UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – The biggest job interview of their lives is quickly approaching and while former college athletes are scattered across the country working on one 40-yard-dash start after the next, the theme remains the same.
Just get through it.
Athletes will converge on Indianapolis next week for the annual NFL Scouting Combine, an event that’s soared in popularity as fans can now participate in the week-long meat market, getting a chance to watch athletes participate in the bench press and field questions from the media. Who doesn’t enjoy their job interview unfolding in front of a televised and live national audience?
It’s no wonder why the combine is met by participants with equal parts excitement and dread. Players go through the paces of the underwear Olympics in hopes that in the name of sleep deprivation, medical exams, team interviews and on-field workouts, they’ll do enough to impress scouts and general managers . They also can’t help but hope that the finish line is in sight. If this is the price they must pay for fulfilling a life-long dream, so be it.
“It’s miserable,” Steelers tight end Jesse James told me about his combine experience a few years ago. “In the bigger scheme of things, the combine has a lot on the line now, but once you start playing in the NFL it’s pretty much behind you and those numbers don’t hold up when you are actually playing games.”
What made James unhappy about the process? Well, it’s the same thing he already warned some of this year’s Penn State players about: The lack of a routine. For people who have their sleep patterns monitored in college sports and who are used to being told where to be and when, they're creatures of habit who will have their ability to adapt on the fly tested.
“You didn’t get sleep if you had an MRI so you could be up until 3 in the morning the night before the bench press and stuff,” James said. “It’s a mind game. All the meetings with coaches and all that.”
Undoubtedly there will be stories that surface in the next couple weeks about off-the-wall questions players are asked by teams during their interviews and some questions that are just downright offensive. It happens every year as teams poke and prod, both physically as they weigh the athletes in like they’re herding cattle and then again in the interview room where seemingly no question – from religion to sexual orientation, which players such as Eli Apple have complained in the past about being asked about – is off limits.
It might be the ultimate sign in this big business that is the NFL that wherever there is an advantage to gain, even if it’s real or perceived, teams will try and go there. How a player responds to an interview question in the wee hours of the morning after a lack of sleep and day of stress seems very similar to how they’ll respond when they’re at the line of scrimmage with the game on the line, right?
Realistically, there’s only so much people can know about these prospects. Despite intense vetting, nobody still was able to flag Aaron Hernandez as a potential character risk. I bet they could tell you his 40 time, body fat percentage and Wonderlic score, though. But apparently his blocking at the time was suspect.
The league brushes off backgrounds of domestic and sexual violence accusations time and time again, because when it comes down to winning, one of the 32 teams is going to take that leap of faith on a player. They always will. If they don’t, someone else will.
So, while players with no red flags on their background except for maybe a medical issue here or there fret over whether or not their broad jump will be good enough or if that high school knee injury truly is a thing of the past, teams will line up to label them by rounds and dish out draft grades. Welcome to the pros.
“It’s awful,” Detroit Lions defensive end Anthony Zettel told me of his Combine experience. “It’s a crazy time. … Then, in that first year, you go from working out the whole year and never getting one break to going into a full NFL season which is longer. So after that, you’re kind of like, ‘Whew.’ You sit back and take a breather and chill.”
One day down the road these same players will have thousands and in some cases millions (see Barkley, Saquon) of dollars to their names so they can sit back and laugh about the quirks of their path to the draft. James tried to relay that message to Penn State tight end Mike Gesicki, who he told not to stress over the Combine. That, he knows, is easier said than done.
“Improve yourself and get through the misery,” James told him. “Everyone is miserable during it.”
• For all the highlights Jacksonville’s defense created last season, one has to wonder what they’d look like on the other side of the ball should they retain wide receiver Allen Robinson. The former Nittany Lion is coming off an ACL injury and is set to become a free agent. How much is the No. 1 receiver wanted in Jacksonville?
