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King Kaufman's Sports Daily

The NFL scouting combine: Wake up, fans! Mistakes are being made. Plus: Pacman's $81,000 strip-club visual.

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Read more: Sports, Las Vegas, NBA, Basketball, Football, NFL, King Kaufman, Sports Daily

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Feb. 23, 2007 | You're missing the NFL scouting combine, which runs through Tuesday in Indianapolis. I say you're missing it because if you're reading this, you're awake, so you must not be watching coverage of the combine.

The NFL scouting combine is a six-day festival of tests and drills and interviews, with college stars going through their paces for scouts and general managers. It's so important that the best prospects make sure to skip it. The insights gathered at the RCA Dome have put teams in position to draft the likes of Alex Smith, Charles Rogers and Joey Harrington among the first three picks in just the past few years.

This is the process that leads to NFL teams taking Ryan Leaf second and Matt Hasselbeck 187th, Tim Couch first and Aaron Brooks 131st -- not to mention Daunte Culpepper 11th. Armed with "40" times and Wonderlic scores, NFL teams in 2000 took quarterbacks Giovanni Carmazzi and Chris Redman in the third round, Tee Martin in the fifth, and Marc Bulger and Tom Brady, in that order, in the sixth.

Few people know it, but my business has something very similar to the scouting combine. Just as defensive tackles have to show they can run 40 yards quickly, we columnists have to prove to our potential bosses that we have the raw skills that can be molded into performance worthy of filling the space between advertisements.

When I was just starting out I and hundreds of other aspiring sports columnists gathered in an office building in Dubuque, Iowa. This isn't the NFL, so we don't get the glamour spots like Indianapolis.

My rotation started with a typing test. I wowed the scouts with a 4.4 40, meaning I typed 40 words in 4.4 seconds. All of the words were "I."

I hear you laugh, but that's an important word in this racket, if you ask I.

Then I took the Wonderlic, sort of an IQ test, which I evidently passed because I'm good with complicated math. To wit: "A pack of gum sells for .89 each. What do four packs cost?"

About five bucks!

Then it got tough. You know how football players have to run those rope or spare-tire courses? Well, we have to approximate our skills too. They sat us in a room and gave us 30 seconds each to:

  • Write a short parody of the way Brent Musberger talks.

  • Come up with a clever name for "the media," to be used in columns for the rest of our careers.

  • Use the trademark symbol in a humorous way.

  • Invent a new nickname for a famous sports figure.

  • Devise a recurring schtick involving some member of your family not yet old enough to read your column.

    They don't really tell you how you did, but I think I aced the combine. After all, here I am at Salon, getting paid a C-note a week, while all those other schmoes from that week are stuck doing network TV shows and writing bestselling books. Losers.

    Next page: Pacman Jones and his $81,000 visual effect

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