Just as the NFL begins to make the draft an event that moves from city to city, the place it called home for decades wants to bring it back.
Gary Myers of the New York Daily News reports that New York, where the draft occurred every year from 1965 through 2014, plans to bid for its return in 2019. New York has not submitted a bid for the 2018 draft; the location for next year’s event will be announced after this year’s draft in Philadelphia.
Per Myers, the cities that are discussing the hosting of future drafts include Philadelphia, Canton, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Green Bay, Jacksonville, and Los Angeles.
If/when the draft returns to New York, don’t expect it to stay. The NFL finally has realized that, by dangling the draft as an eligible offseason tentpole event that moves around like a traveling circus, the league can make plenty of money, in part by finagling favorable terms from the cities that find themselves in competition to host it.