The NFL draft has become such a production that the league starts planning each one about two and a half years in advance.
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Starting last summer, some of the main partners in the 2026 draft, set to be held this week in Pittsburgh, began meeting regularly to discuss the planning and logistics and the impact the draft would have on the city at large.
These meetings included representatives from the NFL, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the tourism agency Visit Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Public School District and officials from city transportation and public safety, according to Wayne N. Walters, district superintendent, and a public school official who attended the meetings, Merecedes J. Williams.
In February, Williams said, the group began receiving “more high-level updates of information than we had ever gotten,” on road closures and the number of visitors expected. Local officials have said they expect around 500,000 to 700,000 people; Pittsburgh only has a population of 300,000. Traffic and transportation would be disrupted, security heightened. For three days, the draft would essentially consume downtown Pittsburgh, as it had in other cities in years past.
In these meetings, Williams said, the group discussed the possibility of schools going remote during the draft. She said they had a “thoughtful conversation,” going through the pros and cons, and then she reported all this information back to the superintendent and district leadership. “We then made the executive decision,” she said.
In mid-March, Pittsburgh Public Schools announced that students would move to remote learning for three days this week, Wednesday through Friday, while the draft is in town. State standardized testing was also scheduled to begin this week for some students, and now that would be adjusted, too.
“We got a lot of backlash and heat from it,” Walters told NBC News.
To some, that might be understandable. The draft had essentially shut down physical schooling for more than 19,000 students, as if it were a snow day. Many parents, who didn’t have flexible work schedules, were being inconvenienced for … football?
“It is not easy to make a decision like this,” Walters said. “But this came in collaboration with a variety of partners. We had Visit Pittsburgh, we had the city of Pittsburgh, we had the NFL, we had the Pittsburgh Steelers, we had our public safety department and just a variety of other partners really sort of informing this decision for us.”
When asked about that characterization, an NFL spokesman told NBC News, “The league played no role in the school’s decision.” The spokesman disputed that the league had taken part in the described meetings, too. The Steelers and Visit Pittsburgh did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokeswoman for Pittsburgh Public Schools followed up, saying that information shared in those draft planning meetings “may have been conveyed through intermediary partners or coordinating organizations working closely with the NFL, such as the Pittsburgh Steelers and Visit Pittsburgh.”
She added that the school district “cannot speak to [the NFL’s] internal staffing or representation” at the meetings.
Whatever the case, Walters had taken everything into careful consideration. He heard about the road closures, the traffic, the security and worried about his students. Many use public transportation and some crisscross the city to get to school. “It becomes a nightmare really for transportation, where students may be waiting for hours for their [bus] to show up,” he said. “And that really creates a safety issue and a disruption and a concern that we want to address.”
At the same time, Walters said, the school district was “recognizing that this is an exciting moment for the city.” He wasn’t recommending students and parents attend draft events, but he said, “remote learning gives that flexibility for families who want to participate.”
This wasn’t the first time an NFL draft had disrupted school, either.
Last year, Green Bay, Wisconsin, hosted the draft, which reportedly drew about 360,000 unique attendees. For reference, the town has a population of about 100,000 people. The Green Bay Area Public School District went so far as to close its schools during the draft; the district made up the time by starting the school year a few days earlier.
Lori Blakeslee, the school district’s director of communications, said they considered many of the same factors Pittsburgh had: student safety, traffic concerns. She also said closing the schools “provided possibly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our staff to volunteer and our students to participate” in the draft festivities.
Leading up to the decision, she said, the school district had “minimal conversations, mostly with the Packers, not really with the [NFL],” about plans for the event. “They didn’t direct what the decision should be,” she added. “That was our decision to make.”
At least one NFL executive sees a trend forming. “The draft is closing public school for two days — that just shows you the size of [the] draft,” Jon Barker, the NFL’s global head of major events production, told NBC News. “It kind of shows you where [the] draft is today. That an entire community is going to stop and, for those three days, they’re going to focus on football.”
“Closing public schools has just become part of what draft is these days,” he added.
From 1965 to 2014, the draft had one location: New York City. The league held it at various hotels and, in later years, at iconic locations such as the theater at Madison Square Garden and then Radio City Music Hall. In 2015, the league took the draft on the road to Chicago and held it in Grant Park. About 200,000 people reportedly attended. The NFL knew it had struck gold. The event returned to Chicago the following year and even more people showed up. The draft has rotated to a new city every year since.
