Question about downloadable rosters

[ThaReaper09]

Quote: Originally Posted by puja21

Well I don't think I was being a dick-- my point was not the accuracy of your source (which is bad-- wikipedia), but rather the fact that the time is inaccurate. It had nothing to do with the roster or whoever made it; I could care less about that. And FWIW, I was actually at that Pro Day at Chapel Hill in spring of '04. That was my senior year of undergrad; I was a taxi-squader at another ACC school down I-40 & some of my teammates were looking to play on Sundays. That's not to say I remember watching Willie Parker run any heats (I don't)-- just saying I'm very familiar with the NFL Combine & Pro Days methods of exaggeration If we are talking about real times, then it's simple. I know he didn't for the same reason I know he cannot fly; it's not possible.

More bull****. It seems you can't go a day without saying something preposterous. Really, it isn't possible? So I guess people setting unbelievable records in the 100-meter dash and re-lay aren't possible either and are jut exaggerated. You know nothing about how fast Willie Parker can run a 40 yard dash. Not me, not you, the only person that knows is himself. But really, if I had to choose between this and the other ridiculous post you made, I would say this takes the cake because man was this the most useless post ever. Quick question. Was that other ACC school Duke by any chance? I believe Tobacco road is I-20.

[puja21]

Quote: Originally Posted by ThaReaper09

More bull****. It seems you can't go a day without saying something preposterous. Really, it isn't possible? So I guess people setting unbelievable records in the 100-meter dash and re-lay aren't possible either and are jut exaggerated. You know nothing about how fast Willie Parker can run a 40 yard dash. Not me, not you, the only person that knows is himself. But really, if I had to choose between this and the other ridiculous post you made, I would say this takes the cake because man was this the most useless post ever. Quick question. Was that other ACC school Duke by any chance? I believe Tobacco road is I-20.

wow, & you called me a dick? My post clearly outlines the background of the 40-meter dash flaws & presents the case of what is & is not possible by the human body. Either you didn't bother to read it or you think you know more about running than the US Olympic spring coach. In calling it useless, you are only showing how little you know about 40-times:

Since you brought up unbelievable 100-meter times & you enjoy the NFL, then I assume you have heard of Usain Bolt... Bolt's 40-time calculated from his WORLD record 100 meter dash at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing is 4.349 seconds.

Surprised? You really shouldn't be if you know anything about track & field. Sprinters start at speed zero & accelerate for ~50 meters, then slowly decelerate for the last 30 or 40 meters. There is a 0.1 or 0.2 second reaction time between the sound of the gun & when the sprinters start running (this is fact, not my opinion). This same reaction time works the opposite way for 40-yard dash times because coaches start the stop watch on the movement of the runners. Therefore the stopwatch starts 0.1 - 0.2 seconds after the runner goes. This means that when you hear a player at the NFL combine ran the 40 yard dash in 4.30 seconds, if he were running on a track with a starting gun, he would really have run between 4.50 and 4.70. If you account for the reaction times, Usain Bolt's 4.394 second 40-yard dash would have likely been clocked at the NFL combine somewhere between 4.00 and 4.20 seconds

And no, my school is not the football wasteland known as Duke... Dookies would not be sending multiple players to play Sundays. Tobacco Road is not an actual road btw... it's a reference to the fact that UNC/Duke/WF/NCSU all used to be within 6 miles of each other 50+ years ago. I-40 is the east-west interstate that cuts across North Carolina & goes all the way to California. I-20 is in SC when you get to that longitude.

[dophin26]

Isn't all this stuff relative anyway? If the combine time for a guy is listed at 4.4 and 4.5 for another, you can just rank them accordingly. It really shouldn't matter what the time is, only that the attributes are consistant. You can't change who did the timing and on any given day a guy could run a different time, so take what is given and use it. And if all else fails, you could, ah... change it yourself.

