John Glennon

jglennon@tennessean.com

The NFL is looking for a city to host the 2015 draft, and Nashville is one of several sites getting some consideration.

Music City isn't considered a front-runner at this point for 2015, but representatives are very interested in bringing a future draft here if it doesn't return to New York's Radio City Music Hall after 2015.

Titans vice president Don MacLachlan and Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation president Butch Spyridon said they made their intent clear to the NFL over the last several years.

"For at least four or five years, we've had occasional communication with the special events folks at the league, and Don and I have gone up there and met with them," Spyridon said on Friday. "We expressed very serious interest that if they ever wanted to talk about (moving the draft), we wanted to be at the table. And even if they hadn't thought about it, we wanted to plant the seed.

"So for some time we have knocked on their door. I would describe it as if you don't go fishing, you don't really have a shot at catching anything."

Radio City Music Hall is unavailable in 2015, so the NFL is searching for an alternative site. Some of the bigger media markets are the current front-runners.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said via e-mail that the league sent letters earlier this week to Chicago, Los Angeles and New York (venues other than Radio City Music Hall) and invited them to provide information related to hosting the 2015 draft.

NFL staff will eventually visit cities under consideration, to look at sites and hold informational meetings. The league anticipates making a decision on a 2015 city and venue later this summer.

"Given the tight timeline to execute an event 10 months from now, we are focusing initially on a few of the largest cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles," McCarthy said. "But we are not ruling out other options."

It's unclear whether the draft will return to Radio City Music Hall in 2016 or whether it will be moved around the country.

McCarthy did confirm that Nashville representatives have approached the NFL over the last few years about hosting the draft at some point.

MacLachlan said he thinks the draft would be a great fit for Nashville, which recently hosted the NCAA Women's Final Four.

"You look at the CMA Festival going on right now – 47,000 people a night for four straight nights is great," MacLachlan said. "You look at what we have to offer with the Music City Center, LP Field, downtown and all the hotel rooms. I would emphasize that Nashville has become a great destination city for conventions, for big events."

Spyridon said that if the league looked at Nashville way as early as 2015 – the proposed dates are April 22-25 or April 29-May 2 – he thought the city would be able to ready for the event in 10 months.

"The key is available dates for our facilities, but I don't see any difficulty at all in the production side," Spyridon said. "From an event standpoint, we have – maybe more so than any other smaller market – the experience, the capabilities and the gear ready for something like that."

Still, a draft beyond 2015 might be more likely for Nashville, if the NFL chooses to move the event outside of New York on a regular basis.

"More than a dozen cities and clubs across the country expressed interest in hosting future drafts," McCarthy said. "We are not ruling any city out at this point."

Reach John Glennon at 615-259-8262 and on Twitter @glennonsports.