When ESPN draft guru Mel Kiper Jr. opens his mouth around this time of year, what comes out must be measured in paragraphs, not sentences.

Sentences, frankly, simply are too restrictive for Kiper, even if his time, as usual, is limited. He doesn’t pause for punctuation – or to draw a breath for that matter – instead choosing to speak in a series of rapid-fire, high-volume monologues jam-packed with as much information as humanly possible.

Want to know who Kiper, 45, thinks will be the best player available when it’s the Ravens’ turn to pick in the 2006 NFL draft? You’d be wise to buckle up. Kiper can, without notes, rattle off countless players’ names, give you their measurements, then tell you almost as much about them as their own mothers could. Does he run good routes? Does he catch the ball too much with his body? Is he afraid of contact? Is he coachable? There is no detail Kiper hasn’t catalogued, no flaw he hasn’t considered, and he has thousands of hours of study to back up his opinions.

This weekend, as he has been every year since 1984, Kiper will be featured prominently during ESPN’s NFL draft coverage, which is scheduled to run 17 hours over the course of two days. In many respects, Kiper and the draft have become synonymous with each other, and in a crude way, asking Kiper about it is like asking Hunter S. Thompson about writing or Andy Worhol about artwork. Whether you love ’em or hate ’em, consider them a genius or a joke, you have to admit, their opinion definitely matters.

“When I first joined ESPN, I actually didn’t like Mel,” says ESPN reporter Chris Mortensen, who has been with the network since 1991. “I didn’t know Mel personally, but it always struck me as weird that we had a guy who basically (is) saying, ‘Hey, here is who they should be taking.’ I used to think, ‘Mel how come you’re not hired by an NFL team if you’re so good?’ But I realized we’ve hired him to be that guy. I’ve actually learned to really appreciate what Mel does. I’m always amazed on Day 2 in the draft when he’s talking about some guy from Alcorn State and knows every little thing about him.”

The draft (or more appropriately, college scouting) has been Kiper’s passion for more than 25 years, dating to when he was just an eager, anonymous Baltimore teenager who hung around Colts practices, trying to soak up whatever knowledge he could. There was no television coverage of the draft then and certainly no jokes about Kiper’s now-famous hair. (ESPN will broadcast its 26th draft this year, and the NFL Network will also broadcast the event for the first time.)

He was simply a kid who loved sports so much, he spent a good portion of his days and nights taking meticulous notes about players he’d never met, recording his observations in a stack of dog-eared notebooks. He published his first draft guide in 1979 when he was a just a freshman at Essex Community College, sent it to NFL general managers looking for feedback, and based on its moderate success (he sold more than 100), encouragement from his father and Colts general manager Ernie Accorsi, he dropped out and never looked back.

Now Kiper is practically everywhere, popping up in print, on the Web, on the radio, and especially on television, where you can catch him live, nearly every hour, nodding his head and gesturing passionately as he explains why a 300-pound offensive tackle from East Carolina may need to work on his footwork if he’s going to be successful in the NFL. Even when Kiper is not on camera, his name appears so often on the “crawl” at the bottom of the screen, the novice viewer might easily be left with the impression that Kiper is some kind of shadowy Orwellian figure, with you at all times.

Yet of all the quasi-media celebrities ESPN has helped create over the years, Kiper’s ascent remains one of the most unlikely, if only because there was simply no one to emulate when he started out. He’s not really a journalist, nor is he an analyst or an entertainer, exactly. (When asked his opinion, he admits that none of the labels quite fit.) Instead, Kiper is a little bit of each of those things, and, he openly admits, a businessman. He started scouting college players so many years ago because it was his passion, but the reason it became his life is because Kiper was one of the first people to realize there was a huge market out there for that information.

“The other day, I think I felt the best I’ve ever felt,” Kiper says, sitting down for an interview last week between media appearances. “I was doing a conference call, and we had about 80 writers and columnists call in, asking questions about the draft. Back in the old days, we had maybe 20 or 30 at the most who were interested. When I first started, everybody said no one would watch the draft, that no one cared. Well, ESPN was still covering it. ESPN created the popularity of it all, and nobody can deny that. And eventually, the critics had to back off, because the fans spoke out. Forty million people might end up watching this draft.”

No incident gets brought up more in connection with Kiper than the one in 1994 when Kiper was critical of the Colts for trading up to take Nebraska linebacker Trev Alberts with the fifth pick, passing on Fresno State quarterback Trent Dilfer. Bill Tobin, the Colts vice president at the time, went after Kiper in a live interview, saying, “Who the hell is Mel Kiper? He has no more credentials to do what he’s doing than my neighbor, and my neighbor’s a postman.”

The exchange remains, to this day, one of ESPN’s most memorable on-air moments.

“I’m going to be linked to Bill Tobin for the rest of my life,” Kiper says, laughing. “I think on my tombstone, I should have something about that. I had a lot of respect for Bill Tobin and never had a problem with him before that. But in the end, Trent Dilfer was one of the few quarterbacks drafted in the first round to win a Super Bowl. I feel a little vindicated, but that’s never been what this is all about for me.”