The NFL Combine: Best or Worst Idea Ever

I'm a fan of football and I value the intensity you find in the NFL compared to all other major sports leagues who play way too many games in the regular season. Young players come into the league after 3 or 4 year college careers and can play right away. This is great as kids have time to learn the game properly in college and don't mess up the quality of the game at the pro level. This problem has been an issue in the NBA for the past decade and only recently has it begun to be addressed.

Now I'm no expert in the NFL, but the Combine seems like one of the most made up things in pro sports. The basic premise is to test players coming into the draft on individual physical and mental tests.

It seems the media seems to love these combines as you'll see front page news on some amazing result like this McFadden guy. Here's some pros and cons that I can see to the Combine format:

1. Evaluating physical traits

Pro: Get to do some very precise measurements of things like 40 yard dash times, and bench press weight.

Con: Provides the opportunity to really fall in love with the athleticism of a guy. The problem is this often props a player's draft position by several rounds. If the guy wasn't on the radar throughout his entire college career, it raises red flags about the guy's knowledge of the game despite great talent.

2. Comparing players to each other

Pro: Since these tests all produce a measurable result, it allows scouts or GMs to positively say that one player is faster or has quicker lateral movement than another.

Con: Provides the incompetent scouts or GMs with ammunition to say that one player is faster or has quicker lateral movement than another.

I really don't understand how a guy moves up the draft by several rounds after an amazing combine. The only reason for this is if he was flying under the radar perhaps not playing on a big team and the combine result just shed light on a guy could really play while in college.

3. The stories we get out of the combine

Pro: It seems every year there's someone who amazes or disappoints. Either way it produces something interesting.

Con: No cons to this.

It seems that the combine is another way that we can sit back and over-analyze things to death. This however is good since it's entertaining. With this in mind I really think we should hold combines in our own lives for casual things.

For example, let's say we're going to play some football or street hockey or ultimate frisbee with some friends. Before the standard draft occurs to decide teams, we should hold a combine prior to the actual game. Following what we've learned from the NFL combine we'll toss aside all the other times we've played (like the college careers of the draftees) and use some somewhat arbitrary means to decide teams.

Let's say for myself, I'm on the below average side for street hockey, but I do run pretty fast. Based on my relative performance I might raise my draft choice by 1 or 2 picks (out of 8 or 10) based on the captains being wowed by the sprinting performance.

Another example is first person shooters (video games), if you were playing Halo and team based games, we can hold a combine. For the combine we'll forget about most things related to actually playing Halo and make up some new measurements that we believe correlate well.

Here are some tests I recommend for Halo team draft combines:

• Hand speed: The ultimate test on this that I found out while in junior high was to take a calculator and press 1+= and do this as many times as possible in 20 seconds.

• Hand-Eye Coordination/Depth Perception: You could try something like having the person lay down and holding a wrapped up sock above their face. You then drop it 10 times and measure how many they can catch it as you drop them. (fakes are allowed)

• Mental Fortitude: The captain should trash-talk the draftee as much as possible to simulate real-game experience. Measure the number of seconds before a negative reaction is made.

These tests and perhaps a few others would really work wonders to figure out who'd be good at FPSs ... and perhaps football.

NBA Second Half Predictions

The second half of the NBA season is underway and it's going to be something special to watch. Let me rephrase that, the second half of the NBA season is underway and the Western Conference will be something very special to watch.

From the Suns, Spurs, Hornets, Lakers, Jazz, Nuggets, Mavericks, Rockets, Warriors and Trail Blazers (who have the worst record among them at 28-24) represent the strongest crop of teams in one conference in my memory. Two of these teams will unfortunately not make the playoffs.

With this in mind, I would recommend to everyone to watch any game involving two teams from this list and witness high intensity playoff-style basketball. Everyone has been talking about how the West is shaping up and putting the spotlight on the fact that potentially a team with around 47 wins might miss out on the playoffs. This will produce some great games especially down the stretch as teams vie for home-court advantage.

Just to join in on the fun, I'll give my mid-point predictions on the final standings:

10th: Portland (currently 10th, 28-24)

From what I've seen of this team, they'll still be fighting until the end for a playoff spot but will come a bit short in terms of experience and overall team talent. Brandon Roy is coming into his own and a unique game. Sneaky quickness and athleticism put together with experienced poise.

9th: Houston (currently 7th, 33-20)

I like the Rockets, but just don't think they're deep enough. Yao is playing great but McGrady has had nagging injuries all year. In fact I think they probably play better without McGrady but they don't have enough all-round talent to keep it up. On top of that we all know that the Rockets have wilted under pressure in past playoff performances. So until they prove me wrong, I'm saying they don't make it in a pressure filled conference.


8th: Golden State (currently 9th, 32 -21)

They'll soon realize Chris Webber is useless for them and go back to their old lineup. This means rock'em sock'em type basketball and it'll be enough to just get them into the playoffs.

7th: Denver (currently 8th, 33-20)

Denver's missing a post presence and a good 6th man off the bench. Having Camby, Carmelo and Iverson are enough to make them a good team and competitive though. Amazingly I remember hearing last season about how deep they are in the front court. Unfortunately cumulative injuries have just decimated the production potential from the PF spot.

6th: Dallas (currently 6th, 35-19)

Adding Jason Kidd adds the intense mentality they've been missing. However I question this team's makeup especially considering how weak they are with post offense. Remember that Devin Harris provided decent offensive production at 14 ppg and 5 assists plus the ability to play solid man to man defense against quick point guards.

Jason Kidd improves them by facilitating points for his team, but compared to the improvements other teams have made, it's not enough.

