Oh, and another great thing about living in Abu Dhabi?

Nobody is talking about the NFL draft.

If you haven’t picked up on this yet, the rest of the world doesn’t care about the NFL. Actually, I can’t think of anything that the U.S. cares about more … that the rest of the world cares about less. Including Nascar and baseball.

And when it comes to the NFL draft … you really are talking about the most excruciatingly dull “event” in American sports. And I would say “in sports of any kind” but I’ve seen enough cricket to know the NFL draft might have one rival …

So, now we have the NFL draft in prime time?

I have a few questions about that.

–Did the Panda Cam at the zoo in Hong Kong break? That’s the camera trained on the pandas, in HK, 24/7. Mostly the pandas sleep. And I would rather watch that for 4-5 hours than the first round of the NFL draft. I mean, one of the pandas might eat some bamboo.

–Is the U.S. bereft of paint drying? I thought the Golden Gate Bridge was being painted constantly. Couldn’t we watch that for four hours-plus, instead?

–Have American sports fans really reached the point that they would rather watch the NFL draft than actual, live guys-running-around sports events? Like the NBA playoffs, like big-league ball? And if that is true, as apparently it is, what does it say about the decline of U.S. sports culture?

I know. Yes. I probably have ranted before about the NFL draft. But, remember, I come at this from a very personal angle — I covered about a dozen of these. As a journalist. Sitting there at the Rams training site in Anaheim, feeling myself getting old as the thing dragged on … and on … and on. With the same awful predictability of on-the-clock blockbuster trades and reaches and escapability and indecipherable clips of a left guard maybe blocking someone and the one guy left in the green room who still hasn’t been drafted …

I can assure you that I have never covered any other (quasi) live sports event at which I took a book to read. Or a book of crossword puzzles. It is that awful. You know it is.

Four-plus hours of Mel Kiper’s hair. And Mel, too. ESPN doesn’t still bring out Chris Berman for this, does it? Four hours of him playing voice tricks? (“Listen to me pitch my voice up here … and then pitch my voice way down low here.” No, he hasn’t at all turned into a parody of himself.) That might prompt some violent suicides.

You will give up your night (on the East Coast) and a big chunk of it (on the West) to watch “war-room cams” and Mort and Clayton and That New Guy standing outside some team’s HQ interviewing GMs and coaches who love, love, just love the guy they just picked, whom they really never, ever thought would still be on the board when it was their turn.

Please, don’t watch this. Watch five straight hours of shouting heads on some cable “news” station. Play computer solitaire for five hours. Go to bed early.

Any of those will be better for you than the NFL draft … live. Or almost live.

Get up in the morning, find a list of the first round, scan it in a minute or two … and that’s really all you need to know.

That’s my plan here. The draft begins in five minutes? Hey, time for us to go to bed, here on the other side of the world.

Wake me when it’s over. Second thought: Don’t wake me for the NFL draft.  Ever.

Here in Abu Dhabi, on the shores of the Gulf … I’m not worried about losing sleep over this.