The 40 is the most important measurement in American sports today and there isn't a close second. Current players know it, fans know it, and would-be draftees know it.
In the past two months, in the midst of training at D1 Sports in Nashville, I've seen future NFL players turn from making fun of one another (or me, the Bookman) to expressions of grave seriousness in less than a second when they realize they're about to run a timed 40. There's something about staring down that expanse of eight 5-yard intervals that gives even the best athletes of today pause.
|
|
| In the NFL, speed is king. (Getty Images) |
Each year the 40 becomes more important and more widely discussed. Partly that's because the Internet has allowed the NFL Draft to become an actual sport in and of itself, but it's also because there's something about raw measurements of athleticism that speak to us in a way baseball projections or basketball projections don't.
If you're a fan of baseball, you might know how hard a pitcher your team drafts can throw. What else do you know about the draftee in terms of raw athleticism? You might know his high school stats or his college stats, but how fast and strong is he? These numbers might be out there, but they don't capture us like the numbers in football. It's the same with basketball -- the NBA has pre-draft camps, but other than an occasional vertical jump what do you hear of these results? Hardly anything.
But the NFL Combine? We all hear how players do at the NFL Combine. And what measured skill do we hear about more than any other? The 40.
I'd argue this is because of all the NFL skill tests, anyone can attempt the 40. Even if most of us never actually try it. There's a simplicity to the 40 that appeals to us. Most people can't bench 225 pounds even once. It's hard to approximate what making a catch and getting hit in an NFL game actually feels like. The three-cone drill? Ninety-nine percent of football fans couldn't even set up the three cones correctly. The pro shuttle? Same thing. But the 40, we understand.
I came into training for the NFL Combine knowing I intensely cared about the 40, but that's about all I knew. For a measurement we all care about, there's a striking lack of knowledge out there about the 40 itself. That's how you and I manage to have an incredibly over-inflated sense of what we would run.
A couple of months ago I was down in Atlanta discussing this. My friend, and stellar Atlanta attorney, John Ducat refused to believe he wouldn't break a 5.0 in the 40. Even going so far as to say, "I would bet my house that I can run a sub 5.0 40. I'm not slow." I told him then if I accepted his bet, his wife would arrive home to find me sitting in the living room with my feet propped up on their ottoman with the deed to their house. Which wouldn't make her very happy.
|
|
| Running surface matters in the 40. (Getty Images) |
You're wrong, you don't. A 5.0 40 time is actually fast for your average guy. I'll put it to you this way: If you wanted to make a second career out of betting guys at bars that they couldn't break a 5.0, you could become a 40 hustler. You roll into the bar, challenge them, have an official timekeeper and then collect your money.
Trust me, breaking a 5.0 means you're very fast. That's just one of many things I've learned about the 40 while training alongside some of the top college athletes in America for the NFL Combine. Here are 13 other things:
1. Every kid in high school has an inflated 40 time. Every single one. Every coach steals time for his kids and it's always to the kids' advantage. I read about this in Bruce Feldman's Meat Market, where every college coach insisted on timing kids at their football camps to assure accuracy because they didn't trust the provided times. This has been reiterated for me a thousand-fold since. According to our head trainer for the NFL Combine, Kurt Hester, "High school coaches are liars. They tell a kid he runs a 4.5 and the kid believes them because they're the coach. Then they show up at a camp and we get them and they're barely breaking a 5.0. These kids may look like they're running a 4.5 on tape but it's because the other guys they're playing against are running 5.5's."
