One of the national pundits put forth the premise earlier this week that the annual draft of college players has become the second-most important day on the NFL calendar, almost as important as the Super Bowl to the legion of fans who follow the most successful professional sport in the country.

Well, at least it is for most of the country. It's difficult for even me, a dyed-in-the-wool gridiron guru, to suggest that most sports fans in New England will be paying attention to the Patriots' decisions about their four sixth-round draft picks while there's another Red Sox-Yankees series in progress.

Never let it be said, however, that the Patriots' organization doesn't try its best to keep its brand at the forefront of the masses. There will be a draft party for fans at the stadium on Saturday, although its hyping has been more low-key than in the past.

Let's hope the fans in Gillette Stadium's East clubhouse have the proper perspective about things. It wouldn't be good PR for the local dynasty to have fans clamoring for the TV sets to be turned away from ESPN or the NFL Network, and to the Fox Network's baseball broadcast from the Bronx, at about the same time as the Patriots make their first pick.

By the way, if you have an overwhelming need to bond with other draftniks this weekend and have been shut out of the Gillette soiree, let me suggest doing so in a way that will benefit a worthy cause. Tickets ($40 adults, $20 12 and under) are still available for nose tackle Vince Wilfork's fourth annual Draft Day party on Saturday, noon to 6 p.m. at Pinz in Milford (110 South Main St.), with proceeds going to the Diabetes Research Institute. Call 617-268-0001 or e-mail at draftdaytix@sportsidentity.com for more details. To be honest, I'm not certain when the NFL Draft became a spectator event for the first time. Sure, some fans make the annual trek to New York (this year, Radio City Music Hall) to watch the actual announcements, but I figure you really have to have a screw loose to want to watch new Commissioner Roger Goodell make his debut at the podium.

I haven't had the opportunity to check out what the Patriots have offered their fans in recent years. While the revelers have been quaffing frothy beverages and partying on, I've been slaving over a hot keyboard trying to make sense out of the slowest-moving two days in all of sport.

But those two worlds collided on April 18, 1998, when the Patriots decided to do up the draft in a big way for the first time.

It was called the "Ultimate Draft Party," and it was probably one of the last times that the old Bay State Raceway (which ended its useful life as "Foxboro Park") was used for a sports-related event.

Long before Gillette Stadium was more than just a twinkle in the eye of those who didn't want the Patriots to move to Hartford, the Kraft family was saddled with a white elephant in the form of the deteriorating horse track next to the old Foxboro Stadium. Its rebirth as a thoroughbred track had been a colossal failure, and even a return to harness racing couldn't save it as a viable business - at least in the eyes of the Krafts, who evicted the operators and shuttered the track in 1997.

And there it sat, filled with all of the trappings of a major horse-racing venue, including an opulent clubhouse that had tiny television sets at every seat, and plenty of bars throughout the structure. What better place could there be to attract thousands of football fans who still believed that Pete Carroll could lead the Patriots to the promised land?

Fans came out in droves to watch the 1998 Draft at the old racetrack. Three floors of the former grandstand building were filled from stem to stern with official-Patriots-merchandise-adorned rooters trying to get autographs from the many players who showed up for the event, or to ogle the Patriots' cheerleaders - yes, it was a predominantly male crowd - or to actually watch the draft on the hundreds of TV sets that used to carry the daily races from harness and thoroughbred tracks across the country.

"Indeed," I wrote at the time, "if the old Foxboro Park had attracted many crowds of this size during its harness meets, it might still be in business today."

As it turned out, more than 2,000 fans ponied up $25 each for admission and $10 for parking to watch something they could have watched at home for just the cost of their monthly cable hookup. By today's standards, that's probably still a bargain.

Some things never change, however. The Draft is still a colossal bore when your team's not on the clock, and as I wrote, "the largest cheer heard in the building all day was a reverberating roar when Mo Vaughn hit a home run against the Cleveland Indians earlier in the afternoon." The media was also headquartered in the former executive offices of the track - a soccer game was being played in the stadium next door, as I recall - and it was clear that not a lot of thought had been given to how reporters were going to do their jobs with Carroll and then-Personnel VP Bobby Grier holding their post-selection press conferences at a podium in the middle of the main grandstand area.

Carroll and Grier had made running back Robert Edwards of Georgia the first of their two first-round selections, No. 18 overall. They followed that at No. 22 with Tebucky Jones, the running back-turned safety from Syracuse whom they intended to convert into a cornerback, even though Jones had never played the position in college.

The Jones selection raised red flags throughout the media corps, even before we heard the exaggerated tales of team owner Robert Kraft being present at a private workout, stopwatch supposedly in hand (which apparently never happened).

So, it was my duty to ask Carroll what he saw in Jones that made him worth first-round selection at an alien position. But asking that question before a throng of liquored-up fans was almost impossible. Even after I finally got the question out, some of the more lubricated individuals among the paying customers continued to whoop and holler at inappropriate times.

Carroll was no fool, either - he quickly realized that the raucous audience was a means for him to deflect away possible criticism of the pick, and he played to the crowd more than he would have at a normal press conference.

Carroll put on his best college cheerleader routine, projecting more animation and enthusiasm about the selection than he would have if only reporters had been seated before him, and the crowd roared in appreciation. So much for follow-up questions.

As I wrote: "This was not business as usual, it was showtime. It was time to put a happy face on the draft and make it a fan-friendly event. Indeed, if the Patriots could have figured out a way to hold their draft without the media present, they probably would have done so. How else can you get instant approval for your picks, dubious or otherwise, and charge people for the privilege of offering it?"

Nine years have passed, and Bill Belichick has had proven that he doesn't need any help to minimize the media's impact upon anything he does. After three Super Bowl championships, and with a waiting list of 50,000 people or more clamoring to get tickets, the Patriots don't need to stage a huge dog-and-pony show on Draft Day to make their fans love them.

It's kind of a shame. After all, the 1998 draft party was one of the last "Only in New England" moments before the franchise's metamorphosis into just another dynasty really kicked in.

But I'll bet that on Saturday, the fans in the East clubhouse are still going to want the plasma screens tuned to the Sox-Yanks game instead of Chris Berman and Mel Kiper Jr.

Whaddya know! It's still "only in New England."

MARK FARINELLA may be reached at 508-236-0315 or via e-mail at mfarinel@thesunchronicle.com