There’s something soothing about the NFL offseason: Playoff reruns from the ‘80s fill NFL Network’s schedule; the Top 100 vault is unspooled; beat writers turn to wideout workouts in Miami Beach or body shaming quarterbacks’ beer guts; talk shows dissect franchise tags to exhaustion. 

Amid the low-stakes Super Bowl comedown and long summer of “Hard Knocks,” there’s one weekend of tremendous possibility: the NFL Draft. 

Every year, it starts (for me) with a shuffle through the Blaze Pizza line for a puny pie with extra sauce, all the vegetables. I post up in front of the television and watch the first round until I fall asleep, usually around pick No. 14. Teams are afforded 10 minutes per selection, meaning the event mostly entails jubilant mothers boxing out girlfriends and well-bearded Midwesterners booing Roger Goodell.

But this year, the draft was not like every year; nothing was appeasing about it. 

First, Shedeur Sanders — Mel Kiper’s No. 5 prospect — tumbled to the Cleveland Browns in the fifth round. But well before he earned the fifth slot on the Browns’ depth chart, Deion Sanders’ son got a call. Not from a real general manager, but from a different nepo baby, Jax Ulbrich, an Ole Miss student and the son of Falcons Defensive Coordinator Jeff Ulbrich.

Pretending to be New Orleans Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis, Jax rang up Shedeur to inform him that he’d be the Saints’ next pick before reneging, “You’re going to have to wait a little longer, man. Sorry about that,” and hanging up. In this unfunny prank call, Jax nepo-ed the harmless pastime into malice for us all.

Speaking of nepo babies, Ivanka Trump is back. Eagles cornerback Eli Ricks visited the White House on Monday and was overcome with lust. Worse (in my opinion), Saquon Barkley shamelessly played a round of golf Sunday with her father, President Donald Trump.

Then came more disturbing details regarding Shannon Sharpe’s relationship with a 19-year-old woman. I won’t get into the icky specifics, but the washed ESPN host is facing a $50 million rape lawsuit.

First-year UNC Head Coach Bill Belichick completed this dual symmetry with an age-gap relationship of his own. During a CBS Sunday Morning segment, he showed up in a distressed tee, while his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, hovered mostly off-camera, interjecting when she believed questions like “How did you guys meet?” breached the couple’s privacy.

The footballers and their little infractions have taken me out. I’m stepping away — canceling my Paramount, ESPN+ and League Pass subscriptions. I’m trading my remote for a rod and retreating to a better place: the Los Angeles River.

That concrete flood channel — an icon for car chases and dystopian cinema — will be the site of my sports-media cleanse. Engulfed in brutalist grey and runoff, will be me — an urban angler, wading around. 

I intend to start small by catching some bluegill with worms. Then I’ll level up: stale bread wrapped in tin foil. Surely, I’ll reel in sewer salmon, Tijuana trout, gutter grouper, mud marlin, dumpster dolphin and every other iteration of concrete carp. I’ve entered my Julio Jones offseason. So long, National Football League. Hello, Neighborhood Fishing League.

While I cast into the city’s stream, skip microplastics and unearth old shopping carts, sports will continue. In my absence, Jimmy can plow through the NBA Playoffs, the timeline can flood with Paige Bueckers in Dallas edits, the Stanley Cup trophy can corrode in 14 cans of Coors and the Rays can relegate themselves to the bottom of the AL East.

Approaching purification, I will pay it all no mind. We’ll chat in the fall when my Omega-3 levels are high and my soul has been scrubbed clean by coastal critters.

Leila MacKenzie is a junior writing about minor details in sports in her column, “Little Things,” which ran every other Wednesday. She is also the data editor at the Daily Trojan.