Jack Kerwin

It’s never been the most scintillating form of entertainment. Despite all the talk and posturing and prognosticating that takes place in the months leading up to it, the NFL draft, the actual event itself, never quite lives up to its build-up.

Year in and year out, the pattern rarely changes. Fans, from cursory to creepy, get caught up in the fanfare to some degree. They hear the chit-chat about their teams’ needs, their teams’ drafting tendencies and their teams’ likely choices, all the while becoming that much more curious.

The anticipation mounts, knowingly or not – to some level, at least. Mock drafts get perused, read and re-read. Then the first round comes each April, and … it leaves you a little flat. If you happened to follow the proceedings at all, they just don’t seem to fulfill the appetite – even if your team picked the guy you wanted it to pick.

It’s like expecting a steak with all the trimmings and what you get is a plain hamburger, sans bun.

I’m in the minority, both at home and abroad.

Quarterback, to me, is not THE ISSUE for the local football franchise that plays at Lincoln Financial Field just up the road, nor is it for the 2013 NFL Draft, which begins tonight in New York City.

Oh, it’s been talked about, near and far, to the umpteenth degree for weeks, heck, for months – how the Eagles need a new one, a surefire, can’t-miss guy to run the show in new coach Chip Kelly’s offense for years to come, and how this year’s available choices are lacking, not only in that regard, but just in general.

I just don’t buy it, on either count.

Put it this way, the view here is that Philly doesn’t necessarily need a quarterback. That it’s fine if GM Howie Roseman opts to fill another spot with the No. 4 pick tonight, or if the Kelly/Roseman braintrust opts to pick a QB, too – because the pickings are pretty darn good … for any team.

It reads well: aging favorite son returns with the fire and desire to lead a return to greatness, or create a path to a greatness that never quite really existed in the first place. His coming-back party is embraced by all who remember him, by those who have been informed about him by those who remember him, and by just about anyone linked to the equation who hopes for a better future than the recent past.

With Eddie Jordan’s decision, unofficially made Wednesday, to take a dribble down memory lane along the banks of the Raritan River in Central Jersey and grab the reins of the rubble that is the Rutgers University men’s basketball program, what we have is the positive, heart-tugging, pride-pumping beginnings of a great storyline. Following the Mike Rice instruction-by-intimidation (or, if you prefer, intimidation-by-instruction) fiasco, not to mention previous errant shots with coaches, the Scarlet Knights appear to have pulled off a slam dunk here.

Perhaps you’re basking in the afterglow of the recently completed NCAA tournament, or swimming through the sludge of the Rutgers University coach-by-abuse fiasco. Maybe you’ve stepped away from college basketball altogether until next fall, opting to focus on baseball or spring football.

Regardless, the fact remains … the game, as it does with all big-time sports, goes on – day after day, month after month, year-round.

Be it hirings or firings, conference addition or subtraction, something always seems to pop up on the hoops radar. With all that, and the underlying reason behind everything being money, it was kind of nice to see that Oklahoma State freshman Marcus Smart opted to remain on campus at least another season, a decision he made public Wednesday.

No one-and-done for him. The green and gaudy lifestyle provided by an NBA bank account can wait.

With the culmination of the 2012-13 college basketball season, signed, sealed and delivered with Louisville’s Peyton Siva-sparked “speed kills” act Monday night in Atlanta leaving Michigan on the wrong side of an 82-76 score, we, alas, must bid adieu to this campaign’s Mid-Week Madness.

Yes, it’s true – sad, but true. No more blasphemous statements that cast doubt the true ever-lasting omnipotent quality of powerhouse conferences the big-name schools that play in them. No more insane suggestions that maybe, just maybe, a great player or five exists who wasn’t coveted by the Big Ten, Big East, ACC, Pac-12 or SEC, and that – holy cow – one of ’em may be better than the Otto Porters of the world. No more going against the grain, and calling into question conventional wisdom such as Indiana’s obvious place atop the game’s elite, that the Hoosiers just could not be touched when things mattered and that Victor Oladipo was the second coming of not just Michael Jordan or Dwyane Wade, but an other-worldly combination of both.

Yep, there has been just some crazy thinkin’ and preachin’ in these parts. But, rest easy. That’s over … for now.