The NFL doesn’t have a swimsuit competition but it comes pretty close this time of year when the annual Scouting Combine convenes this week in Indianapolis, the next phase in football player evaluations (after in-season scouting and bowl games) on the way to the draft in Chicago during the last weekend in April.
For the next week, teams’ extended staffs (coaches, scouts, general managers, player personnel execs, medical evaluators) will subject the more than 300 invited college players to a football beauty pageant, complete with drills and exams measuring those players on times in the 40-yard dash, cone drills, shuttle drills, some position-specific work and more, in addition to private interviews with teams back in the team’s hotel rooms.