We wonder if the Minnesota Vikings are hoping to get some more season ticket sales in New Ulm with their selection of Moritz Boehringer, a wide receiver from the Schwbisch Hall Unicorns in the German Football League.

It will be interesting to see how Boehringer fares in making the giant leap to the NFL with only a couple of years of German youth football and one year in the GFL behind him. But he has the physical size and speed to be a good wide receiver, and he apparently impressed the Vikings brass with his smarts and the ability to learn quickly. He is undoubtedly a project who has a lot of learning to do.

We will also be watching with interest the career of Tyler Marz, the Springfield native who didn’t get drafted after playing offensive line for the University of Wisconsin, but signed with the Tennessee Titans as a free agent shortly after the draft. We wish him luck. And we wish the Vikings luck with their draft picks.

The NFL?draft has become a great entertainment spectacle in itself in recent years. It’s kind of like Christmas morning, when the kids run down the stairs to open their presents. The kids rip the paper off their presents to see what they got. Maybe it’s just what they asked Santa for, maybe it’s a reasonable facsimile, maybe it’s just socks and a sweater. But whatever it is, it’s shiny and new and full of promise, like the players selected in the draft. The kids won’t know how good the present is until it’s taken out of the box and put to use, just like the teams will put the players through their paces to see if they fulfill their promise, or are a bust.

Here’s hoping Moritz Boehringer turns out to be an unexpected treasure.