All the while, she talked football with the coaches. She was eventually moved to the scouting department, and before long, was grading films, writing player scouting reports and conducting interviews with potential players. They let her make the final pick of the 1975 draft. She took Ohio State tight end Mark Bartoszek. He didn’t stick, but Carberg proudly proclaimed he wasn’t the first cut, either.

“I wasn’t some women’s libber trying to make a point, I just truly loved football,” she said. “My feeling was, ‘I love football, you love football, let’s talk football.’ It felt very natural to me, still does.”

She said she doesn’t remember facing any discrimination. She had been around the club so long that she had earned respect.

“She’d start talking football with the guys in the front office, and they’d say, ‘Where in the world did you learn all this garbage?’ ” Michaels said. “Some people have a knack for this stuff, and Connie is one of them. It was very interesting to me at that time. I was pleasantly surprised with her scouting reports, which were pretty darn accurate. She was right up there with the best of them.”

She left the Jets in 1980. The new owner wanted to reduce her role. Right around that time, she fell in love and followed John Carberg to South Florida, where he had a job with Southeast Toyota. ESPN had just started televising the draft and she remembers asking John to pull into a motel on State Road AIA that had cable so they could watch the 1981 draft.

The mother of two now does public relations for Al Hendrickson Toyota, but remains a draftnik. She watches 15 games per weekend, jots notes on legal pads, subscribes to draft blogs and follows draft gurus on Twitter. She attends Jets training camp religiously for 10 days every summer.

“For Mother’s Day, I don’t get flowers or chocolates,” she said, laughing. “My kids buy me Mel Kiper’s draft guide every year.”