A one-year experiment of holding the draft the first full weekend in May is on hold, but the 2015 NFL Draft is indeed on the move.
According to ESPN, the 2015 draft will be held April 30-May 2, with the first round in primetime. Moving the draft up one week from its 2014 start date avoids interference with the Mother’s Day holiday that caused consternation from the public and NFL teams alike. It also further compacted the offseason schedule, which was greatly reduced by the latest collective bargaining agreement.
While the draft has historically ended Saturday night on the East coast, teams spend most of the night and next day lining up prospects who were undrafted to visit the team facility, take physicals and potentially sign contracts.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in July that the 2015 draft will be in either Chicago or Los Angeles.
New York’s Radio City Music Hall, the traditional site of the draft, was ruled out because of scheduling conflicts.
Radio City Music Hall was not able to offer dates in April or May, when the draft usually takes place. Next year’s event will either be April 22-25 or April 29-May 2.
“We had 12 cities that were interested,” Goodell said. “We felt the best thing to do was focus on the three cities, because they had such a tremendous interest. There are very attractive aspects to each of those cities. Because we don’t have the appropriate dates in May, our focus is completely on Los Angeles and Chicago.”
Goodell said in July the NFL was looking into how to conduct the draft if it extends from three days to four.
“We’re talking about different concepts, primarily how to strengthen the last day and whether we should maybe push that back to the clubs a little bit more and allow the clubs to have a little bit more freedom as more of a club day,” he said. “Maybe they would announce the picks from there. We’re looking at everything under the sun, because there’s a great interest in it and we want to do something that’s more responsive to our fans.”
