In a move that further confirms that the group of draft invitations has expanded beyond the original list of 20, probably due to some of the invited players declining to attend, former Florida State quarterback Christian Ponder tells Lee Gordon of Warchant.com, the Rivals.com site devoted to the Seminoles, that he has been asked to come to Radio City Music Hall.
“The initial plan was to head back to Dallas to be there for draft day but today I was just extended an invitation to head up to NYC,” Ponder said in an recent article that appears behind a pay wall. “My family and I will talk about what we are going to do but it will be hard to turn down actually going to the draft.”
Gordon tells PFT that Ponder has since said he plans to make a decision on whether to attend by the end of the week.
One factor probably will be the expected duration of his wait. Some view Ponder as a first-round prospect. Nolan Nawrocki of Pro Football Weekly recently wrote that some evaluators have compared Ponder to former Bills starter Trent Edwards. Which isn’t a compliment.
But Ponder has shown a talent for playing through injury, and some think he could become a very good quarterback at the NFL level. For now, the question is whether he would be more comfortable waiting for the call to come from his home, or whether he wants to risk doing the draft-day slip-'n'-slide in New York.