Playing For The Chargers Just Can't Be That Bad

After a tense hour in which Eli Manning was a prospective law student, the NFL's first family of quarterbacks got what it wanted.

In one of the more bizarre first hours in recent draft history, Manning was taken with the first pick by the San Diego Chargers, for whom he announced he wouldn't play.

An hour later, as Manning walked away from the podium at a press conference in which he insisted he would go to law school, someone rushed into the room to say the Giants just obtained him for another quarterback, Philip Rivers, whom they had taken with the fourth overall pick.

UPDATE: Apparently, choosing between pro football or law school is more popular than I previously thought.

In the locker room before the Rose Bowl in 1997, he [Pat Tillman] asked one of his coaches, Lyle Setencich, what draft round he might expect to be chosen in the next year. "I told him to get a law degree, that he was going to be President," says Setencich. "He said, 'I want to play in the NFL.'"

I should have tried out for the Raiders as a DT.