[ThaReaper09]

Quote: Originally Posted by puja21

wow, & you called me a dick? My post clearly outlines the background of the 40-meter dash flaws & presents the case of what is & is not possible by the human body. Either you didn't bother to read it or you think you know more about running than the US Olympic spring coach. In calling it useless, you are only showing how little you know about 40-times: Since you brought up unbelievable 100-meter times & you enjoy the NFL, then I assume you have heard of Usain Bolt... Bolt's 40-time calculated from his WORLD record 100 meter dash at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing is 4.349 seconds. Surprised? You really shouldn't be if you know anything about track & field. Sprinters start at speed zero & accelerate for ~50 meters, then slowly decelerate for the last 30 or 40 meters. There is a 0.1 or 0.2 second reaction time between the sound of the gun & when the sprinters start running (this is fact, not my opinion). This same reaction time works the opposite way for 40-yard dash times because coaches start the stop watch on the movement of the runners. Therefore the stopwatch starts 0.1 - 0.2 seconds after the runner goes. This means that when you hear a player at the NFL combine ran the 40 yard dash in 4.30 seconds, if he were running on a track with a starting gun, he would really have run between 4.50 and 4.70. If you account for the reaction times, Usain Bolt's 4.394 second 40-yard dash would have likely been clocked at the NFL combine somewhere between 4.00 and 4.20 seconds And no, my school is not the football wasteland known as Duke... Dookies would not be sending multiple players to play Sundays. Tobacco Road is not an actual road btw... it's a reference to the fact that UNC/Duke/WF/NCSU all used to be within 6 miles of each other 50+ years ago. I-40 is the east-west interstate that cuts across North Carolina & goes all the way to California. I-20 is in SC when you get to that longitude.

Hmm... well I don't give two ****s about what people THINK Usain Bolts 40 time COULD/WOULD be. I don't think his 40 would be that slow. Have you seen Bolt run? No? Then I think you should. It's true acceleration differs due to the difference in distance, but trying to calculate somebody's 40 time based off of their 100 meter dash time is preposterous. Also, why do you have to hate on Duke? I mean seriously, what did they ever do to you? Did they reject you or something? Is that why you are spewing mouth garbage toward them. Either way, I'm done with the conversation. Have somebody who is clearly slower than somebody else in real life faster than said person on a video game makew zero sense.


Good day.

[ThaReaper09]

Quote: Originally Posted by dophin26

Isn't all this stuff relative anyway? If the combine time for a guy is listed at 4.4 and 4.5 for another, you can just rank them accordingly. It really shouldn't matter what the time is, only that the attributes are consistant. You can't change who did the timing and on any given day a guy could run a different time, so take what is given and use it. And if all else fails, you could, ah... change it yourself.

This is all true, but I want an answer of why this problem occurred. I know I can change the rating myself, which I did.

[puja21]

Quote: Originally Posted by dophin26

Isn't all this stuff relative anyway? If the combine time for a guy is listed at 4.4 and 4.5 for another, you can just rank them accordingly. It really shouldn't matter what the time is, only that the attributes are consistant.

I think I've seen that take from you before dophin, & you're not alone... That's the mis-assumption people make about 40-times & the NFL. But yes, the idea that "times are at least relative to one another" can be true if you look specifically at the COMBINE (& then only for one given year as a comparitive window). However, beyond that all bets are off.

Consider college pro days like the 2004 UNC one cited in the case of Willie Parker. Remember, at pro days you have literally between 30 & 100 people taking & recording their own times... every scout for any of the 32 teams who shows up, the hosting school, the school of the student athlete running, the agent/support staff (ISP sports) of the athlete running... Do you think it's a coincidence that someone at the pro day for Parker's school reported an astronomically low 4.2 40-time? I'm not saying that Willie Parker is not fast... he may be the fastest player in football without pads-- I doubt it, considering all the BCS conf All-American track stars who play in the NFL, but I have no certainty on this. Rather, I am just saying that this time is almost certainly not relatively comparable to other players measure... even on that day. And of all the heats I've seen for Parker (including campus times when he was an underclassman), none approach 4.2.

