I had the misfortune of covering the National Football League draft a half-dozen times, minimum, in my 31 years at The Sun. Probably more like 10, 12 times.
For some of these drafts, I was the Rams beat writer. For most of them, we had two teams in town. In theory, I was really, really interested.

In practice, it was five hours out of my life spent looking at Mel Kiper Jr., Chris Berman — and the same five commercials endlessly recycled. Several of the drafts I covered were before e-mail. Before the internet. Some were effectively before cell phones, even.

So it made for a LOT of sitting … and … waiting.

I never showed up for a draft without a plan to kill time. Among the options:

1. A Sunday crossword puzzle.

2. Another Sunday crossword.

3. Reading every story in the L.A. Times Sunday book review. Even the one on poetry.

4. Compiling stats for my fantasy baseball team.

5. A book. Preferably a long one. Tolstoy’s “War and Peace was a good choice. “Moby-Dick.”

6. A copy of New Yorker magazine. “Shouts and Murmers” alone can kill an hour.

7. A game of cribbage with some other bored scribe.

8. Eating breakfast.

9. Eating lunch.

10. Thinking about dinner.

So, yeah, the NFL draft always was one of the most tedious assignments in sports. The sort of stultifyingly dull day during which you could feel yourself getting older. Like being at the DMV.

The league finally cut down on its 15-minute-per-pick policy this year, shaving it to 10 minutes, which is still too much … but the effect was a positive one. The NFL “blew through” the 31-player first round in 3 hours, 30 minutes, fastest since 1990. Of course, two clubs already had signed their picks, and the Patriots had one of their selections stripped, so …

Anyway, it’s not quite as horrible as it used to be. I probably could cover the draft next year and leave Tolstoy completely out of it. But Kiper remains inescapable.