Stopwatch can dash dreams

Sean Hayes led the Space Coast in tackles last season as a junior, piling up an obscene 230 stops.

But the Merritt Island High linebacker knew college recruiters would be more preoccupied with another number -- one that can be manipulated as well as misleading -- as they evaluated players like Hayes.

Hence, he spent the spring running track even though he wasn't actually a member of the team. Hayes worked on non-football-related things (his starts out of the blocks, for example) that could mean everything to his future in the game.

"I understand why colleges look for it, because they want the fastest kids on the team," said Hayes, whose team plays at Seminole High on Friday night in the Kickoff Classic. "Really, you don't run the 40-yard dash in game situations unless a guy is on a breakaway and you have to catch him from behind. The game is played between the tackles and that's how you find out who the real football players are."

Hayes echoed the sentiments of just about any coach, recruiting analyst or NFL general manager. Yet that hasn't stopped 40-yard dash times from becoming as obsessed over as any number in football.

"There seems to be a general consensus among football coaches that there is a difference between football speed and track speed," Palm Bay High coach Dan Burke said of 40-yard dash times, "but nonetheless everyone uses them as a measuring stick."

"It's really the standard now," agreed Florida State coach Bobby Bowden.

Teams like Bowden's Seminoles, Florida and Miami are a big reason for that. Their sustained success has helped make speed the most valued commodity in football.

Yet as important as speed has become, 40-yard dash times have the potential to produce fool's gold as much as they do accurate measurements of a player's speed on the football field.

That is because the 40-yard dash -- the equivalent of the radar gun in baseball -- can be questioned on multiple fronts.

Exaggerated times

Ask Scott Kennedy about the 40-yard dash times top prep players are posting these days, and he'll bring up an episode of "Friends."

In one show, the main characters are talking about how there are automatic answers to certain questions. When a girlfriend, for example, asks her boyfriend if a particular outfit makes her look fat, the answer is a resounding "No!"

Kennedy, the Southeastern recruiting analyst for Insiders.com, feels an automatic answer has emerged for 40-yard dash times.

"These kids all think they run a 4.4," Kennedy said. "No, you don't. If you do, you probably need to go straight to the league. Forget about college."

There is a reason why Kennedy chortles when asked about all of the prep players who supposedly run sub-4.5 40 times.

Gil Brandt, a personnel consultant for NFL.com and former director of player personnel for the Dallas Cowboys, said NFL teams consider running backs and wide receivers who run a 4.5 in the 40 to have excellent speed.

Those are generally the fastest players on the field -- and are generally in short supply -- which makes some of the 40 times that are plastered all over Internet recruiting sites seem a little less than believable (nine of the skill position players in Rivals.com's top 25 senior in the country ran sub-4.5 40s and top-rated Derrick Williams posted a 4.31).

"For me, it's a lot better to watch these guys on film than watching them run these ridiculous 40 times," ESPN recruiting analyst Tom Lemming said when asked how he gauges a player's speed.

Jeremy Crabtree, the national recruiting director for Rivals.com, won't list a 40 time if it is lower than 4.3.

And with good reason.

He played high school football in the Kansas City area against a kid whose best 40-yard dash time was 4.38, Crabtree said.

That player was Maurice Greene, who later laid claim to title of world's fastest human by breaking the world record in the men's 100-meter dash with a time of 9.79 seconds.

If the discrepancy between 40-yard dash times and how fast players actually are can seem as wide as William "The Refrigerator" Perry, that is because there are so many variables in the test that is football's equivalent of the SAT.

How a person is timed, what kind of shoes that person is wearing and what kind of surface he is running on has an impact on what 40-yard dash time he runs.

In the late 1960s, the Cowboys did a study using the freshmen football players at Penn State (first-year players weren't eligible at the time).

They did an exhaustive series of running tests, Brandt said, and drew this conclusion about the 40-yard dash: running on a grassy surface in football cleats and getting timed electronically added, on average, 1.3 seconds to times that were taken when participants ran on a hard surface in track shoes and were timed with hand-held stopwatches.

"When guys run these exotic times," Brand said of college-bound prospects, "they don't do it when they get timed on the National Football League level."

What do times tell?

Nine times.

That is how many times Brandt recalled the Cowboys testing a record-breaking college wideout who couldn't break 4.6 on the array of stopwatches that had been timing him.

Jerry Rice may have run pedestrian 40-yard dash times but they sure didn't slow him down when he made the jump from college to the NFL.

"I don't have too many memories of anyone catching him," New York Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi said of the player who went on to become the greatest receiver of all time. "Emmitt Smith and Marcus Allen did not have blinding 40 times either."

If the legitimacy of 40-yard dash times can be questioned, so too can what they reveal about a football player.

Players like Rice, Smith, Allen and Gale Sayers -- a Hall of Fame within the Hall of Fame -- are proof of that.

"The only people running 40 yards straight are guys playing special teams and maybe receivers now and then," said Sebastian River coach Randy Bethel, who played at the University of Miami.

Translation: the 40-yard dash does not measure the kind of speed needed on a football field.

"Quickness to me," Bowden said, "is more important than speed. I've had guys that couldn't dodge anybody, couldn't get open. I don't know if Fred (Biletnikoff) ran better than a 4.6, but boy, he was graceful and quick as a cat."

Any coach will agree that there is such a thing as football speed and it can't be quantified.

Some simply are faster on the football field for reasons ranging from good anticipation skills to wearing a uniform better than others.

Crabtree ranked Early Doucet ahead of Palm Bay's Xavier Carter when assessing LSU's loaded recruiting class last February. Many fans questioned it, he said, because of Carter's world-class speed and superior 40-yard dash time.

Said Crabtree of Doucet, "When he put on those pads Friday night, there was nobody that could catch him."

Here to stay

As flawed as measuring players by 40-yard dash times seem, the stopwatches are here to stay.

"We colleges are really interested in (speed) and committed to it, but pros are even more than us," Bowden said. "They feel the difference between the great ones and the near great ones is speed."

"I'll say this as far as the NFL," said Brandt. "People are always trying to find every way possible for doing a better job of drafting. There's always going to be a Steve Largent that didn't run all that fast and catches 800 balls in the NFL. You'd probably go broke looking for the exception."

"The Hall of Fame is full of players that did not have great 40 times," Accorsi said, "but by the same token, if the time is extremely slow and the (player) has to play against defensive players who can do all of the things he can do, plus run a lot faster, it is a major factor."

Hayes ran a 4.8 40-yard dash time at a Nike Combine he attended with teammates Eddie Haupt and Xavier Chapple in the spring at the University of Miami.

"I'm the kind of kid (major) colleges aren't going to look at because of my 40 time," said Hayes, a first-team FLORIDA TODAY All-Space Coast team selection on defense last season. "Let's be honest here, you've got to run a certain time and be a certain height."

Hayes is only 6-feet tall. That and his speed -- or is it 40-yard dash time? --is why Hayes doesn't expect to hear from Florida, Florida State or Miami.

"I know I am capable of playing at that kind of level," Hayes said.

Unfortunately for Hayes, the stopwatches don't necessarily agree.

Contact Brown at 242-3698 or sbrown@flatoday.net