The NFL Combine Is A Human Meat Market
I get more creeped out and disturbed by the NFL combine every year.
I said this last year but it really is like a modern slave auction. A bunch of players are paraded around in front of people who are essentially betting on their abilities. All these old people are judging these underwear kids on everything, deciding who to bid on. Oooh, this one is very strong. This one is very tall. This one runs a fast 3 cone drill. Dance for me. Dance in your form-fitting underwear for me. Run an arbitrary distance for me. It’s weird as shit.
I listen to ESPN radio on my commute (when I’m not playing music, that is) and normally it’s jokey jokester shows like Dan Lebatard but once in a while they get actual sports people on to talk actual sports. This week, for 20 minutes, I listened to Todd McShay talk at length about hand size. Hand size. Who gives a fuck if someone has hands that are an 8th of an inch below average? These people do. These disgusting weirdos. Draft people weird me the hell out.
The sad part is I get why it’s important. These are insane investments by teams. Millions of dollars at stake. You want to be sure you are getting the best product (*shudders*) possible, and small issues with hand size that might affect pass catching or ball gripping (lol) genuinely do matter at the highest level. But it doesn’t really make it any less weird to be going on radio shows talking to people about how players with a middle finger metacarpal length under X size results in a 22% success ratio at the NFL level for linebackers. It feels bad to see some guy get reviewed, have short arms (something he can’t help) and essentially watch his draft stock fall in real time.
What I honestly wish is that we’d stop watching it. I can’t watch it. I tried once and felt bad about myself. I’ll admire the highlights afterward. But the lack of content in the offseason and a whole bunch of amateur draftheads have turned the combine into a spectacle and it’s just not right. What I really want to watch…what I would pay good money to watch…is the team interviews. I want to hear the weird stuff. I don’t care about how fast players run. They are all faster than me, and all basically run within the same 2 second time window, which makes every run look the same. I want to see how teams are psychologically challenging players.
I want to hear Eli Apple get asked if he’s gay in real time. This would be aces reality television. It’ll never happen, but imagine how good it would be. There are bizarre stories that come from every player about the insane stuff NFL teams ask at the combine in an attempt to judge a player. Give us the goods, NFL. If you are going to take this stupid spectacle further than you already have while neglecting the actual on-field product, at least give us the WWE soap opera shit in the meantime.
I hate everyone on Twitter circlejerking about Josh Allen who isn’t even close to good
Josh Allen is pretty good IMO. He is one of those very high ceiling QBs, and not even as risky as Baker. He was pretty good in the senior bowl when he had actual NFL type talent around him that he lacked at Wyoming. He was stellar at the combine. I think he will go #1 or #4 in QBs
How come his career completion percentage 56%? That’s the worst in the class
Quinton Flowers is better than that and he runs more than your average armed forces option qb.
Basic completion percentage is overrated as a stat. Maybe he’s got accuracy issues, or maybe he takes a lot of deep shots, or maybe his receivers had drop issues. It could be him, or it could be the system/supporting cast. GMs are most assuredly doing their homework to find out which.
It might be over the course of the game but it evens out over the course of the season (guys make spectacular catches that were off target vs. drops). I can’t think of an example of a 50-something% completion guy in college making it in the pros. Just doesn’t happen.
It’s probably a good thing that I don’t get to see anything about the Combine, or mock drafts or anything, living overseas. Of course, I could look that up if I bothered to, but why would I?
Just seeing the names of the QB prospects of the year on the forums I frequent is enough. Throw every other position and Combine results/college stats in there? Wheee-oooff.
Just waiting until the draft actually happens, then looking at the first round and then in-depth analyses of draft results for every team I track is good enough, thank you very much.
Said analysis proves to be oh so wrong for several players in a few months in many cases anyway, lol. Many is the time I’ve seen articles that are desperately trying to mask the fact of “We thought this guy was great! But now we got him in camp, good Lord how did we pick this wrong?!” with blatant, ungrounded optimism.