5th: New Orleans (currently 1st, 37-15)

This team is completely based on Chris Paul. You take him off the team and replace him with an average PG and they're out of the playoffs. That's not to diss the other players on the team, but I can't think of anyone here who can create their own shot. David West is a great player, but I don't see him being the focal point of an offense.

The reason I put them lower on this list is that they're going to be facing the post-good year don't ignore this team syndrome now. Meaning teams in the first half probably didn't fear the words New Orleans on the schedule the way they would with the Suns. With teams aware of how good they are, the Hornets are now going to face stiffer competition.

4th: Phoenix (currently 2nd, 37-16)

The Suns are just going to be getting ready for the playoffs, meaning learning how to incorporate Shaq into their team. Just watched the Phoenix-LAL game, please Shaq don't run with the rest of the team.

Keeping the aging Suns rested vs. competing for playoff position is going to be a tough task for coach D'Antoni.

3rd: Utah (currently 4th, 35-19)

The Jazz have an incredibly solid team 1-5.
PG - Deron Williams can be just as good as Chris Paul in different ways
SG - seems this is more of a rotation position with Brewer-Harpring-Korver, but I'm a fan of having defensive minded SG instead of a highly paid offensive minded one like Carter, McGrady, Redd, etc. Even though they can produce instant offense, they usually score at a low clip and take shots that really should go to low post players. Give me a cheap defensive 2 who can shoot 3s and a star forward anyday (save for Kobe).
SF - Kirilenko's got a great all around game and fits this team well with his shot-blocking, passing and length.
PF - Boozer's an all-star on offense.
C - Seems a bit awkward to have a 3 ball shooting centre, but Okur's been playing like he was last year and it really throws defenses off.

2nd: San Antonio (currently 5th, 35-17)

Last year's champs, got some valuable experienced help from Kurt Thomas which fits perfectly. I watched this team a few weeks ago against the Raptors and were amazed by their ball movement. This isn't something I usually think of from the Spurs, but I guess they just surprise you with the high level of execution on every aspect of the game.

1st: Los Angeles (currently 3rd, 36-17)

Of all the recent acquisitions, Pau Gasol is the most important. The guy is still young, in his prime and now playing with Kobe Bryant in Phil Jackson's system. I think everything fits here. When Bynum gets back, I don't expect him to do anything except grab alley-oops, putbacks and provide an athletic body to rebound and that'll be enough.

Plus this team's bench is impressive. It's not impressive on paper, but rarely does the bench play and the overall quality of the game goes down.


So that's the mid-season western review. Let's check back later and see the folies of my ways....

Politics and Sports

I feel I've spent enough of my time recently in life watching sports, reading about sports and going on the net to find different view points on the same topics regarding sports. I figured this would be a good outlet to let it all out...

Welcome to my first article at Hung on Sports.

We've recently spent the last few days surrounded with news on the Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee congressional hearings. Also consider the recent accusations from Sen. Arlen Specter[1] that he wants investigations into why the tapes regarding the New England Patriots Spygate scandal were destroyed.

Frankly I can't understand how these stories have even become reality. I don't know much about the internal workings of the political system in the United States (I'm Canadian btw, but I don't know much about the internal political system in Canada either), but the question on my mind is how the hell congressmen can spend any time at all on either of these subjects.

Most columns or news reports I've seen about the Clemens-McNamee hearings don't even begin to address the question of why they are there in the first place. Did Roger Clemens take steroids or HGH? Is McNamee lying about administering the needles to Roger? How many times did Clemens glance at McNamee during the hearings? Personally my opinions are Yes, No, and ? on these subjects but that's not the point.

When I actually take a second or two to think about this event, the thing I really want to know about is how the justice / political system actually has the power to bring in these individuals to answer questions. As far as I know there aren't any charges that are being brought against any of these men.

I think a popular opinion is that these senators are just using this opportunity to gain a bit of spotlight for themselves. I wholeheartedly agree with this. Are they acting inappropriately? Probably.

However, since this is the way it is and can't do anything about it, I think congress should set aside some time for other celebrity fueled hearings to put under the spotlight things we all would like to know. For example:

• Bring in Isiah Thomas and grill him on how he could possibly put together a roster as bad as the Knicks.

• See if Tony Romo realizes that the longer he dates Jessica Simpson will directly correlate to him sucking more (not to say he's a bad player, but he has now gone 0-2 in the playoffs and seriously who would date Jessica Simpson at this stage of her career?).

• Bring in all NFL linebackers and see if they take any steroids (just to double check the rock solid NFL drug-testing policy).

As a side point, how dumb were we back in the home run race between McGwire and Sosa? I remember everyone including myself coming up with various theories over how these guys were hitting so many homers. This list included juiced balls, a dilution of pitcher quality in the MLB, that general training regiments had improved massively from the early 90s to late 90s and steroids. Looking back on this, it's one of the most obvious things ever. It was a lock that it was steroids but no one really wanted to believe it.

I remember sometime during the race to 62, McGwire was caught using something called Andro which I believe was available at the time in any GNC and was relatively common. There was a minor shock and controversy over this. McGwire put on a brave face and said something like he would quit using it because he didn't want to give kids a bad example. This in hindsight is hilarious.

Along the lines of hypotheticals from above, congress should declare that McGwire be put on the show Moment of Truth and ask whether he was privately overjoyed that the media didn't beat the steroid question over him and he seemed to get away with it until the entire HGH scandal unfolded.

So I guess I don't have a satisfactory answer for why politicians are investigating these kinds of things, but I have a feeling most of them don't even think we're asking the question.

/Andrew