NFL Scouting Combine combines hucksterism and chicanery

The NFL Network has been televising the workouts at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis.

The Combine combines hucksterism and chicanery. What a joke.

Most of the tests are not valid in that they don't predict NFL success. You know Vernon Davis, the 49er's TE whom coach Mike Singletary dressed down last season? He is a perfect example of a Combine Queen. He dazzled the scouts with his "athleticism" (wink, wink). But at the combine, nobody gets hit. There are no collisions. And fatigue isn't a factor. Neither is pressure.

And the tests themselves don't even measure what they purport to measure. I'll give the two worst examples.

You hear breathless talk by the NFL flacks of a "forty-one inch vertical leap!" That doesn't mean the guy got his heels 41 inches off the ground, which would be impressive. The measuring stick they use, with a bunch of revolving 1-inch thick sticks at the top, is set at a fixed height. Tall guys with long arms can reach the highest sticks. It's absurd.

Then there's the bench press, "reps with 225 pounds." What a joke. In an actual power lifting contest, most would get credit for 0 (ZERO) repetitions because they bounce the weight off their chests and arch their backs, raising their butts off the bench.

This year they have a new trick: not extending their arms fully, and not letting the weight all the way down to their chest on each rep. It's called cheating. Muscles are stronger at mid-range, relatively weaker when a muscle is fully extended or fully contracted. But the supposedly "tough" blowhard "strength coach" nevertheless counts each half lift as a full rep.

Raging Bullwinkle has been lifting weights for over 41 years. Raging Bullwinkle is unimpressed with this sham display of power. Consider that to the NFL Network’s Mike Mayock, 330 pounds is the ideal weight for an offensive lineman. A 225-pound barbell is only 65% of 330 pounds. Proportionately, it’s the equivalent of a 200-pound man doing repetitions with 130 pounds or a 225-pound man, like Raging Bullwinkle, doing repetitions with 145 pounds.

Then there’s the juice. The NFL doesn’t test for human growth hormone. And if you think BALCO will be the last lab to synthesize “designer steroids” to beat drug tests, you’re being silly.

Finally, there's the implicit assumption that a high number of reps with 225 pounds is correlated with a high maximum lift (one rep). But the correlation is not as strong as many people believe; there is not a linear correlation. For example, while most people who can do 10 reps with 225 pounds can do one rep with 300 pounds, 20 reps with 225 pounds does not translate to one rep with 600 pounds.

Two days ago Raging Bullwinkle went to the gym to do his weekly heavy workout. (He also does a weekly light workout in between heavy lifting sessions.) Although Raging Bullwinkle does a variety of lifts to maintain full-body functional strength, I’ll report on the bench press alone, the NFL’s standard of strength.

Raging Bullwinkle’s final three sets were: 4 repetitions with 250 pounds; 3 repetitions with 275 pounds; and one rep with 285 pounds. Raging Bullwinkle is only 225 pounds, too small to play his college position, guard, in the NFL. And Raging Bullwinkle is 55 ½ years old.

That's why Raging Bullwinkle is thoroughly unimpressed.