INDIANAPOLIS. The NFL Scouting Combine, the annual meat-market in which college football players are put through their paces running, jumping, and navigating their way around little orange cones, began here Thursday, with representatives of the league’s thirty-two teams poring over results like ancient soothsayers examining the internal organs of sacrifice victims. “One-tenth of a second in the forty-yard dash may not seem like that much to a layman,” says Max Flarok, whose “Combine Watch” podcast covers the proceedings, “but five years from now it allows you to say ‘I knew that guy was going to be a bust’ when he pulls a hamstring.”
In addition to feats of strength and speed, the annual gathering probes college athletes’ injury history, possible drug use, and intelligence, the last-named by the “Wonderlic test,” an assessment of athletes’ cognitive abilities. “Pro defenses are complicated,” says Oren Dailey, Jr., a former scout. “We ask questions like ‘Bob and Jim are on a train traveling 60 miles per hour between Chicago and St. Louis. How much rope can they buy at $1 a foot?'”
But there’s a new “character” question for budding pros to respond to this year: “Are you now, or have you ever been, engaged?” The reason? The dramatic decline in Travis Kelce’s regular-season production last year, which many have linked to his engagement in August to Taylor Swift, the billionaire Grammy-winning singer, songwriter and actress. “I don’t like having to probe into guys’ sex lives,” an NFL assistant linebacker coach said off the record, “but it’s pretty clear Kelce was overwhelmed by the myriad details and conflicting interests that go into planning a wedding.”
“Ring-bearers–one or two?”
Federal employment laws prohibit teams from asking direct questions about a prospect’s marital status, so coaches and scouts are forced to resort to ruses such as “You have an open seat remaining at a wedding reception but two maiden aunts, one each from the families of the bride and groom. Who do you invite?”
Rookie contracts are subject to a “slotting system” established by the current NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement, and the difference between a first and second round pick can amount to millions of dollars. “I been up all night studying floral arrangements,” said Lorenzo Tyson III, a cornerback from Northeast Mississippi State. “Tomorrow I got to hit the books first thing to know which fork to start with and what to do with my napkin ring.”
Players with gaudy statistics from their college careers are advised by agents not to take the Nuptial Screening lightly, but sometimes the pressure of a recent engagement causes them to lose focus. “Yoo-hoo!” warbles Emily Boatwright, fiancee of Western Oregon’s Emil Blartkowski.
“What sweetie?” the neckless nose guard calls back.
“Which color do you like for the bridesmaids’ dresses–Creamsicle orange or Burnt Siena?”
Blartkowski looks around nervously and, thinking the coast is clear, mouths the words “orange” so softly only a parabolic microphone, the so-called “whisper dish” that allows NFL camera crews to record crunching tackles and audibles over stadium noise, can hear him.
“I heard that,” barks the director of player personnel for the Las Vegas Raiders. “See you in the Arena Football League.”