase the amount of time per pick it should still be fine.

Maybe you haven't but millions of people do watch those shows. I believe both of those shows are consistently in the top 5-10 viewed programs every week. The NFL is trying to tap into the heavily viewed Thursday night lineup. Wouldn't they be better off monopolizing the weekend slots they already had? I have a hard time thinking viewership will go up with this decision. Not everyone has Tivo...hell, some people still don't have satellite or cable tv, amazingly.

I love watching the draft and really look forward to it each year. So, I am going to watch the draft if they start it at 2 am on Tuesday night. There seems to be a lot of dislike for this move to 3 days. I can understand that, my preference would be that they could hold the entire draft over three hours on Friday night. However, I like the new move to 3 days. Mainly because the draft will be starting two days earlier than it has in the past. Also, I will get three days of draft fun instead of two.

Here is a terrible but interesting idea: The NFL draft takes place from April 15th through May 15th. There would only be one draft pick per business day throughout the month. So essentially the draft would take place over 20 something business days. Each evening the draft would run for two hours and about 10 draft picks. This would make the draft very interesting and and build up a lot of anticipation for almost an entire month. There would also be more trades. I'm not saying that I would like the draft to move to this format, I just think it would be interesting.

I agree.

I felt drained after this year's draft. Just took forever and ate up too much time. I like the idea of going to the bar with a few friends and catching the first round of the draft like it's an actual game.. Besides, it's that big of a deal anyway, so why not give the first round it's own night.

I don't think this matters much. It's called DVR and Tivo. And if you don't have either, you can watch these shows online at their host sites, such as cbs.com and nbc.com, or the countless other sites that stream them the next day, such as hulu.com and megavideo.com.

The only television event that people really need to cull out a time in their schedule to watch (if they don't have DVR or Tivo) is live sports. Everything else is conveniently available online.

What intrigues me the most about it is that teams will have two opportunities to reevaluate their boards based on both the first round and now the second and third rounds, and revise it accordingly. Breaking the draft up in this manner should allow teams to do even better at identifying star players and making moves to get them. I think that you'll end up seeing better picks being made in the 2nd and 4th rounds again. After the 4th round it'll be a free-for-all like it is now, but it'll be nice to see a few more of those 4th round picks having a bit more weight than they currently do. (In 2005 Brandon Jacobs, Marion Barber and Kerry Rhodes were all players who were picked in the 4th round after teams redid their boards.) I was never a fan of moving the third round to the 2nd day. These are multimillion dollar decisions, and it just seemed that teams were being rushed a little more than they had been and making a number of bad picks as a result. I think that this new format will really help teams that draft well to do an even better job at getting the best players that they can. I think that because of that it is a great move. Aside from when it actually occurs, anything that helps the Packers to become a better team is something that I'm a fan of, and I really think that changing the draft schedule like they have will be something that helps them quite a bit.