"Nobody Runs a 4.3"

Riddlewire

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Good article from my second favorite football blog.
The money quotes:

In an effort to keep pace with numbers that are all to often misleading (like the hand-timed 40-yard dashes above) more and more high school football players inflate, mislead, or flat-out lie about their own 40-yard dash times with increasing regularity, proliferating a myth of what is truly fast and what is not.

So why is it then that some 42 year-old bum sitting in his cubicle has the audacity to categorically determine whether a player is "fast enough" or "strong enough" to play Division I football?

He even provides examples of four of the scholarship thieves who will end up benefitting from the great lie.
 

ToughJ.Riggins

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Interesting article. There is less than 10 guys since 1999 that ran a legit 4.3 flat or below at the NFL combine if I recall. Hand-times usually time faster as well.

If you're consistently running in the low 4.5s as Rex Burkhead is now; with a PB of 4.46, fans shouldn't be talking about how "slow" he is. I've seen this on various message boards about Rex.

Burkhead is faster than the majority of Division IA starting tailbacks over 40 yards, but it's his 10-15 yard burst, power and agility that set him apart. Fans always remember the 40 times of white guys it seems (I guess they look it up to see how "slow" they are), but inflate the black times.
 

Colonel_Reb

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A practice I have noticed is that a lot of DWFs andblack jock sniffers in the Castemediawill use the exact time of a white player, ex. 4.55 or will round it up to 4.6 while rounding down the black player time of 4.55 to just be a 4.5. So much for fair treatment.
smiley5.gif
 

Jimmy Chitwood

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no one has ever run a "legit" 4.3 or less. ever. anywhere.

the 40 times at the NFL Combine are only "legit" when compared to other NFL Combine times. if teams/coaches/whoever wanted to really have "legit" 40 times, they would have timers exactly like they do on a track & field competition.

times wouldn't start on the players first move, which is how it is done now. hand-held times would have zero credibility, unlike now. the so-called "electronic" times at the Combine are not, nor are they really "electronic" anywhere else. only the finish line at these events is electronically controlled, whereas the start is still hand-held reaction time after the runner's first move (that is hardly consistent, as i'm sure you can figure out). wind conditions and track surfaces would also need to be uniform, unlike now.

we've discussed this at length in another thread, and there have been meticulously researched articles that back me up, as well. one can reference the 'roided up, former world's fastest man Ben Johnson's 40 time to see what i'm talking about. furthermore, the hand-held times that Scouts and Rivals drool over are routinely MORE than 2 tenths of a second wrong, making their favored athletes' times much, MUCH faster than they should be.
 

Observer

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If the truth be told, there are few people who can run a 40 under 5 seconds.

Reaction times are published with track events, and the range is roughly 0.12 to 0.3 seconds. The "official" adjustment is 0.24 seconds. So, this 0.24 would need to be added to the runner's time. Then, since the person doing the timing begins the clock at the first movement, there is also a reaction delay from this person as well. So add another 0.24 seconds. Thus, we've already added a 1/2 second even under "fair" conditions. Add about .2 again if it is a hand-timed finish, and now our hand-timed 4.3 guy is at 5s and might not even get drafted as a lineman.

If you have video editing software, you can see and measure that the players are not really burning up the stripes. A few guys are burners, but not that many.

Years ago and being football-brainwashed, my impression was that the speed guys could all run a 100m in about 10.3 or less. I remember Cliff Branch -- and he was a true burner -- had run 100y in 9.2 (hand-timed, I think) and ran the 40 in 4.3. That would be about 10.3 in 100m. These days, there are dozens of claimed sub-4.5 guys, but I would wager that very few of them can run under 11s/100m at their current weight and conditioning.

Edited by: Observer
 

P-NutLane

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The 40 yard dash is a joke to me. How anybody can take football seriously anymore stuns me.
 

NorCal831

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i remember having a discussion about the 40 yard dash with the track coach at my old junior college Cass Jackson. he was one of the last two way starers when he played at San Jose State, is credited as being the first black head coach in college football, and was actually jerry rices first agent (he showed me the newspaper clipping and everything), so he knows his stuff when it comes to football, track, and speed in general. he said all these 40 times are bull and that nobody runs a 4.3, meaning a 4.3 or 4.31. he was saying how annoying it was to hear people talking about guys that run a 4.38 or 4.39 as "4.3" guys. in his words "thats a f---in 4.4 that aint no f---in 4.3. the 40 doesnt mean s--- anyway."

on a side note i remember a time when a friend of mine asked him who was the fastest white guy he ever saw. he responded kind of angrily by saying "man shut up with that s---. color aint got NOTHIN to do with it, nothin at all. i ran against plenty of fast white boys and trust me color dont got s--- to do with speed." he went on to name a bunch of good white sprinters he ran against or saw run. great guy to have a convo with. he knows his stuff, is blunt, and doesnt believe all the media hype and grabage.
 

RBNY123

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Nobody runs a 4.3 but zwinggi runs a 4.18 pb he is really just that fast. Some team out there please pick this guy up.
 

Mike

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RBNY123 said:
Nobody runs a 4.3 but zwinggi runs a 4.18 pb he is really just that fast. Some team out there please pick this guy up.

Zwinggi is very fast. But he does not run a 4.18. That's some of the biggest BS I have ever read in my life. It's almost as bad as all those Florida kids who claim they runs "4.2s"
 

Jimmy Chitwood

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RBNY123 said:
Nobody runs a 4.3 but zwinggi runs a 4.18 pb he is really just that fast. Some team out there please pick this guy up.


Zwinggi does run a 4.18with howthey time the 40 for football players. so, his 4.18 translates to him being MUCH faster than other football players, but it doesn't accurately translate his time. measuring a player's 40 time needs to be done differently if coaches/scouts wanted to get a "real" time, like they have in track and field meets.


we don't want to get confused here about what we're discussing, though.


this thread is pointing out the improper method people use to time football players. however, the 40 times listed for Zwinggi are the result of the same methods used for other players. erego, he is SUPER fast.
 

johnnyboy

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NorCal831 said:
i remember having a discussion about the 40 yard dash with the track coach at my old junior college Cass Jackson. he was one of the last two way starers when he played at San Jose State, is credited as being the first black head coach in college football, and was actually jerry rices first agent (he showed me the newspaper clipping and everything), so he knows his stuff when it comes to football, track, and speed in general. he said all these 40 times are bull and that nobody runs a 4.3, meaning a 4.3 or 4.31. he was saying how annoying it was to hear people talking about guys that run a 4.38 or 4.39 as "4.3" guys. in his words "thats a f---in 4.4 that aint no f---in 4.3. the 40 doesnt mean s--- anyway."on a side note i remember a time when a friend of mine asked him who was the fastest white guy he ever saw. he responded kind of angrily by saying "man shut up with that s---. color aint got NOTHIN to do with it, nothin at all. i ran against plenty of fast white boys and trust me color dont got s--- to do with speed." he went on to name a bunch of good white sprinters he ran against or saw run. great guy to have a convo with. he knows his stuff, is blunt, and doesnt believe all the media hype and grabage.

great story Norcal.

cheers
 

chris371

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its really astounding how much emphasis is placed on running a 40 in one tenth of a second faster or slower.

Playing outside Receiver is much more about having the coordination skills to time a jump perfectly, and catch the ball whilst in the air and having DBs flying around you like angry bees. The will to get the ball is so important.
 
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