Now, the NFL Combine is pretty meaningless, a big waste of time and effort.

The Combine of the early days that gave us Auburn’s Bo Jackson running a 4.12 40-yard dash in 1986 also gave us the fastest time ever in Indy, Rondel Melendez’s 4.24 time in 1999.  Yeah, I know, who?

For every Jerry Azumah from New Hampshire, who got his shot as a result of his performance at the 1999 combine, there have been many more guys like Mike Mamula, Adam Archuleta, Robert Gallery, Kyle Boller, and David Carr. Great at the Combine and in workouts, not so great in NFL games.

For all the time and effort spent on the Combine, teams would be better off drafting guys based on how they finished in the voting for year-end awards like the Heisman, Outland, and Butkus trophies. 

Any football freak remembers watching the crazy, plyometric, ballistic training craziness endured by Archuleta and seeing the video clip of Boller throwing the ball 80 yards (I’m pretty sure it was 80 yards) from his knee, through the goal post. Scouts, fans and general managers alike were all seduced by these physically impressive, but football-meaningless feats.

Boller, or Broderick Bunkley who bench pressed 225-pounds for 44 reps last year, might impress at Frank Costanza’s Festivus celebration but not so much on the tundra of the NFL.

In the early days of the Combine, there were young guys who really were raw, undiscovered talent. Real examples of diamonds in the rough. Today everyone knows what to prepare for. As a result of all the emphasis on the drills featured at the Combine, a whole cottage industry of experts has cropped up and every kid who plays football from the 9th grade on knows what the drills are at the Combine. Just like “American Idol,” has become a forum for ringers and singers with past show biz experience – and usually failure – the NFL Combine has become a by-the-numbers event that as a result has lost its luster and relevance.

There are football conditioning experts that just teach to the test, as if they are preparing kids for the SATs. It should be so obvious to the powers that be in the NFL personnel business; if you take the best group of athletes that play football, and devise any series of physically demanding tests, the best athletes will perform the best. Great athletes will always perform better than lesser athletes, but these great athletes aren’t necessarily better football players.

Now you have young men who have been working on these drills for 8 or more years. Of course today’s athletes are going to be perform better on these tests than the athletes of a decade ago.