I've noticed so many people across this forum and NCAAstrategies complaining about ratings, making comments like
"Our OLB runs a 4.34...how was he rated a 76 speed???"
(This one is made up.)
But do any of you
seriously believe the 40 times you hear?
And what do they mean?
HANDS
The most common way of timing 40s is simple - hand start the clock when you see the player's first movement, hand stop it when you think he's crossed the finish line.
I say "you
think he's crossed the line" because there's always a delay there.
TRACK AND FIELD
In track and field, the conversion for hand-timed to Fully Automatic Timed (FAT) is .24-.26. It simply takes that long for people to react to someone's torso crossing the finish line and then press a button.
A 10.0 hand-timed 100 meter dash is worth about 10.25 seconds. That's pretty substantial.
WHAT IS A HAND-TIMED 40 WORTH?
So if we assume that 40 yard dashes have the same delay, then a 4.30 40 yard dash is a 4.55 40 yard dash.
That's without counting the delay at the START of the dash, when the timer is reacting to the player's first movement (presumably from a distance of about 40 yards).
So let's generously say that the delay there is about .20. That 4.55 is about 4.75 in reality now.
VARIANCE
But if everyone is on a level playing field with this inaccuracy, it's all good, right? We don't need to talk about what a 40 time REALLY is because its usefulness is in comparing athletes, right?
Well, that'd be compelling if we really believed that everyone was inaccurate to the same degree.
The .24-.26 track and field delay I was talking about was for experienced professional timers, people whose job it was to be accurate.
In football, we're talking about coaches, S&C gurus, "speed camp" gurus, etc. These are all different sets of people and their ability to time consistently and accurately often differ dramatically.
I don't mind telling you I can run fast.
However, I remember running a 40 that 2 coaches timed at one pre-season practice. The difference between the two times? .30.
Add the simple difference in human error into the mix with people who have good reason to inflate 40 times - if I'm a H.S. coach trying to get my free safety a scholarship, I'm probably going to help him out - consciously or subconsciously - when he's running his 40.
If I'm Tom Shaw, I've got a really good reason to round down times instead of rounding them up.
If I'm the Florida S&C staff, I've got motivation to attribute otherworldly speed to every player on my roster.
etc.
DIFFERENT TIMING PROTOCOLS
Further complications.
Most timing is fully hand-timed.
But what about when people say "Our defensive end was
electronically timed at 4.42!" ?
Well, what kind of electronic timing?
Some people have the clock start electronically and then the clock is stopped by hand. Others start with hand timing and end electronically. (both can be done with lasers, as people love to point out)
These are going to give us different results.
I'm not aware of anyone who times using track and field-like fully automatic timing. The NFL-combine doesn't.
WHY DOESNT EVERYONE JUST TIME THEIR PLAYERS USING FULLY AUTOMATIC TIMING?
Because no one wants to hear that their favorite running back ran a 4.67 40.
The NFL doesn't want its fastest combine 40 time to be a 4.55.
Fans have become accustomed to ridiculous 40 times. They spread by word of mouth and then need to be backed up on the track or field. It's almost like reverse causation.
BOLT
Usain Bolt ran a 4.3x 40 yard dash when he set the world record in the 100 meters last year. At least, that's the best estimate by a few teams of experts, extrapolating the split from his 10 meter times, video analysis, etc.
4.3x from the time the gun went off to the time he passed 40 yards.
Pretty ho-hum for the fastest man in history, right?
I mean, I heard about a high school cornerback in Texas who ran a 4.1! And Chris Johnson runs a 4.2! Deion ran a 4.19 in sneakers!!!!!!!!11
How would we go about converting Usain's real, raw 40 time to a "football 40"?
Well, there's no reaction time for football players - so minus .15. Unless we're not using gates at the start, in which case we've also got to put .20 to human reaction there.
4.15 (3.85?)
The finish line is hand-stopped (or hand started) in "electronic" football 40s, so minus .25. Or maybe our hand-timer's really good, so we subtract .15 instead. Or maybe he's really bad, so we use .35 instead.
3.90 (3.70?) , 4.00 (3.80?) , 3.80 (3.60?)
My point is simply that we have no clue.
A "football 40" from that day in 2009 might bee anywhere from 4.15 to 3.60? There are so many variables that we can't say much beyond "it'd be really fast"
This post, in short:
- Hand timing is really, really, unreliable
- The way in which "football 40s" are timed varies considerably
- This results in potentially vastly different numbers for the same exact run
- You don't want accurate 40 times because then you couldn't claim that your school's MLB runs a 4.31.
- Usain Bolt is slower than your school's MLB, right?
06-18-2010, 11:42 AM
