Pro-Days are extremely important for athletes looking to
continue their football careers either at the college or professional level.
During these winter months, most major schools will host a Pro-Day that uses
the same drills as in the NFL combine to give their players up close and
personal exposure in front of top scouts. They are also an opportunity for
players not invited to the combine to be seen. Posting great numbers at a
Pro-Day can have significant bearing on whether a player is chosen for a team
or not and at what price. Because of this, some schools have been caught
“fudging the numbers” in a variety of ways. One of the ways this is done is by
continuing to choose hand-timing over electronic timing.
Studies have shown that hand-timing compared to electronic
timing is consistently faster due to human reaction time. “The error from hand
timing results in a minimum of 0.1 to 0.25 second difference from electronic
timing.” (Michel Weinstein, Zybek) When hand timing, coaches do not start their
watches until they see movement from the runner, but it takes time for a human
to see that an athlete is in motion and then click a watch. Current timing
sensors begin timing the instant a player begins moving and they are accurate
to a least the hundredth of a second.
Many football programs own timing sensors, but choose not to
use them because they want players to post fast times at their facilities.
Because facilities are choosing to use hand-timing over timing sensors, data
being posted from locations across the country are not comparable. Many players
post unrealistic times and the data is skewed.
It is financially possible for nearly every school in the
country to own timing sensors. It seems only right that the NCAA should regulate
these Pro-Day tests in order to get true results from them. Without the regulation,
they are not beneficial for data collection and scouts cannot look back and
rely on the data to make decisions about players. If the technology to
standardize these Pro-Days is inexpensive and readily available, there is no
good reason to not use them. Coaches cannot be allowed to continue posting
non-regulated data at the risk scouts are being given false statistics that
make players look better than they really are.
-Emily De Lena
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0164/8082/files/Combine_Hand_Start_v_FAT_Start_40_yard_dash_Analysis_Paper.pdf?238
