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For the past two years, the National Football League has held the annual selection meeting, the NFL Draft, in Chicago. These last two years followed up decades of the event taking place at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, but the league also decided to open up the event for bids from potential host cities. Think of it as an Olympics bidding process, but hopefully far less corrupt.
Well, Chicago won the bid for the first year that it was up for selection (2016), and the league announced on Thursday the site of the 2017 NFL Draft: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
As the NFL’s press release notes, Philadelphia hosted the Draft most recently in 1960, and was the site of the very first Draft in 1938.
The Green Bay Packers were not in the running for 2017, but team president Mark Murphy has discussed the city and the franchise’s plans to bid on the event starting in 2019 and beyond. At that time, the Titletown District developments should be complete, which will make the area around Green Bay a better destination for the loads of media and fans that descend upon the host city.
Despite the Draft changing locations, there appear to be no plans to adjust the format of the event - round one will still take place on Thursday night, with rounds two and three on Friday evening and the remainder of the picks coming in Saturday.