The NFL Combine Needs to Be Fixed

The annual National Football League Scouting Combine has existed, in one way or another, for over three decades. It’s time for the league to make some necessary changes.

There is no more ridiculous event on the sports calendar each year than the annual NFL Scouting Combine. Players are weighed, measured and then tested in a handful of drills that occur roughly two months before the subsequent NFL Draft and almost half of a year before those same athletes will play a down of exhibition football.

We’ve learned that the NFL Combine can also be a useless exercise. Remember when quarterback Johnny Manziel was a hit among multiple franchise at the 2014 combine? Cornerback Justin Gilbert was also impressive that February. Their NFL careers may be beyond saving. Defensive end Jadeveon Clowney had an NFL Combine to remember that same week, but he has not yet proven that he was worth a first overall pick of any draft class.

It turns out that the NFL Combine is not only a flawed practice. It is also, in some cases, offensive and downright repugnant.

Those who have read up on the NFL Combine in the past probably know that teams have been known to ask prospects some random and even funny questions. “Do you prefer McDonald’s or Burger King?” and “Boxers or Briefs?” are examples of quirky questions that do not, to outsiders, offer any indication if a pass-rusher can get to the quarterback or if a wide receiver can keep both feet in the field of play as he reels in a pass while in the corner of the end zone.

Are those questions strange? Maybe. Are they offensive? Nah.

Teams crossing a line when speaking to prospects is unfortunately nothing new, and that trend continued last month in Indianapolis. CBS Sports NFL Draft guru Dane Brugler provided the following piece of information back on February 25.

Strangest interview question I've heard a NFL team ask a prospect so far: Do you find your mother attractive? #NFLCombine
— Dane Brugler (@dpbrugler) February 25, 2016

Let’s begin with the notion that a NFL Combine is supposedly similar to the types of job interviews that we regular people go on every day. In what corporate world would such a question be remotely acceptable? Imagine the outrage that would be voiced via social media websites such as Twitter were an interviewee to make it public that he was asked such a humiliating question. Why is it considered humorous or “campy” just because those being asked are future NFL players?

Then, there is the obvious question that must be asked: What is the right answer to this question? On second thought, never mind. Not only do I not want to know the psychology behind those in charge of a billion-dollar entity asking a potential employer how he feels about the attractiveness of his mother. I don’t want to know how I would rate based upon the different answers that could come to mind.

NFL coaches and scouts being creepy is inexcusable. Asking questions such as the one delivered to Ohio State cornerback Eli Apple at the 2016 NFL Scouting Combine should be a fireable offense for anybody associated with the league.

Apple, as explained by Enrico Campitelli of CSNPhilly.com’s The 700 Level, went through the following experience while meeting with the Atlanta Falcons at the NFL Combine.

"“I’ve been asked a lot of weird questions. I don’t know if I could say on TV,” Apple said.“The Falcons coach, one of the coaches, was like, ‘So do you like men?’ It was like the first thing he asked me. It was weird. I was just like, ‘no.’ He was like, ‘if you’re going to come to Atlanta, sometimes that’s how it is around here, you’re going to have to get used to it.’ I guess he was joking but they just ask most of these questions to see how you’re going to react.”"

Before anybody who forgets that it is 2016 heads to the comments sections to offer hot takes about a player maybe getting his “feelings hurt” during an interview, it must be made clear that Atlanta head coach Dan Quinn, per Campitelli, apologized via a team statement. Campitelli also reported that a NFL spokesman referred to the question being asked to Apple as “disappointing and clearly inappropriate.”

In other words: All with common sense know that somebody messed up big time here.

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Perhaps more bothersome than Apple being asked if he “likes men” during an interview with a NFL franchise is that nobody in football circles – beat reporters, former players, agents, etc. – I spoke with after the fact was surprised. While you’d have to dive to the worst depths of the Internet to find people who have no problem with Apple encountering questions about his sexuality during a NFL Combine meeting, in-the-know individuals aren’t stunned that it happened.

Let’s, for the sake of argument, say that the Atlanta coach in question is a loan wolf of immaturity and ignorance as it pertains to this matter. Just as one overly-inebriated individual can get an entire party shut down, that one coach has shined a massive spotlight on the reality that things at the NFL Combine need to change.

I don’t pretend to have all of the answers or even the one right answer to fix the NFL Scouting Combine. You don’t have to be a future pro, an agent or an attorney to understand that something needs to be done to address these Q&A sessions. Perhaps the NFL Players Association could produce a list of questions that will, starting in 2017, be no-nos. Maybe the NFL will, in the future, have to record and monitor every interview to determine what teams need special training in this aspect of roster building.

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No employee should ever have to face a situation where a would-be boss grills him on sexual preference or any other personal and private information that has nothing to do about the job in question. Shame on the NFL, let alone the Falcons, that it took a story such as Apple’s for the league to have to address this.

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