There are sometimes as many as 60 or 70 annual pro-day workouts held at colleges all over the US; each with different track surfaces, wind & weather conditions, media/NFL scout coverage etc... But even with all those options, not every student gets to run at his home school-- for instance, while both Virginia Tech & Miami would host their own, other ACC schools like Wake Forest, NC State & regional players like App State, ECU, Coastal Carolina, etc would share with UNC or another big hoster. Clemson/South Carolina (traditional rivals) might share a pro day during a down FB year for one of those schools... in these cases, the home students virtually always have better "reported times" than the comparable visiting athletes, when measured against their combine runs just weeks later.

Sometimes there are even independently contracted COMPANIES timing at pro days, whose sole purpose is to train NCAA FB players to prepare for the draft by improving their pre-draft measure-- these companies understand that a perceived difference of .1 seconds in 40-time can make or break millions in guaranteed money because of the scientific attiude taken by the NFL toward the draft; things like the draft valuation chart. Don't you think they want to falsely report times lower or-- more common-- intentionally take measures using a process that generates faster times?

And there is no SOP between these groups & in some cases even within one of these groups. Even if you exclude the outsiders & just look within the NFL scouts of 32 teams... some of these teams take:
--the fastest time
--the slowest
--the mean
--the median
Some even throw out the high & low times & then take the mean or median... Sometimes they publicize the results from these methods or from the OPPOSITE of their methods before/after the draft to try & move a player up or down relative to their own or another team's drafting position, to gain leverage negotiating or HURT another team's leverage negotiating with players already picked, to spin public opinion if ESPN reported a GM's selection as being particularly terrible (see Phil Savage's post draft PR).

It is just a ridiculous circus of misinformation & jockeying among these many forces & almost none of it is believable. You are correct that one given year of times at an Indianapolis Combine is the best source for relative comparable accuracy... anything beyond that, however, is a crapshoot

[mKoz26]

Puja, I mean no disrespect to you in any way, but I think you calculated Usain Bolts projected 40 time wrong. You see, Usain Bolt was running the 100 METER sprint. NFL players run the 40 YARD dash. 100 meters=slightly over 328 feet. 100 yards=300 feet. I may have calculated wrong, but I got 3.588888 for his forty time. I did 300/328...Multiplied that by 9.69, then multiplied that by 0.4-is that right?

[puja21]

Quote: Originally Posted by mKoz26

Puja, I mean no disrespect to you in any way, but I think you calculated Usain Bolts projected 40 time wrong. You see, Usain Bolt was running the 100 METER sprint. NFL players run the 40 YARD dash. 100 meters=slightly over 328 feet. 100 yards=300 feet. I may have calculated wrong, but I got 3.588888 for his forty time. I did 300/328...Multiplied that by 9.69, then multiplied that by 0.4-is that right?

Your calculation is not correct. You can't simply convert from meters to yards and divide by time. It doesn't work that way b/c you are assuming constant velocity, which I alluded to in the last post in the sentence about sprinters' acceleration for ~50m followed by gradual deceleration.

A more accurate way to estimate Bolt's 40-yard dash time would be to use his 60 meter split from his world record 100 as the velocity bench mark. Bolt hit the 60m mark at 6.35 seconds into his heat (FWIW the official world record in this race is 6.39 by Mo Green-- so, kudos to Bolt as he would've shattered that record too)

This means that Bolt ran the last 40 meters in 3.34 seconds or 0.0835 seconds per meter. If we assume his speed over the last 40 meters was the same as his speed between 40 yards (36.576m) and 60 meters, then his 40 yard dash time is 4.394 seconds. Remember, however, that in reality a sprinter's actual speed between 40 yards & 60 meters would be faster than what they run in the last 40 meters... so, the first 40 yards would really be even slightly SLOWER than 4.394 seconds.