THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602110249
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JIM DUCIBELLA, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: INDIANAPOLIS LENGTH: Long : 138 lines
Eric Mahlum was deep into yet another mind-numbing psychological exam, wondering what it had to do with blocking a blitzing linebacker, when he hit a question he still can't answer:
What will your tombstone read?
``Blew me away,'' he says. ``Another team asked what I'd do if I found five dollars.''
And the NFL accuses reporters of asking dumb questions.
Welcome to the Scouting Combine. It's where, for four days, 331 of America's finest football players - OK, there's a Canadian or two - will be poked and prodded, undergo complete, separate mentals and physicals by each of the league's 30 teams, and hope like crazy they pulled an ``A'' on the hamstring exam, not the hamstring itself.
Mahlum, an offensive lineman, is a proud survivor. He was drafted in the second round by the Colts, due in part to how he handled himself here a year ago.
It is anything but a trivial pursuit. Each team sends as many as 30 representatives, from general managers and scouts to coaches and assistants to their entire training staff, plus a half-dozen doctors. It is, according to one scout, ``probably the most important factor in deciding a prospect's draft status other than his playing career itself.''
The league foots all expenses. They hold it on a weekend so no student need miss class. Every invitee has an opportunity to be viewed by teams that otherwise might have paid slight attention. Draft-day stories abound of players being selected by teams they never spoke to except at the combine.
How's it work?
Only NFL personnel, the prospect's coaches and the prospects themselves are allowed inside the RCA Dome during testing.
Prospects, no matter what position they play, are asked to run, jump and do agility maneuvers. They're required to surrender blood, sweat and urine samples, on demand. There are doctors who bend limbs to the left, doctors who bend them to the right.
As many as six medical representatives from each team will get their moment with each player.
Each player is transported to a local hospital for lab tests, a chest X-ray and an EKG. Next comes an interview with orthopedic doctors and team trainers. Depending on what they hear, doctors can order further testing or additional X-rays.
Back at the players' hotel - the NFL leases the entire three-floor, 275-room Holiday Inn for the weekend - prospects are given tests to determine knee strength and stability. Then comes a psychological test known as the Wonderlic.
That's the league's standard offering. The New York Giants prefer their own ``personality questionnaire'' - all 400 questions worth.
Players are awakened at 5 the next morning. Before breakfast, they undergo drug and steroid tests. After that, the physicals begin.
There are six orthopedic stations. Doctors and trainers representing five different teams man each. Sometime after the weight-lifting testing, each player is administered a hamstring-flexibility exam.
Before the weekend is through, the skill-position prospects actually handle a football.
The No. 1 thing you come out with is physicals,'' Bill Tobin, the Colts director of operations, told the Indianapolis News. ``How healthy are they? Then, you get comparisons athletically. You are running them all at the same time of year, on the same surface, under the same conditions, with the same watch, with the same finger on that watch.''
Sounds fair. So how has something seemingly so good and universally beneficial become so controversial?
Last year, why did 25 percent of the players invited - 78 of 315 - refuse to work out?
Players from 26 different colleges were AWOL from the physical testing, forcing teams to track them down later for a complete evaluation. Some teams were so fed up they didn't bother.
NFL personnel people say there is just one culprit.
Agents.
More and more players, especially surefire and borderline first-round prospects, are being told the combine can only damage their draft status. Tennessee's Heath Shuler attended the combine two years ago, but refused the workout on his agent's advice.
``I used it to network, meet people, talk and conduct interviews,'' said Shuler, who labeled the weekend ``a cattle call.''
``It was better for me to hold a private workout for them.''
Maybe, though NFL people argue that Shuler was chosen third overall in the draft not because of his workout, but because films of his career created for him an evaluation that he'd be a star.
``In our eyes, the only way a player can hurt himself by coming here is to refuse to work out,'' Tobin said. ``If the player comes with a prima donna attitude, it doesn't help him. If he is sensational, it will boost his stock.
``We've drafted players who didn't work out, but if it comes down to two players of equal ability, we take the kid who worked out.''
NFL talent scouts point out that at least three players from last year's class - Boston College linebacker Mike Mamula, Penn State tight end Kyle Brady and Colorado quarterback Kordell Stewart - substantially increased their draft standing, and their worth, by their showing here.
Before the combine, Mamula figured to go anywhere from late first round to early third. By the time he left for Boston four days later, he was a lock for the first round and was gobbled up by the Eagles with the seventh pick.
Brady was thought to be the draft's best tight end, but still was projected to go in the second round at the earliest. The Jets liked what they saw here and nabbed him in the first round.
And Stewart, so valuable to Pittsburgh's Super Bowl drive, wasn't expected to go until the fourth round. After four days in Indy, he was a second-rounder.
There are others.
In 1989, Deion Sanders - yes, the $35 million man - had his doubters among NFL scouts and GMs. After the combine, the Falcons liked him so much they made him the fifth pick in the draft.
Two years before that, Purdue defensive back Rod Woodson was acknowledged to be a spectacular athlete, but where? He'd played practically every position except the line as a Boilermaker. Two months and one combine later, Pittsburgh made Woodson the first defensive back and 10th player selected in 1987.
Teams sheepishly admit that sometimes the combine helps players far more than it ultimately helps the teams that draft them.
``When I was in Cincinnati, we drafted a linebacker because we were just amazed at how he kept lifting and lifting the weights at the combine,'' recalls former NFL coach Sam Wyche. ``We found out that on the football field, the guy was a great weight-lifter. He couldn't play a lick.''
Agents claim the field at the RCA Dome yields slow times in the 40-yard dash, one of the cornerstones of player evaluation. They don't tell them it doesn't matter, because every player is timed on the same surface, and allowances are made.
There's a well-known story about Tim McDonald, for years among the league's best safeties, both with the Arizona Cardinals and San Francisco 49ers.
At the combine, McDonald's 40 time was 4.85, alarmingly slow for someone expected to keep pace with the Michael Irvins and Irving Fryars of the world.
But George Boone, then college personnel director for the Cardinals, followed McDonald back to school at Southern Cal, timed him again and received a more believable reading.
So, what is the combine? Evil, or necessary evil? Mahlum votes for the latter.
``It's a pain, but you understand why things are the way they are,'' he said. ``You realize how important this is to teams. They are going to be spending a lot of money on the players and they want to make sure what they're getting.'' by CNB