Teammate Jalen Ramsey took to social media to tweet at Jacksonville’s official Twitter account this week, pleading with his team to keep Robinson, who burst on the scene with a Pro Bowl nod during just his second season in 2015. Through four NFL seasons, Robinson has 202 receptions for 2,848 yards and 22 touchdowns. He played in just one game last season because of the injury and would seem like a prime candidate for a franchise tag. That's a risk worth taking if you're Jacksonville.
Give him one year to prove whether he’s 2015 A-Rob or not and go from there. But, as I can attest after watching him break out at Penn State, when healthy, this guy can make plays that are just jaw-dropping. He’d glide down the field and elevate over people like no one else. That’s certainly worth the one-year tag. If he gets out of town, someone could have a big-time playmaker on their hands. If they tag him, he could make bundles on the market in 2019.
• Why do players think they have the right to have a say in a team's executive decisions anyway? That's been a theme this NFL offseason, one where we're seeing teammates lobby for one another. Earlier this month, Aaron Rodgers was irked the Packers didn't consult him before his quarterback coach wasn't retained. Are teams supposed to run every move past their franchise players?
• The TV ratings for the Winter Olympics are down, including a new low that hit during President’s Day weekend. Viewership is 7 percent less thus far than the 2014 Games in Sochi and the prime-time appeal of live coverage plus the ability to stream the Games hasn’t been enough to keep me tuned in either.
No, I wasn’t lost because of the lack of NHL-ers or the 2016 sexual harassment lawsuit that didn’t come to the public eye until snowboarder Shaun White took home gold in the halfpipe. I can’t complain about NBC’s coverage because most nights I've had it muted.
The appeal here beyond a handful of athletes just has not been enough to lure me – and apparently many others—in. I love the Olympics, but these Games have just been pretty boring. Maybe I was more in tune with Sochi because of all the dysfunction that came with it? The Summer Games will always be more appealing to me and many others, but in the dead of winter somehow, some way the IOC and all of us have to find a way to make us want to watch. There are so many other things (thanks, Netflix) vying for our attention that perhaps that's why this is a tougher-than-usual sell.
• Grappling with a sports celebrity’s iconic status is something we all deal with. If you think about your favorite athlete and pair him or her with at least one thing he or she has said or done that made your stomach churn -- or at least didn’t sit well with you -- then why is it that we always come to the defense of this person? Isn’t it weird? This is fandom and we’ve all done it, myself included.
Now, snowboarding fans are doing the same thing with White. How does one accept that he’s a once-in-a-generational athlete who completed a remarkable comeback, but also recognize that minutes after the halfpipe gold medal his past was dug up on social media and sexual misconduct allegations from the past were brought to light?
There’s no statute of limitations on our behaviors and tweets and while White accepted some responsibility for his actions, we all struggle with the notion our sports heroes and celebrities can be both good and bad at the same time. What does it say when you put on a jersey or apparel of that particular person? Are you supporting the athlete, the person, both?
Trust me, I see this regularly living in State College where some want to support Joe Paterno, the football coach who preached academics and did a lot of good for the university, yet they wonder if by doing so they're ignoring everything else that happened here during his tenure.
It's a lot harder to accept that sports heroes can be wonderful and flawed, just like the rest of us. For White's fans, they're now grappling with this reality, too.
• Francisco Cervelli is far from pleased with Major League Baseball's new pace of play initiatives, highlighted by fewer mound visits. Cervelli spoke about the strategy required and how this thinking man's game is like a chess match with one strategic move after the next.
He's right, but will anyone tune in for a chess match that lasts longer than a couple hours? It's like that game of Monopoly that drags on for days until eventually someone caves and either hides the thimble or just folds up the board. Strategy is important, but so too is making this sport more appealing to a younger audience that already has short attention spans.
I'm probably not alone when I say that I don't have 3-plus hours to carve out to watch 162 games. That's the reality for a lot of us. When games go to commercial usually the channel flips with it. If baseball games continue to drag on at this rate quite a few people probably won't be flipping the channel back.