Mel Kiper Jr. (; born July 25, 1960) is an
analyst covering
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wit ...
for
ESPN
ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
. He has appeared on ESPN's annual
NFL draft
The National Football League Draft, also called the NFL Draft or (officially) the Player Selection Meeting, is an annual event which serves as the league's most common source of player recruitment. Each team is given a position in the drafting o ...
coverage since 1984, providing in-depth information on the nation's potential draft picks.
Career
Kiper said that
Ernie Accorsi, general manager of the
Baltimore Colts
The Baltimore Colts were a professional American football team that played in Baltimore from its founding in 1953 to 1984. The team now plays in Indianapolis, as the Indianapolis Colts. The team was named for Baltimore's history of horse breed ...
, encouraged him to become a draft analyst. Accorsi told him that there was a market for draft information and suggested that Kiper convert his analysis into a business.
Kiper and fellow draft analyst
Todd McShay
Todd Marshall McShay (born March 22, 1977) is an American football television analyst and commentator.
Early life
McShay attended North Shore Christian School in Lynn, Massachusetts and then Swampscott High School in Swampscott, Massachusetts, ...
are often featured together and compare their mock drafts on ESPN programs.
Big Board
Kiper creates what he calls his "big board", on which he ranks the top 25 players every week. During
ESPN
ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
draft coverage, Kiper's big board appears on the ticker and updates automatically once a player is selected.
Video game appearances
*Kiper voices himself as the ESPN draft expert, and has his own mock draft in ''