The NFL Scouting Combine is a yearly event held in Indianapolis for the purpose of putting the top college athletes through simple athletic tests to see if they are worthy of being drafted.

The whole combine system is utterly useless and does not replicate what the athletes do on the field during games. The combine can be refined to simply a full health check and interviews with the players. Here is some supporting evidence on why the combine is pointless.

The NFL combine is only open to specific players who are invited. The combine is an exclusive event and here are some good current NFL players who were not invited.

Doug Baldwin- 443 receptions for 5,945 yards and 45 TDs. He won Super Bowl XLVIII and has 2 pro bowls

Malcolm Butler- started 48 out of 59 games and has 8 picks, 4 forced fumbles, and 177 tackles in 4 years. He also made the game-winning interception against the Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIV. He has a pro bowl and a 1st team all-pro selection

Antonio Gates- He is second in TD’s for tight-ends and he will be going into the Football Hall of Fame.

Julian Edelman, Chris Harris, James Harrison, Malcolm Smith, Tyreek Hill, Tony Romo and Adam Thielen are all pro bowl players not invited to the combine.

Many of the drills at the combine are pointless, like the 3 cone drill, where the athletes run back and forth touching cones. There is no point in a NFL game that a player will be doing this. The 40-yard dash also is overhyped, as the athletes run WITHOUT pads on. A players’ time significantly decreases while wearing pads, so they should run the 40-yard dash in uniform so that the prospective teams have a more accurate idea of how fast the athletes will be on game day. For example… Usain Bolt, the fastest man alive, is slower running in football pads than Von Miller, Luke Kechley, and literally hundreds of NFL players. The quarterbacks also complete throwing drills without pads on, a study has shown that quarterbacks are more accurate when throwing the football without pads on. Once again, the combine should be completed with pads on.

Also, the times and scores that athletes get at the combine can have little effect on the outcome of their career. He are a few examples.

These five players all had awful combine performances, yet still had great careers, with 2 of them going into the Hall of Fame in Tom Brady and Terrell Suggs, and other players like Kelvin Benjamin, Anquan Boldin, and Joe Haden. On the other hand, here are some players that were lights out at the combine that most of us have never heard of and had short, pathetic careers: Darrius Heyward-Bey, Matt Jones, Vernon Gholston, Bruce Campbell, Mike Mamula. The combine jumped these players up on many teams draft boards, some players from the 3rd-5th round all the way up to the 7th overall pick.

Now the combine does have some useful parts, like the physical examination and the meetings that the athletes have with teams. If the NFL made more practical drills and opened up the combine a little more to other players than it could be more useful. NFL team also have to realize that the combine is not the end all be all that they make it out to be, as shown by many examples of how teams banking on combine performances made the wrong decision. To finish it all off, the athletes should be paid if they are invited as it is another large event, where athletes have to perform and could easily get injured, and they are earning nothing. The NCAA takes advantage of these athletes and the NFL takes advantage of them as much as possible before they have to give them a little portion of the billions of dollars that they have.