21st Century Man on…”Mr. Irrelevant”

“Mr. Irrelevant” is the name given to the last player selected in the NFL draft every year. The designation refers to the fact that this person stands little chance of making the team that selected him or the NFL in general, though this is no certainty. The name was undoubtedly first penned by some reporter for whom reading the news as it is lacks excitement and lyricism. Regardless, the term is now widely used by the media as a clever way to refer to this ‘unfortunate’ fellow. Since the media is too busy sloganeering and stalking Lindsey Lohan to provide you with meaningful information, the task of providing appropriate perspective falls once again to the 21st Century Manual.

To understand just how irrelevant this person is, you need to have a basic familiarity with math. You also need to know the last pick of this year’s draft was the 255th selection from the ranks of eligible college players. Though there are 124 Division I FCS teams and several hundred more teams in Divisions II and III, most kids get picked from college football’s most prominent league, which is currently known as the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (don’t ask why or we’ll be here all day). Currently there are 120 teams in the FBS, each of which consists of 85 scholarship players. Applying a handy mathematical trick known as multiplication, we see there are 10,200 scholarship athletes in Division I FBS alone. Of these, only the ones who have been out of high school for at least two years are eligible for the draft. However, when you consider the remaining 3 fuckton of players who come from the other college leagues, 10,200 seems like a reasonable round figure to use as a typical year’s draft pool.

So as you can see, though 254 players were selected before Mr. Irrelevant, he was picked in lieu of roughly 9,945 of his football playing buddies. 97.5% of his peers weren’t chosen at all. Once you add in all the journalism majors who quit after they got the shit stomped out of them in high school ball and all the other non-playing pogues who’ll graduate from college this year, you begin to get a sense of just how irrelevant this gentleman truly is.

Perhaps the “Mr. Irrelevant” monitor will spark a trend in the media. Perhaps newscasters can start referring to the Senator who wins by the narrowest margin as “Mr. Unpopular.” Or maybe they can crown the last person to get into Harvard every year “Mr. Stupid Ass.” Wouldn’t that be clever?

Of course, we could always do the opposite and come up with a replacement for the “Mr. Irrelevant” title. A couple that come to mind are:

“Mr. Fuck You, I Got Drafted Into the NFL. What the Fuck Have You Done With YOUR Life.”

or…

“Mr. Call Me Mr. Irrelevant to My Face and I’ll Curb Job Your Ass, Fuck Pig.”

I’m not married to these specific alternatives, per se, but you get the idea. They don’t have quite the same ring or winking smugness as “Mr. Irrelevant,” but they do a much better job of illustrating the point Teddy Roosevelt was trying to make 100 years ago when he said “It is not the critic who counts…the credit belongs to the dude who actually steps into the arena and fucks shit up.” Or something like that, anyway.