I know I shouldn’t spend all day Saturday (4/25) watching the NFL Draft, but I just can’t help myself.

Most of it is spent waiting while 32 first-round picks take six hours or more to be made, with only one being by the team I have religiously followed since moving to Northern California almost 40 years ago, the San Francisco 49ers. But as somebody who doesn’t follow major league baseball any more and can’t really get into basketball except for the NCAA Tournament (I’m black, so I’m sure you all are thinking that my disinterest in basketball is ethnically impossible), for me the NFL season ends when the Super Bowl is played (I have never counted the Pro Bowl the following week as a real game) and really begins in earnest on the last Saturday in April with the NFL Draft.

On that day, every team is starting their new season. Every team starts out with the same identical record. On that day a new crop of rookies is joining your team (mine included) to help them win. Never mind that the reality – that at least half of them will fail, some of them spectacularly and miserably – is much more sobering than the ideal. On that day your team (mine included) will pick the players that are the foundation of what you believe with every fabric of your existence will be a championship team somewhere down the line, hopefully sooner rather than later.

So here’s hoping that B.J Raji, Michael Oher and Brian Orakpo (in order of preference) are still there when the 49ers get to make their first choice, 10th overall — and that the 49ers have the good sense to choose one of them.

– DaveyDoug