Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing 1st and Ten, which aired in syndication from 1984 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on Tubi.

This week, it’s for the draft.

Episode 4.3 “Caught In The Draft”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on October 19th, 1988)

The Bulls attend the draft and screw everything up.  It turns out that allowing the players to own the team was a really bad idea.  In fact, it goes so badly that TD Parker (OJ Simpson) really deserves to be fired for suggesting it in the first place.  But, nobody wants to get on TD’s bad side, for some reason.

How badly does it go?

The Bulls need a linebacker.  Sonny Cowers, the phenom out of Louisiana, is available in the first round.  Unfortunately, Mad Dog worries that, if he drafts Sonny, the Bulls will then either release or trade him.  Seeing as how Mad Dog owns the team, I’m not really sure how he could be traded or released but whatever.  Mad Dog picks a player that the team doesn’t need and Sonny is picked by another team.

Meanwhile, Jethro and Bubba insist on drafting an unheralded running back because they’re convinced the man is in their hotel room and threatening to commit suicide if he’s not drafted.  It turns out that the man in the hotel room was just an actor and that the Bulls just got conned into drafting some fat guy from Tennessee.

The Bulls do get a new head coach when TD trades a sixth round draft pick for the new coach of Houston’s term, Ernie Denardo.  That’s right, Denardo’s back!

The draft is such a disaster that the bank cancels their loan and the players are forced to sell the team to the fast food company that they were trying to avoid being purchased by in the first place.

I actually liked this episode.  I enjoyed the chaos of the draft and it was hard not to laugh at the earnest stupidity of the players.  Shouldn’t you guys be trying to draft a quarterback? I thought at one point and, for a second, I felt like a sports expert.

Seriously, they need do need to get a quarterback.