People walking down the street with a white cane can predict NFL drafts as well as Mel Kiper.

Joe loves to read mock drafts and completely enjoys listening to just about anyone talk football — including Mel Kiper of BSPN. But Joe has long wondered why some people think Kiper is some sort of draft sophist?

Kiper was never the best gauge of who drafts who. Long before Joe ever heard of Kiper, Joe knew of Joel Buchsbaum who was the best at the NFL draft until Joe was aware of Mike Mayock.

Sadly, Buchsbaum passed away a few years ago and since — with the exception of WDAE-AM’s Justin Pawlowski — Mayock is the best going nationally with his uncanny ability to predict the draft.

Well, the good people of ColdHardFootballFacts.com decided to rank the NFL mock drafts of various analysts. Simply put: Beware what you read and, in short, don’t listen to Kiper (at least when it comes to the draft).

Going back four years, Kiper was correct on 25.2 percent of his mock drafts. Folks, you can throw a dart blindfolded at a wall of photos and damned near be as accurate.

We’ve been tracking the record of several mock draft “experts” since our first off-season in 2005. We’ve found that the performance of these “experts” is so dismal that we confused it with the outlook for the global economy.

The best mock-draft “experts” can tell you who was twice named SEC player of the year. They can tell you who banged out the most bench reps at the Combine. They can tell you who’s raised concerns because of off-field behavior issues.

But at the end of the day, they can’t deliver the promised goods: they can’t tell you which player will end up with which team!

To put it another way, the mock draft contributes so little to society that we swear we saw it protesting outside the G-20 summit in London today.

Strangely, Mayock was not included in the study, nor was Buchsbaum, but Joe thinks Buchsbaum had passed away by the time the site was launched.

In short, if you want good draft analysis, subscribe to Pawlowski’s draft musings and get free beer! Kiper won’t give you free beer.