ESPN coordinating producer Seth Markman is the golden child to sports media writers this week as he dishes on the WorldWide Leader’s production of the draft as if they’re recreating antimatter. Speaking to SI.com’s Richard Deitsch, Markman explained the building blocks of molecular physics why ESPN again won’t let its own reporters live in 2017:

As mentioned above, Markman says that ESPN staffers will not tweet out picks in the first round ahead of Goodell. “We will allow our staffers to tweet any behind the scenes conversations teams are having, trade talks, debates, etc., but what we won’t allow is for them to flat out give away draft picks before the commissioner announces them,” Markman said. “As I have said in the past, our viewers have overwhelmingly told us that they do not want us to spoil the drama of the draft in any way. This goes for Twitter, too. I realize that there are those who disagree with this approach, but we are not in the business of angering our loyal viewers and I personally like the unspoiled nature of this event. Fans love sitting on the edge of their seats to hear what the commissioner says. Trust me, Adam Schefter could easily report who each team is going to pick minutes before the commissioner announces it. That would be terrible TV and he has no interest in proving that he could do this anyway.”

Sure. Adam Schefter has no desire to prove that he can scoop every pick. Right. The most competitive, obsessed scoop reporter in sports has no desire to prove how good he is. Sure. OK. Whatever you say.

But I feel like this stupid, corporate-imposed embargo will soon go the way of NBC trying to show us taped Olympics. There are two very distinct audiences: those who use Twitter, and those who don’t. The overall number of people who do is relatively small, and those people will most likely be able to find out picks before they’re announced on TV, regardless of who tweets it. ESPN putting a gag on Schefter does nothing other than cut them out of this loop. For everyone else? No matter how many retweets those scoops get, news won’t travel fast enough in just a few minutes for it to get out of Twitter for the rest of the population to find out anyway. Maybe if your event requires a self-imposed mandate on reporting it’s time to rethink the way you broadcast it. 🤔