Barker took over the event’s production before the 2019 iteration in Nashville, which drew a reported 600,000 people over a three-day span. That year, the league booked live music acts, really leaning into the city’s “Music City” reputation. On Saturday, the draft’s final day, the league had country music star Dierks Bentley perform a 75-minute set.
“We added that element of music to the draft stage and turned it into a festival,” Barker said. “That’s when I think it really exploded, and that’s when we knew that this could only get bigger and bigger and bigger.”
This week in Pittsburgh, Nelly, 2Chainz and Steve Aoki will perform concerts, as will local sons Wiz Khalifa and Bret Michaels. Fans will also have access to the Steelers’ stadium. They can kick field goals, run the 40-yard dash or sit on the grass and watch the draft.
The draft is the one NFL event that draws fans from all 32 teams, hence the big crowds. This time of year, every fan has hope. They’ve watched college football, analyzed their team’s roster and, Barker said, “we all have opinions on what we think our team needs.”
Count among them Corey O’Connor, the 41-year-old mayor of Pittsburgh.
O’Connor is as Pittsburgh as they come. He grew up in the same house his mother had, and he attended Central Catholic High School and Duquesne University within a few miles of each other. In his youth, his father had one season ticket to Steelers games. But the family often went to games together; the rest of them would “sneak into the games,” O’Connor said.
Remember, this was back in the ‘90s, before ticketing went digital. “We would have an old ticket underneath the actual ticket,” O’Connor explained. Then as the usher went to rip the tickets, the O’Connors would feed on the commotion of the crowd. “My dad would say, ‘When you get in — run. And I’ll meet you at the seats,’ ” he said.
“If the usher said, ‘Where’s the ticket for the kid?’ my dad’s response was, ‘Well, what kid? I didn’t see a kid,’” O’Connor said. “And by that time, I’m gone.”
His father, Bob O’Connor, was a local politician who went on to become mayor of Pittsburgh in 2006. He died of a rare brain cancer less than a year after taking office. About two decades later, Corey ran and was elected mayor, too.
Now, a few months into his term, Corey O’Connor is leading the city as it hosts the NFL draft. In a twist of fate, he is now coordinating with local and state agencies, as well as the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the NFL to ensure the event is secure. (Both O’Connor and Barker said that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would not be involved in the event.)
“Because of what’s going on, on the world stage, there’s some additional security concerns,” O’Connor told NBC News.
That’s why the city is closing roads and bridges around the event site. “Can’t take any chances of somebody, a terrorist or somebody like that, wanting to do something bad,” O’Connor said. “I’m not sleeping a lot. You’re just: ‘What about this? Did we think about that parking lot?’ Your mind is constantly going about what could possibly happen.”
But those closures will have ripple effects. Schools are going remote and traffic is expected to be gnarly. Driving in Pittsburgh is already a challenge without the crowds. “It’s a tough city to navigate,” said Trisha Pittman, the traffic anchor for WPXI, a local TV station. “There’s people that have lived here for 30 years and still can’t figure out where they’re going.”
The city famously features lots of bridges and tunnels, which creates bottlenecks for the flow of traffic. The city’s topography doesn’t help either. Pittsburgh is not flat; lots of roads are elevated. “You see the road you want to be on, but you can’t figure out how to get there,” Pittman said. Some drivers get so confused, they end up heading onto wrong-way roads.
Now add 700,000 visitors, many of whom, presumably, have never visited. “It’s going to be a lot,” O’Connor said. “It’s going to be a great stress test for our transit system.”
City officials are choosing to look at the positives. The draft is a chance to showcase Pittsburgh and how it’s evolved. Outsiders still know it as the “Steel City,” and whenever the Steelers play on national television, producers inevitably show a steel mill.
“Pittsburgh is not that smoky city anymore,” said Walters, the superintendent. “It’s vibrant, it’s innovation, it’s a health care hub. It’s an artificial intelligence hub. It’s robotics. There are major universities here and just a vibrant cultural scene.”
O’Connor said, in his opinion, Pittsburgh has “one of the best views in the world,” when your car exits the Fort Pitt Tunnel and the Pittsburgh skyline unfolds before you. He urged visitors to “pause and take a look,” as they visit the city this week. “There’s a lot of good stories that you can kind of take in while you’re stuck in traffic,” he said.
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