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Kellen Moore goes undrafted, and we all learn a valuable lesson about the NFL

By Kevan Lee Updated
Feb 24, 2012; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Boise State Broncos quarterback Kellen Moore speaks at a press conference during the NFL Combine at Lucas Oil Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brian Spurlock-US PRESSWIRE
Feb 24, 2012; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Boise State Broncos quarterback Kellen Moore speaks at a press conference during the NFL Combine at Lucas Oil Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brian Spurlock-US PRESSWIRE

Update: Moore has signed with the Detroit Lions as a rookie free agent.

Despite winning half-a-hundred college football games and piloting one of the most prolific and complicated football offenses for the past four years, Kellen Moore was not selected in the 2012 NFL Draft. Eleven other quarterbacks, including Northern Illinois and Tennessee-Chattanooga ones, were. Football god has a strange sense of humor.

Not that Bronco Nation finds it funny. Seeing an all-time great, your all-time great, get passed over for guys with measurables and potential is a tough pill to swallow, not unlike the crazy pills that most Bronco fans assume all 32 NFL GMs are taking. But it also shouldn't come as much of a surprise. After all, this is the business whose job fair is held in underwear and whose most brilliant minds at one point thought Jamarcus Russell was John Elway. The NFL is just being the NFL.

If Kellen Moore's draft story has taught us anything it is that there is a reason why we are college football fans and not NFL fans.

Players like Kellen Moore have a chance at the college level, and stories like his add to the pageantry and purity of the college game (yes, I recognize the irony in calling college football pure). There is more opportunity in college. There is more variety.

The NFL looks for a prototype for a reason. Prototypes are more successful, on average, and success means wins and wins mean money and money means fat, happy owners stay fat and happy (or plastic-surgery'd and happy, like Jerry Jones). Maybe some day the prototype will be 6-foot, left-handed, goofy football wizards. But that day was not Day Three of the NFL Draft.

Moore's legacy will live on in DVDs and record books and a certain blog's archives, and one day, when Moore is hoisting a championship trophy in a polo and a headseat, we'll all forget this NFL Draft thing ever happened. I'd kind of like to forget starting now. Is there a crazy pill for that?