Draft-day prank calls: How NFL teams collect player info for the big moment

Some of the most memorable moments of any NFL Draft are videos of players getting the long-awaited phone call from a team on the clock, with their new coach and general manager telling them they're about to be selected.

This isn't a new phenomenon. The classic photo of a jorts-wearing Brett Favre sitting on a bed in a crowded room, huge portable phone at his ear, took place in 1991, fully 34 years ago. This year's draft, however, featured a dark and unfortunate twist on that moment, with several players getting prank calls from people pretending to be NFL executives.

Most prominent was Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders, who was projected by many pundits as a high first-round pick but fell, quite publicly, for two days before being picked in the fifth round by the Browns. With cameras all around him at the family's draft gathering, he had gotten a call early in that fall from someone he thought to be Saints general manager Mickey Loomis, making the traditional call before the pick.

"You’re gonna have to wait a little bit longer, man," the prankster said before hanging up, adding insult to the difficult waiting game Sanders would continue for much of the draft.

Both sides of the prank call were posted online, and that yielded an even wilder revelation: The person on camera with the prank caller was Jax Ulbrich, a small-college football player and the son of Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich. The team would issue a statement saying that Jax had gotten the number off his father's iPad at their home, and even with a public apology from Jeff Ulbrich, the NFL issued fines for the breach of confidential information: $250,000 for the Falcons and $100,000 for Jeff Ulbrich.

To put that fine into perspective, it's a