It is a bright warm morning at the end of april, the slanting sun catching a haze of pollen as it filters through the trees of Central Park. On an AstroTurf field under a huge white awning, dozens of hyped-up New York City schoolchildren are gathered.

To a soft-rock soundtrack, half a dozen huge young men enter the tent through a crush of photographers and television cameras; a posse of Gullivers soon surrounded by a Lilliputian swarm of children. Today, they are college students. In two days, they will be multimillionaires. The National Football League draft for 2008 is entering the final stages of an annual selection saga that grips American football fans for months.