‘Just go with it’: Irrelevant Week to mark 50 years of roasting and toasting NFL’s last draft pick
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Football fans traveled in packs to go to the NFL draft, with an estimated 600,000 people attending over the three days last week.
The draft doesn’t end until a new Mr. Irrelevant is named, that title being bestowed upon the last player selected.
Paul Salata, who was a wide receiver at USC before going on to play for the San Francisco 49ers, Baltimore Colts and Pittsburgh Steelers in the NFL, cooked up the idea to celebrate the last selection.
A tradition was born in 1976, when Dayton wide receiver Kelvin Kirk was taken by the Steelers with the 487th pick.
How appropriate it was that when the 50th member of the Mr. Irrelevant club was chosen on Saturday, April 26, it occurred in the shadow of iconic Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis. Memphis cornerback Kobee Minor became the milestone man when the New England Patriots made him the 257th and final player taken.
Melanie Salata-Fitch, daughter of the late Paul Salata and the chief executive of Irrelevant Week, discussed the celebration making it to the half-century mark, opening with a dose of the family’s trademark humor.
“In 50 words or less?” she quipped, as if the story could be told as such.
Salata-Fitch said her father, who died a day shy of his 95th birthday in 2021, would be “flabbergasted” to realize that the party has gone on this long.
“When it became 20 years, he really thought that was long,” Salata-Fitch said. “We tried to get [the past Mr. Irrelevants] all back. Some of them were not alive anymore, surprisingly. … At the 20th year, four of them were already gone, for whatever reason. Twenty years, it is really long, and then 25, he thought was long. I mean, 50 is really long.
“My friends know never to ask me to go anywhere the last week of April or anytime in June because I’m planning Irrelevant Week, I’m at Irrelevant Week, or I’m at the draft. The draft always falls on my birthday.”
Mr. Irrelevant is as much a term of endearment as it is a good-natured ribbing, and through the decades, those who have held the title have gained a following in Newport Beach, which serves as home base for the annual Irrelevant Week.
The week’s happenings include the Lowsman Banquet, at which Mr. Irrelevant has been handed a trophy depicting a player fumbling the football. It has also often seen the Newport Beach mayor present a key to the city.
There is usually an evening reserved for a pub crawl. Mr. Irrelevant also receives a surf lesson, drawing attention from the community to see how he takes to the local culture.
Ed Fitch, Melanie’s husband, compared his father-in-law to Don Rickles, the stand-up comedian. While he said he fit in well as a football fan and USC graduate, it took thick skin to be that close to the fun-loving Salata.
“I would try to throw a little bit back at him, and it was no contest,” Fitch said. “You just got to roll with the punches, and I do. I have no problem with that. It was actually a lot of fun, but I was the butt of a lot of jokes.”
That’s sound advice from a man who spent a lot of time in the presence of the founder of Irrelevant Week, which has a well-earned reputation for roasting and toasting its honorees.
When the first Mr. Irrelevant selection was made, the draft consisted of 17 rounds. It shrunk to a dozen rounds the next year, eight in 1993, and it has been seven rounds since 1994.
There are a handful of Mr. Irrelevants actively playing in the NFL, including Brock Purdy, who was the starting quarterback for the 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII.
Ryan Succop became the first Mr. Irrelevant to hoist the Lombardi Trophy, when he served as the kicker for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV.
The odds were stacked against Matt Elliott when he was taken with the final selection (336th overall) by the Washington Redskins in 1992. Elliott, an offensive lineman who also went on to play for the Carolina Panthers, holds the distinction of the final 12th-round selection in NFL history.
It wasn’t until halfway through his fifth year at the University of Michigan that Elliott thought he might have a shot at playing professional football. Every pick of the NFL draft is televised nowadays, but back then, Elliott said he woke up on the final day of the draft and watched the picks come in on the ESPN ticker at the bottom of the screen. The programming that day included motocross and professional wrestling, he recalled.
When he got the call from the Redskins, Elliott got tipped off about what was coming his way. Coach Joe Gibbs and Mike Hagen, the scout who had contacted Elliott in college, had similar advice: “Just go with it.”
Soon, Elliott was out in Southern California, where the festivities included a Runnin’ Gunnin’ Golf Tournament. Depending who’s telling the story, they will detail different twists among the holes.
“There were some holes that were timed,” Elliott said. “There was a hole where you had to use a left-handed 7-iron the whole time. I think one of them, you had to tee off with your left foot up on a box. The 18th green, I think they had Hooters girls throwing water balloons at you while you tried to putt. Just absolutely outlandish stuff like that.
“Certainly, if they did it, it fit the attitude of the event itself. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Let’s have some fun, right?”
Lowsman Banquet arrivals have provided plenty of opportunity, too. No sooner had Grant Stuard, a Buccaneers draft pick, arrived on deck than he was greeted by Captain Jack Sparrow in 2021.
The following year, Purdy was flanked by showgirls in feather costumes in recognition of the fact the draft had taken place in Las Vegas.
Salata-Fitch also recalled Ryan Hoag — selected by the then Oakland Raiders in 2003 — being an easy mark with Hoag Hospital servicing the local community.
“We had him come in an ambulance,” Salata-Fitch said. “In the back of the ambulance, he’s on a gurney, and he has cheerleader nurses next to him. It was a fun kickoff.”
Irrelevant Week is known for taking requests and trying to accommodate them for their man of the hour. Hoag said he hoped to appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
“They made it happen,” Hoag said. “They had me as the announcer on the Jimmy Kimmel show. Steve Harvey was one of the guests, and they interviewed me, essentially, alongside Steve Harvey on the Jimmy Kimmel show live. That is pretty special.”
Hoag, who has since made appearances on “The Bachelorette,” and, more recently a game show called “The Floor,” figures he has attended about a dozen Irrelevant Weeks.
Salata used to joke that the Mr. Irrelevant fraternity was a more exclusive club than winners of the Heisman Trophy, given annually to the top player in college football. The Lowsman Trophy is a parody representation of that hardware, which displays a ball carrier posed as delivering a stiff arm.
“Seventh-rounders are always kind of afterthoughts because you have an 11% chance of making the roster as a seventh-round pick,” Hoag said. “Then there’s us as Mr. Irrelevants. How lucky are we that Paul Salata 50 years ago decided, ‘You know what? It’s irrelevant that you were last. I think it’s relevant that you were drafted, and I’m going to make a big deal about it. Let’s put a party on for you,’ and then the NFL took it and ran with it.”
Those who have gone along with the program have received a lot of goodwill. Elliott said he is still affectionately referred to as “Casper,” a ghostly nickname he was given by Salata for his pale Midwestern complexion on his initial visit.
“They’re going to rib you a little bit, but the focus is you and celebrating you,” Elliott said. “Hoping for your success is what they’re doing. It’s a lot of fun. It will make it even more fun if you just try to have fun. I think it’s one of the neatest things that surrounds the draft.”
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