While the NFL prolonged the paint-drying exhibit they call the NFL Draft to three days this year, I enjoyed the life of a reformed addict. I still bought every draft guide that every magazine stand had to offer, but I refused to spend the time just watching and waiting for the Eagles to make me scratch my balding dome. I worked on Night One, and didn't even know the Eagles traded up to No. 13 until I heard a ruckus from our guys in the Sports Department. On the second night of the draft (rounds 2 and 3), the wife and I went to Sellersville for dinner (Washington House) and a concert (liberal subversive Janis Ian). Sure, I had secret operatives leave me messages on my turned-off cell phone, but I was so enraptured by the concert that Andy Reid's dalliances were secondary. On Day 3, I followed the fourth and fifth rounds online (one can only take so much Tim Tebow talk from the talking heads on TV) and went out with Sofia and the better half for some errands. Now, as I check online every 12 seconds for a list of undrafted players signed by the Eagles, I'm hit in the face with one of my major pet peeves -- the Mr. Irrelevant award, which is given to the player drafted last each year. Instead of spewing my angst in a new blog about the mockery being made of wide receiver Tim Toone and Weber State (drafted by the eternally irrelevant Detroit Lions), I felt a rerun of my column from last year on the topic would be ... relevant:

Keeping the name game relevant

Originally published: Sunday, May 3, 2009

By GORDON GLANTZ, Managing Editor

After spending hours I’ll never get back watching the NFL Draft last weekend, this semi-forgotten song has been bouncing around in my head.

It’s called “(I Love It When You) Call Me Names” by a singer-songwriter named Joan Armatrading who was always loved more by the critics than the fickle public.

The verses of this song — released way back in 1983 — reveal an adult-themed meaning. But it is the chorus — basically the song’s title repeated multiple times — that resonated all week.

Why? Because, deep down, we all need to be called names. It is as essential as oxygen. If we’re not labeled something — liberal or conservative, white-collar or blue-collar, funny or serious, family man or swinger, etc. — then who the heck are we?

Do we become trees falling in the forest that no one hears?

Without calling it “swine” flu, we wouldn’t know that this media-created scourge came from pigs.

Without calling it an “independent” film, we wouldn’t know that what we’re seeing was made to stretch on a shoestring budget, but free from the greedy clutches of Hollywood.

We need name-calling — as long as we don’t abuse the privilege and get lazy.

Take it from someone who has been called every name in the book — especially since the debut of this column in 2004. As long as I consume a balanced diet of labels, I dare say it all keeps me feeling virile.

Good, bad or indifferent — a moniker fired from the launching pad of another means you exist. You matter. You are not anonymous.

Which brings us back to the aforementioned Armatrading song and the NFL Draft, which I swear I’m not going to let consume another weekend of my life (stop laughing, people who know me too well). The two-day event concluded with one of the most insulting names one can be called.

It trumps any vile tag in the book. It makes “mama’s boy” look like “stud.” It makes “milquetoast” look like “flamboyant.”

Some smug clown named Paul Salata steps to the podium to announce the day’s final selection — this while the on-air draft experts, the know-it-alls who dissected every single other player chosen as if each were mythical gladiators from ancient Rome, suddenly start to laugh it up like middle-schoolers ready to pounce on the class scapegoat in the playground after school.

The ringleader, Salata, has long-since come to the brilliant conclusion that the last player taken in the NFL Draft should be dubbed “Mr. Irrelevant,” and has the gall to invite the poor kid for an annual week-long mockfest in Newport Beach, Calif.

Irrelevant? Really?

There are people who seem irrelevant to us (heck, I could rattle off about 100 without even batting an eye), but they surely matter to someone somewhere.

Such a mean-spirited label fails to fit the last player chosen in a professional sports draft. Even if the odds of sticking in the league are slim, it is a tremendous accomplishment.

The NFL, which restricts excessive touchdown celebrations and other demonstrative acts of passion, should be flat-out ashamed of itself for giving Salata this platform each year.

Consider the hundreds of thousands of kids who play the game of football — from the Pop Warner high school levels to the thousands who are outstanding enough to wear college uniforms. A small percentage of that multitude are good enough to get a passing glimpse from a pro scout, and a mere few hundred (256 this year) get drafted.

At present, there are four of Salata’s former Mr. Irrelevants still in the league, which is four more than he would like you to know about. There are countless undrafted players, such as Eagles’ standout safety Quintin Mikell, playing for pay.

