Youth movement good news for Goodell

William Bryan, Special to the News

Published December 19, 2006 at midnight

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It’s good to be Roger Goodell. The new NFL commissioner inherited the empire on which the sun never sets, an embarrassment of riches that David Stern, Bud Selig and Gary Bettman can only envy from afar. Every morning Goodell wakes up to newspapers full of positive stories about the actual games his league plays. Then he goes to the window, throws back the curtains, and hallelujah! It’s raining rookie superstars!

In the NFL, it’s 1983 all over again. Known as a great quarterback draft, 1983’s first round produced John Elway, Dan Marino and Jim Kelly, but also produced three other present or future Hall of Fame players in Eric Dickerson, Bruce Matthews and Darrell Green.

Based on early returns, the 2006 draft may be the best since 1983. We need to be cautious about early returns (Dewey defeating Truman and all that), but Reggie Bush, D’Brickashaw Ferguson, Vince Young, Devin Hester, Joseph Addai, Maurice Jones-Drew and many of their brethren in a golden horde of rookies look great.

In 1983, six rookies made the Pro Bowl. As good as this year’s class looks, only Hester is certain to be in Hawaii in February. But while the Class of ’83 paid immediate dividends, they were more important as a long-term gift to the NFL.

The first round in 1983 famously saw six quarterbacks drafted, offering a touchstone for all subsequent drafts. In 1999, five quarterbacks were drafted in the first round. Three of the five washed straight out of football, but the NFL was fortunate to have the ’83 draft around to create unwarranted hysteria for ’99.

It is too early to judge the Class of ’06 relative to past classes, whether it is more ’83 or ‘99, but it did what it needed to do for the NFL. Sports fans will sit in front of the television en masse next April because of the sparks of excitement and hope generated last April.

This rookie class will eventually make Pro Bowls, win Super Bowls and make the sort of electrifying plays on which NFL Films was built. Some might even develop as well as the Class of ’83, which eventually provided one-half of the "Best Quarterback of All Time" argument, adding Elway and Marino to Johnny Unitas and Joe Montana.

Young, Hester and Bush get all the ink in Rookie of the Year discussions, but the best has been Jets tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson. Last year the Jets were Ishtar-bad and their offensive line was worse. This year Ferguson has improved the line to average and the team is in playoff contention. He has started all 14 games, taken only two penalties and kept the brittle Chad Pennington alive.

The Rookie of the Year debate is ubiquitous, it’s passionate, and it is exactly the kind of story that Messrs. Stern, Selig and Bettman cannot buy, beg or steal. Good players are good news for any league, but good rookie players promise to keep good news in Roger Goodell’s morning paper for years to come.