The average fan may not notice much of a difference as the NFL scouting combine kicks off this week.
TV ratings show that while most things the NFL touches turn to gold, watching a bunch of guys run 40-yard dashes in shorts remains more of a niche attraction — fewer than 1% of households watched the Saturday morning/afternoon window of the Combine last year (67% watched the Super Bowl).
To try to entice a larger audience (and hence, more advertising dollars), the league is making some drastic changes to the format, the most extreme of which is moving all of the workouts to the evening, from Feb.