It isn’t a slave auction. These guys aren’t being forced to perform against their will. They’re all there to get a multi-million dollar contract. It’s a job interview. More publicised and more hands-on than your regular job interview, but the available positions are much better paid too. Also, McShay doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The measurables only matter if they show up on the game tape. If a DB runs a slow 40 but plays fast on the field the real draft people don’t care, but if after seeing a DB run a slow 40 they go back to the film and see him getting burned by fast receivers, that’s a red flag. Justin Pugh has T-Rex arms and was supposed to be a second-third round pick because of it according to people like McShay but he ended up going in the first.
Things can be reminiscent of other things, without actually *being* those other things. Jeez.
I didnt say it was a slave auction, I said it was like one, which it is in certain ways. Its a creepy job interview.
I find comparing one of the greatest atrocities ever committed against a people to a highly publicised job interview for rich people creepier and more disturbing honestly.
I think the word you are looking for there isn’t “creepy”. Maybe “misguided”. Which I’ll accept. It’s an extreme analogy for sure and you’re more than welcome to see it that way.
But I stand by that there is something weird about how this job interview goes. It’s not a regular interview, and the way it is presented has some unsettling similarities. These kids are inspected and paraded in front of all these coaches, very publicly, so that the coaches can later bid on who they want. These kids are already exploited by the NCAA and although they are about to get paid, are still more or less going to be exploited by their new employers. It’s not a close parallel to a slave auction, but it’s still a little bit closer than it probably should be. I can’t watch it because that’s all I can see. You seem to see it differently. That’s fine, agree to disagree.
Definitely some creepiness to seeing grown men look at these young men in underwear like one would look at a prized horse. At least they fixed the creepy interviews.
Also why is the evaluator dressed like a pilgrim?
“still more or less going to be exploited by their new employers.”
Come on man, they are getting paid absurd amounts to do their dream job. Every single employee in the world is exploited if that’s the standard you are using.
They get no say in where they will work, who they will work for, what they will do, and how much they will get paid. It’s not exactly free enterprise.
Yeah some of them will make a lot of money, but they give up a lot of freedom, too.
I guess in some ways the players do have some control over who they play for, but those players get shunned for even attempting to suggest they want to play for particular teams. Elway and Manning technically did nothing wrong but look how their draft day refusals are perceived by most people. There are fans of both the Colts and Chargers who will always hate those two for doing something perfectly understandable in a different light.
I remember how Pat Tillman was used as a way to trash Eli in 2004, it’s pretty messed up and ironic since what they were doing was an insult to Tillman as well (even more than what Eli did that day), bunch of hypocrites.
In the end seeing how the Chargers has a tendency to waste whatever talents they have, Eli received some vindication though some hate still lingers…there’s still too many idiots trying to act like he was bailed by great team mates in those SB wins. Would have been nice to feed some of these people to Jared Lorenzen.
Sure they do. They can work for the NFL or they can try their hand at literally anything else they are qualified for. Not being able to pick their team hardly takes away their ability to choose who to work for. It’s like not being able to pick what department you’re getting hired to.
Because the NFL is a monopoly – it’s very different from not picking your department (which by the way if you are in the top 10% of your job you get to interview at more than one department and if you’re in the top 1% you get to pick whatever job you want). It’s also very rare for an industry to force you to work in a specific city, since you could just change companies.
Not saying that it’s that horrible as many still get payed well but, it’s not as simple as you make it. Additionally outside of the top rounds the pay doesn’t work out as well as you’d think. Not many industries hiring for the majors many of the college players are forced to take (true story, most of my CFB friends were essentially forced to take specific majors) and certainly can’t compete once they’ve taken off several years off to have a go at pro football.
Additional information:
After the 3rd round players make about $2.5 million with only about 60k guaranteed. While that may sound like a decent bit, if the player never received a second contract and somehow doesn’t get cut, it comes out to about 50k a year for their whole career (age 22-71) which considering inflation, living expenses, etc. is pretty poor (50k 50 years from now will likely be what 30k is now if not less). That’s before we get into how the 2.5 million gets taxed. 50k is well below the average income of a person with an advanced degree (70k according to Wikipedia) so it is not considered rich.
