Hometown Boy Harnish This Year's Mr. Irrelevant

One of the most unique storylines of the NFL Draft every year is finding out who Mr. Irrelevant will be. For those of you who don't know who Mr. Irrelevant is, he is the last player selected in the draft overall. The winning player gets to enjoy Irrelevant Week at Disneyland and gets to be in the parade and other festivities. Paul Salada, who founded Irrelevant week in 1976, got to make the announcement of this year's lucky man. What made this year's selection especially interesting is that the pick belonged to the Indianapolis Colts, the same team who had the very first overall pick of the draft. This has only happened twice before, when the Philadelphia Eagles did it in 1949 and the Houston Texans had it happen in 2002.

The Colts thought through this decision and decided to choose someone they thought would have been gone by this point. The player they chose was Northern Illinois quarterback Chandler Harnish. Harnish had an excellent career playing for the Huskies. He finished with 8,944 passing yards, a 61.9 completion percentage, 68 touchdowns, and 26 interceptions. He also ran for 2,238 yards and 24 touchdowns. His 11,927 yards of total offense ranks third in MAC history. Harnish set 30 school records an Northern Illinois, was a two-time all-MAC selection, chosen the conference's MVP this season, and led the Huskies to the league title. Having played at Norwell High School in northeastern Indiana, Harnish couldn't have been happier to be selected by his favorite team, the Colts.

Harnish isn't the only happy one because the Colts needed quarterback depth badly. Of course, they got Andrew Luck with the number one overall selection in the draft, but they only had two quarterbacks on their roster prior to the draft. One was career backup Drew Stanton, who was acquired in an offseason trade from the New York Jets. The other was Trevor Vittatoe, a virtually unknown second year quarterback out of UTEP. Harnish should get his chance to prove he deserves to be on the roster come Week 1. With the Colts content with a need filled, Harnish happy to get selected, Colts owner Jim Irsay decided to make at least one more person happy. On his Twitter, he offered to give $5,000 to the person who correctly predicted who Colts would make Mr. Irrelevant. Irsay announced that Billy Cardwell from Kokomo, IN was the winner. It appears as though today is a good day to be an irrelevant Hoosier. Just ask Harnish and Cardwell.