Apr 22, 2019; Costa Mesa, CA, USA; Los Angeles Chargers general manager Tom Telesco at a press conference prior to the 2019 NFL Draft. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Chargers: GM Tom Telesco Reacts To Key Scene In Kevin Costner Football Classic 'Draft Day'
We all know that Kevin Costner is more or less the ultimate modern sports movie actor.
A legitimately high-level baseball player, Costner has made three MLB-themed flicks (the classics "Field Of Dreams" and "Bull Durham" and the less-than-class "For Love Of The Game"), a golf picture ("Tin Cup"), a high school cross country movie ("McFarland, USA"), a cyclist movie ("American Flyers"), a race car drama ("The Art Of Racing In The Rain"), and, most importantly for our purposes, the somewhat overwrought-but-very re-watchable NFL front office drama "Draft Day."
If you count poker and gambling as a sport (I'm not sure I do, although they do broadcast games on ESPN so... maybe it is?), you could throw in his appearance in the mediocre Aaron Sorkin drama "Molly's Game." He also has a cameo in the boxing dramedy "Play It To The Bone."
Fittingly, the premiere sports movie actor's lone football flick recently received the deep-dive treatment from your premiere Los Angeles Chargers executive, general manager Tom Telesco.
"Draft Day" tells the tale of beleaguered Cleveland Browns GM Sonny Weaver Jr. (Costner), who enacts some initially head-scratching wheeling and dealing on the opening day of a fictionalized version of the 2014 NFL draft, while struggling through a variety of personal and professional challenges.
Telesco actually unpacked several crucial sequences from the Ivan Reitman-directed 2014 picture, but given that this year's NFL draft is less than a week away, we figured it would behoove for this exercise to see how he feels about the movie's actual front office war room and draft board.
"Let me see the draft board," Telesco says in the clip. "That's disappointing. That is nothing like anyone's draft boards. I mean it's a little bit [like an actual draft board] but, first of all, they're so small, like if you're going to have a movie about [NFL] draft day, I think you would really get some real draft boards. There's one player in each round for each position? Tough. That draft board's just terrible."
So perhaps it'd the most realistic of behind-the-scenes football draft dramas. But it's basically the only behind-the-scenes football draft drama, and for what it does right (capture the fun and frenetic energy of deadline dealmaking), it's a good time.
