With the 16th Pick in the 2007 NFL Draft, the Green Bay Packers Select...

I hereby announce my retirement from the National Football League.

What? Well, no, I never actually worked for the NFL. Or for any NFL team. Never actually played, never had my name on a roster, never got invited to a training camp, or a pre-draft workout, or even a draft-day party.

So maybe “retirement” isn’t exactly the word. The point is: this year, I will not be entering the NFL draft.

It’s the end of an era.

Every year since, roughly, 1988, I’ve made myself available for the NFL draft. Every year, I’ve sat by the phone, waiting for the call. It never came.

Too bad, because I would have been the best backup quarterback in league history.

Nobody looks as good wearing a baseball cap and headphones as I do. Nobody can hold a clipboard under one arm and still signal in plays like me. I can joke around during pre-game warm-ups, chew gum intensely during fourth-quarter strategerizing, dump buckets of Gatorade on whomever needs it, hold towels up so the cameras can’t see which part of Brett the trainers are working on.

I do it all.

And do you think anybody would take a knee in the wee moments of a game faster than me?

Don’t make me laugh. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Okay, so I’m being ridiculous. I never played college ball. I was a mediocre lineman in high school. I’m slow, clumsy, can’t get rim on the basketball court, and my spirals are, shall we say, shaky.

There is no vast conspiracy keeping me out of the NFL.

All the more reason. You know that everybody would look good riding some kid’s bike across the parking lot during training camp, if they were doing so next to me.

Sorry about that reflector, kid. Have an autograph.

But, just for fun, let’s say the Packers had chosen me one year instead of…oh, just to pick a random example…Aaron Rodgers.

Would they have been any worse off?

No. In fact, they’d be better off. For one thing, I’d happily settle for the league’s minimum salary – over the past three years, that adds up to just over a million dollars. Your average first-round pick makes more than that in one year.

If you’re going to pay somebody not to play, why not go for the bargain? Plus, I’d quite happily kick a piece of it back. Shall we say…seventy five percent?

I know, the league wouldn’t allow that, but: what the league doesn’t know won’t hurt them. “Say there, you highly-sought-after free agent: not sure you want to play at Lambeau Field? Would a brand new fully-tricked-out Hummer help you change your mind?”

Because I can make that happen.

Oh, you’re an environmentalist? Fine. An H3, then.

Point is, with me on the roster, there’d be options. Options that don’t exist right now.

This is what I think about, as I listen to all the discussion and debate and prediction and dissection leading up to NFL Draft Day.

I’ve seen umpteen mock drafts and dozens of rumors. This team’s moving up, this player’s falling. Which team has what needs, but which GM preaches the gospel of best available player.

It’s like listening to a weather forecaster tell me what’s going to happen next week, or, as I like to call it: guessing.

They scrutinize drafting reports and rosters, compare 40-yard-dash times and vertical leaps, endlessly debate whether this cornerback’s slight inclination to turn his shoulders too early is more likely to drop him into the 3rd round than that tackle’s bare propensity to lean back on his heels.

General managers and head coaches do the same thing. And how do they fare?

Well, just look down the list, and…busts and coulda-been-shoulda-beens outnumber the impact players. By a lot.

Now: name the Packers’ current top five impact players. Name their top ten.

Donald Driver, Mark Tauscher, and Aaron Kampman – two 7th-rounders and a 5th-rounder – should all be there.

The point: nobody really knows who’s going to pan out.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the draft. I love the guessing. I love the obsessing over every slightest detail. Mostly, I love that it’s a little bit of football in an otherwise barren and lifeless off-season.

Oh, God, the off-season. If only it were shorter.

But considering the history, the uncertainty, the downright failure, more often than not, to bring a real blue-chipper in from the first round…

Huh. Maybe I’ll keep my name in the hat after all.