The majors many college athletes (not just football players mind you, my whole flag football team was built from members of the track team that couldn’t balance track with an engineering major and were forced by the team to drop track) are forced to take aren’t nearly as profitable as others without additional education (masters degrees, MBAs, etc). There are exceptions but they are not the norm.
Basically players don’t have much of a choice with anything, even jobs outside of football.
Again – not all doom and gloom but outside of the first round is really a bunch of rich people.
This is essentially part of a job application process for extremely well paying jobs – and since the jobs in question are you know athletic in nature then it makes sense to test the physical prowess and measurables of the candidates.
What else do you want the teams to do, test how many words they can type per minute and quiz them on their prowess with the Office suite?
And really any spectator sport is about watching people running around performing for our amusement. Does that make every football Sunday equally as much of a meat market, or is that okay because they’re wearing slightly bulkier uniforms?
That being said, so much of the information is of so marginal value (even to the people who do it for a living) that I don’t get why anyone who isn’t getting paid to do so would actually watch – even if the NFL tries to drum up interest. Hell outside of Rich Eisen goofing around for charity I watch maybe 2 minutes of draft coverage every year.
So yeah you should stop watching it. Not because it’s ‘a modern slave auction’ but because there’s no real entertainment value in it.
You should do a weird draft question comic.
Do you like Pineapple on Pizza?
What is your favorite alcoholic beverage?
Do you visit your grand parents?!
What’s your favorite position in the Kama Sutra?
Favorite internet meme?
If you were a woodchuck, would you chuck as much wood as you could chuck, knowing that it would cause you to upchuck onto Chuck Pagano? Must answer in the form of a sonnet.
Shudder
I think creepy huckster man should be recurring whenever the nfl is particularly behaving like a meat market.
Apparently the Seahawks challenged a punter to a staring contest.
You got to understand that it’s just more than business. An entire FO’s jobs depend on who they choose. So I don’t blame them for being overly meticulous.
It is like a slave auction, in that people get others to pick impressive physical specimen, who get paraded around, to work the fields. It is similar, in that way. That’s all Dave is saying. He isn’t saying it is exactly like a slaves auction, and every team owner is a slave holder.
How soon until free agency? Also, in the indoor football league (where zona went), the bottom feeding Cedar Rapids Titans beat the fellow bottom feeding Green Bay Blizzard 47-39 at home in Iowa in the only game this week.
Also also, I’d love to see Maury or Jerry Springer do some live NFL psychiatric evaluations to find to finally answer “Who is the father of Shaqulenia’s baby?”
I think free agency starts in mid March. I want to see who gets Cousins, where Tyrod goes, etc
Seriously, what happened to the AFL? I heard it’s only down to four teams now, especially after Cleveland went on hiatus
People did put too much stock on size (not to mention tons of Lebrontards use that argument a lot…) to the point they miss out on what made the player great. Strahan was considered to be “undersized” which is why teams passed him over in first round for such “legends” like John Copeland or Eric Curry. We all know how it worked out and I’m glad as well.
To be fair, none of the formal side of the NFL wanted the media to be there, but someone figured out you can fill 40 hours of TV time and millions of people will still watch it.
Once draft day comes up, do you think Marc Ross will start saying something stupid regarding anything Eli related?
I’m actually really excited to watch this draft. I was pumped last year, since the Chargers had a top 10 draft pick (and then wasted it). But now that there’s a lot of good QBs out there, the Browns have the #1 and #4 pick, it’s going to be very interesting to see how the draft unfolds.
I’d like a player with a low motor, stiff hips, only one gear, really low pad level, with high bendability.
I want to see all the owners run a 40.
Same
I get what you’re saying but I’d say a fashion show would be a better comparison than a slave auction.
I dunno. A fashion show is ostensibly selling what the model is wearing, not the model. At the combine youre getting the guy.
Hmmm, interesting concept, I’ve heard this argument somewhere before, but in the essence that the NFL is racist, but where did I see this concept before…ahh, yeah Kaepernick essentially claims the same thing. Now I’m curious though, who had the idea first, Kap or Dave?