ESPN

Each goes by the name Mr. Irrelevant, but no two are alike.

So when Irrelevant Week is held annually in Newport Beach, Calif., to honor the last player taken in the NFL draft, many of the activities are tailored to fit the guest of honor.

While all participate in the Arrival Party and Lowsman Banquet -- where each receives the opposite-of-the-Heisman Lowsman Trophy (depicting a player in mid-fumble) -- players can decide what else they want to do.

One asked to go clubbing in Los Angeles with Paris Hilton. Another chose to spend time with his family and sleep extra hours in his soft hotel bed. Others, who’d never been to California, wanted to go Jet Skiing or sailing, play golf on a course overlooking the Pacific or meet their sports heroes.

In 2008, David Vobora, a linebacker from Idaho chosen by the Rams, wanted to see the Playboy Mansion and meet the women from “The Girls Next Door” reality TV series. After an evening that included dinner with Hugh Hefner, hanging with “The Girls,” getting a tour of the mansion and sharing Hef’s movie night, Vobora told one reporter it was “a slice of heaven.”

And that’s pretty much been the goal of Irrelevant Week since it began in 1976: to treat the last as if he were first.

Each April, when Mr. Irrelevant is drafted in New York, Irrelevant Week CEO Melanie Salata Fitch is right there to get his requests for Irrelevant Week (usually is held in June).

“I say, ‘Hey, congratulations’ and 'What do you like?' and 'What do you eat?' and 'What have you always dreamed about?' and I start designing events,” she says.

After 37 Irrelevant Weeks, she’s confident the players have had a great time. How could they not? Her mission is to treat each “like a king.”

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