Courtesy Winnipeg Free Press:

There is no other time of the year when football franchises are so full of optimism and hope. Everybody is undefeated and the brain trust of every team has just finished selecting a crop of players with seemingly unlimited potential and capabilities.

So understandably, along with this euphoria comes the often unfair inferences when they are inevitably compared to those veteran players they are one day anticipated to replace. If the transition from the collegiate ranks to the professional wasn’t already hard enough, a number of these rookies now find themselves with some grandiose expectations tacked squarely onto the back of their draft-day selections.

For instance, according to my research into his press clippings, Dylan Barker, the CFL’s top pick in the 2008 draft, apparently not only looks like Tom Cruise, but he has the vertical jump of the CFL’s 2007 defensive player and rookie of the year Cameron Wake, and is the next coming of longtime CFL stalwart and all-star safety Rob Hitchcock.

The Edmonton Eskimos traded one of their picks in this year’s draft for a player who was selected in the second round of the 2007 draft — Kevin Challenger — who apparently reminds people in the football industry of “a young Ben Cahoon.” That would be the Ben Cahoon of the Montreal Alouettes, who has more receiving yards, touchdowns, and all-star hardware than most of the rest of the Canadian slotbacks in the CFL combined. Not an unrealistic expectation for a second-year player. Edmonton also took a defensive back in the fourth round by the name of Jonathon Hood who they say should produce similar results to one Yannick Carter of the Saskatchewan Roughriders. I really don’t know much about Yannick Carter so I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.

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