The Meat Market: The Inside Story of the NFL Draft

by Richard Whittingham

A journalist and ex-football player reports from a front-row seat in the Chicago Bears office about the elaborate scouting process that leads to the selection of new players on draft day

288 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1992

About the author

Richard Whittingham (1 Jan. 1939-21 Feb. 2005), was the author of 28 books including Boy wonder of Wall Street, Skokie, and The Chicago Bears.

Whittingham also wrote as:
Dick Whittingham
David Paige
Andrew David

Reviews

[Jeffrey Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Whittingham, a veteran sportswriter, spent time going behind the scenes with members of the Chicago Bears front office as they prepared for the 1991 NFL Draft.

While Whittingham's book was pretty avant garde at the time, changes to the NFL Draft, the addition of more teams, and the rise of the internet makes this pretty dated by today's standards. However, at the time they this book came out, it was "cutting edge." Nobody had access to the inner working of Draft rooms and just casually mentioned what they saw. This was highly unusual at the time, though this type of reporting is more common today.

His Mock Draft bored me. He may have tried to have build suspense, and it may have made more sense if I was reading this at the time of publication. At least I was able to take a quick trip down memory lane with some of the prospects - footballers I haven't thought about in years.

All in all, it was a pleasant read. He had some good stories from observations made of coaches, scouts, players or others involved in the process (including Mike Ditka).

The only thing he really didn't spend much time on was the team's interaction with Agents. He covered it very briefly. Not bad otherwise.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Whittingham's The Meat Market, may be the only book ever written on the 1991 NFL Draft that was released to the public. Because I'm pretty sure NFL Draft guru Mel Kiper Jr. and some other draft experts wrote books on the 1991 Draft, but I bet their books weren't and never will be released to the public.

The Meat Market was a sort of comprehensive (much of the first part of the book was about the history of the NFL Draft and the NFL itself) reading on many high profile and some lower profile prospects for the 1991 NFL Draft.

There wasn't much revelatory or some super deep analyses of the players that participated in the 1991 Draft within this book. But what the book did do is educate you on the draft process. Plus, it gave you some background on many players who were taken in the '91 Draft.

I would recommend this book only to people who are pro football, NFL Draft, and college football historians, because the casual or new age football fan would get bored or disinterested in this book before they are even a third of the way through the book.