Written by Dave Kolonich

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You know the NFL is indeed the monolith of professional sports when an event as trivial as the Scouting Combine sets the football blogosphere on fire.  For nearly a week, seemingly hundreds of draft hopefuls are paraded around in Under Armour, while some 600 NFL personnel employees lustfully poke, prod and measure calf density, akin to a modern day cattle auction.  However, unlike say a livestock sale, these NFL prospects reveal extraordinarily little to their future employers.

At least with cows, you know what you’re getting.  No offense, Isaac Sowells.

Besides engaging in overtly sterilized, robotic 15 minute interview sessions that accomplish virtually nothing of a tangible sort, the draft prospects at the combine run through a series of contrived drills, which produce a set of numbers that somehow reflect their future NFL productivity.

40-yard dash times and bench press reps are somehow supposed to translate to gameday – where to the best of my football knowledge, players still have to engage in both a physically and mentally demanding grind.  Although the league is steadily moving towards a game of “touch” football, we’re not there quite yet.

What a player actually does when he’s confronted by another human still matters.

However, for the next several days, the question at the combine will not be “does he love the game?” or “will he make our team better?”, but rather “what’s his 40 yard time?”

Really?

Has offseason football withdrawal come to this?  Where have you gone, NFL Europa?

Anyway, while the combine could be more correctly qualified as a prospect’s “first job interview”, or the time to “not run with your shirt off” in some cases, the importance that media attach to the event is completely overblown.

Seldom does a “workout warrior” actually become a legitimate NFL talent.  A more likely scenario is that a team foolishly buys into the combine hype and severely overvalues a prospect.  After all, despite the best efforts of fantasy football and mock draft experts everywhere, the NFL is not really a numbers-driven league, at least in terms of correctly identifying talent.

Yet at the end of this little charade, several new prospects will emerge as legitimate draft targets, based on nothing more than flashy cone-running times…which will be drilled into our heads by an endless array of “experts.”  It’s happened before and no doubt will happen again.

Or, how about this?  Take a look at some of these NFL Combine record holders and decide for yourself.

Fastest 40 Yard Times
4.24 – Rondel Melendez, (WR), Eastern Kentucky – 1999
4.28 – Jerome Mathis, (WR), Hampton – 2005
4.28 – *Champ Bailey, (CB), Georgia – 1999
4.29 – Stanford Routt, (CB), Houston – 2005
4.29 – Jay Hinton, (RB), Morgan State – 1999
4.29 – *Fabian Washington, (CB), Nebraska – 2005
4.30 – Yamon Figurs (WR), Kansas State – 2007
4.30 – Darrent Williams, (CB), Oklahoma State – 2005
4.31 – *Johnathan Joseph, (CB), South Carolina – 2006
4.31 – Aaron Lockett, (WR), Kansas State – 2002

Does anyone else remember the Rondel Melendez era?  Speed is great in the NFL – particularly during this new era where teams spread the ball around with four or five receivers.  However, the funny thing about a 40-yard dash time is that the participant tends to run in a straight line, unimpeded.  How many times does that happen during the course of an NFL game?

Did Forrest Gump declare for this draft?

Most 225 Pound Reps
51 – Justin Ernest, (DT), Eastern Kentucky – 1999
45 – Mike Kudla, (DE), Ohio State – 2006
45 – Leif Larsen, (DT), Texas-El Paso – 2000
44 – Brodrick Bunkley, (DT), Florida State – 2006
43 – Scott Young, (OG), BYU – 2005

Do they even play football at Eastern Kentucky?  I’m envisioning an EKU gameplan devised solely of lunges and squats.  While bench presses are important – especially in a prison yard – it’s rare that a lineman has the opportunity to literally pick up a defender and hoist him over his head.

Best Vertical Jump
46 – Gerald Sensabaugh, (FS), North Carolina – 2005
45 1/2 – Derek Wake, (OLB), Penn State – 2005
45 – Chris McKenzie, (CB), Arizona State – 2005
45 – Chris Chambers, (WR), Wisconsin – 2001
43 1/2 – Dustin Fox, (FS), Ohio State – 2005

A vertical jump measurement would be a little more practical towards determining an NFL prospect’s value.  However, it would be more revealing if an object - say, a football – were thrown at the participant at the height of his jump.  Or, in Brady Quinn’s case, he could just wing it at the player’s ankles.

Fastest 10 Yard Times
1.43 – Aundrae Allison (WR), East Carolina – 2007
1.43 – Eric Weddle (SS), Utah – 2007
1.43 – Marcus McCauley (CB), Fresno State – 2007
1.45 – Leon Hall (CB), Michigan – 2007
1.46 – Colin Branch, (FS), Stanford – 2003

The 10-yard times are a bit more useful, but they could be more intriguing if the player wasn’t directed on when to stop.  For the sake of determining some natural football awareness, how about letting the player determine his own sense of ten yards?  This could help personnel types to figure out which receivers actually know where the first down markers are on a given Sunday.

The Pick
Avoid the hype.  Watch some game tape.  Put some damn clothes on.

For every Emmitt Smith who gets overlooked because of poor combine numbers, there are a dozen Troy Williamson-esque players – the ones who flash every bit of useless talent, except for the intangible that truly counts…

Can they actually play?