This year’s Mr. Irrelevant is Ryan Succop, a kicker from South Carolina nabbed by the Kansas City Chiefs. Those of us who follow these things closely know that kickers are rarely drafted. If they showed promise in college, they get invited to a training camp to challenge an entrenched veteran. They usually don’t make it in the first try and bounce around like drifters, eventually finding the right team at the right time — themselves becoming that entrenched veteran fending off challenges from newcomers each year — or moving on with their lives.

“I don’t plan on being irrelevant,” said Succop, who belied the jock image at South Carolina by holding down a double major in finance and real estate and a minor in computer science. “I’ve been very blessed. I plan on making an impact right away.”

UPDATE: 2009 winner Ryan Succop became the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, and kicked a winning field goal to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers on November 22, 2009. He went on to tie the NFL record for highest field goal percentage by a rookie in a season with 86.2%, and also passed NFL Hall of Famer Jan Stenerud for most field goals made by a rookie in Chiefs history. Succop was awarded the Mack Lee Hill Award, given the team's top rookie.

Maybe it is the 82-year-old Salata — a guy who bases his own existence on coming out of hiding once a year to mock someone else completely out of context — who must have issues with his own relevance after playing one forgettable season in the NFL.

Unlike Succop, he should not feel blessed. He makes no impact. His relevance is in serious doubt.

And, perhaps, this is the larger lesson to be learned here. Perhaps the people slinging reckless labels are telling us more about themselves than whomever they strike with their daily darts.

It’s not that we should seek some great penance for calling names. I, for one, would be out of business in a hurry. We just have to be creative and strive to be accurate.

Above all, keep it relevant.

For every action there is a ... over-reaction? Come on, Russia. How much have you been racking over the years by extorting money from infertile Western couples? Keep in real, comrades!

Read and react:

Russia suspends all adoptions to US families

By NATALIYA VASILYEVA, Associated Press Writer Nataliya Vasilyeva, Associated Press Writer 2 hrs 9 mins ago

MOSCOW – Russia has suspended all adoptions to U.S. families until the two countries can agree on procedures, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday — a week after an American woman sent her 7-year-old adopted son back to Russia on a plane by himself.

The boy's return — without supervision or explanation aside from a note he carried from his adoptive mother saying he had psychological problems — incensed Russian authorities and the public, and prompted aggressive media coverage of foreign adoptions.

A U.S. delegation will visit Moscow "in the next few days" to discuss a possible bilateral adoption agreement, ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said.

"Russia believes that only such an agreement which will contain effective tools for Russian and U.S. officials to monitor the living conditions of adopted Russian children will ensure that recent tragedies in the United States will not be repeated," Nesterenko said in a televised briefing.

The Tennessee woman who sent back her adopted Russian son last Thursday claimed she had been misled by his Russian orphanage about his condition.

Russians were outraged that no charges were filed against her in the United States.

"How can we prosecute a person who abused the rights of a Russian child abroad?" Russia's children's rights ombudsman, Pavel Astakhov, said in a televised interview Wednesday. "If there was an adoption treaty in place, we would have legal means to protect Russian children abroad.

Some 3,000 U.S. applications for adopting Russian children are now pending, according to the Joint Council on International Children's Services, which represents many U.S. agencies engaged in international adoption.

But the numbers have declined sharply in recent years — with only 1,586 U.S. adoptions from Russia last year, compared with more than 5,800 in 2004.

Russia itself has been a big factor in the drop-off, adoption experts said, citing a perception that many children from Russian orphanages can present special challenges, due to such conditions as fetal alcohol syndrome.

Russian lawmakers for years have nevertheless suggested suspending such adoptions, after other cases of abuse and even killings of Russian children adopted in the United States.

Thousands of American adoption advocates had hoped this week to petition Russian and U.S. leaders to prevent the halt in adoptions announced Thursday. Poignant pleas from would-be adoptive parents were included in an online petition, signed by more than 11,000 people and addressed to President Barack Obama and Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, the council said.

U.S. officials appeared willing to consider Russia's demand for a formal adoption pact, after years of resisting such entreaties while arguing that an international accord called the Hague Convention would be sufficient once Russia ratified it.

"We're willing to talk about some sort of bilateral understanding where we would ensure that these kinds of things could not happen," the U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, told CBS television this week.