The NFL Draft comes around every April, and every year it gets to be more and more of a spectacle. It has always been popular, but thanks to increased attention and the availability of a dizzying amount of information about every prospect thanks to the Internet, the draft is more popular than ever. In fact, you could probably make the argument that the NFL Draft is one of the five or 10 biggest sporting events of the year in North America. It is heaven for the sports geeks of the world. The draft season starts in earnest with the college all-star games, turns into a full-fledged frenzy with the Combine in February, and gets more and more insane up until the first team is on the clock on draft day. Because of the huge stakes involved in the draft, the incredible level of college talent that comes out every year, and the increasingly massive contracts that top players demand, the NFL Draft order is more important, and more scrutinized, than ever before.

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How that draft order is determined is often misunderstood, though. The top and the bottom of the order are no mystery. The top spots are reserved for the teams with the worst record. The last pick in the first round is for the Super Bowl winner, while the second last spot is the consolation prize for the runner-up in the big game. It's the middle of the NFL Draft order that causes the confusion in the mind of many, though. The order for the entire draft besides the last two picks is determined by the records of the teams. Many people believe that teams that don't make the playoffs get to pick before those that do, but that's not the case if a playoff team has a worse record than one who doesn't make the playoffs.

Teams with the same record are inevitable, so there obviously has to be NFL Draft tiebreakers. If two teams have the same record and one makes the playoffs while one doesn't, the team that had to go home early gets to pick first. If teams with the same record make the playoffs then draft order is determined by the order in which they were eliminated from the playoffs. In all other cases, ties are broken by the strength of schedule, which is the combined record of the 16 opponents the team faced. Any tie that can't be broken by SOS, or by difference in the standings if the teams are in the same conference or division, comes down to a coin toss.

After all the dust settled for the 2007-2008 season, this is the draft order for the 2008 NFL Draft.

1. Miami Dolphins
2. St. Louis Rams
3. Atlanta Falcons
4. Oakland Raiders
5. Kansas City Chiefs
6. New York Jets
7. New England Patriots (from San Francisco 49ers)
8. Baltimore Ravens
9. Cincinnati Bengals
10. New Orleans Saints
11. Buffalo Bills
12. Denver Broncos
13. Carolina Panthers
14. Chicago Bears
15. Detroit Lions
16. Arizona Cardinals
17. Minnesota Vikings
18. Houston Texans
19. Philadelphia Eagles
20. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
21. Washington Redskins
22. Dallas Cowboys (from Cleveland Browns)
23. Pittsburgh Steelers
24. Tennessee Titans
25. Seattle Seahawks
26. Jacksonville Jaguars
27. San Diego Chargers
28. Dallas Cowboys
29. San Francisco 49ers (from Indianapolis Colts)
30. Green Bay packers
31. No pick (New England Patriots forfeited pick because of Spygate)
32. New York Giants

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