NFL Combine

This week in Indianapolis a hand-picked group of 300+ standout college football players made their once in a lifetime pilgrimage to the NFL Combine. The Combine is a 6 day event in which the top players in the country, projected to be drafted into the National Football League in April, are put through a series of physical tests, mental examinations, intelligence quizzes, and medical examinations in order give all of the NFL decision makers a clear and concise personal look at each player inside and out.

After all the tests are run and all of the numbers are crunched the teams need to make the crucial decisions of what players will benefit their team, which player will make them a champion. Any football guy can tell you that it takes much more than just shear talent to be a successful NFL player and it takes much more than 53 incredible athletes to win a Super Bowl. It is integral that these players are also good people, hard workers, and great teammates with superior learning ability and leadership qualities. The winning teams in the league establish and maintain their winning identity because they draft high character individuals who gel well with coaches and provide an enjoyable presence in the locker room.

Agents and publicists know all of this. They all know that these types of individuals are exactly what teams are looking for and they intensely media train their clients to be able to express the right image to these teams. Most of what these teams see of these players is solely on television. At the Combine players are only allowed to visit with each team for 15 minutes total. In this brief time it is easy to establish yourself as a high quality individual, but these teams aren't meeting with these players to see how good they are, they are meeting with them in order to see if they aren't the type of individual they want in their locker room. With that said, as easy as it is impress, it is even easier to say something to totally scare teams away.

These organizations are playing with large amounts of house money. The last thing they want to do is hand out millions of dollars to a 21 year old kid who will make bad decisions, surround himself with the wrong people, lose focus on the game, and be a bad teammate. Any rumor or inclination that these prospects will prove to be inadequate people can drop his draft stock, drop his selection number, which in turn will potentially cost him millions if not tens of millions of dollars. A team will risk league minimum on a freakish athlete with questionable character but they will not invest in a guaranteed 20 million dollar contract in a player who will prove to be a cancer to the organization.

Regardless of how these young men act in their personal lives, their agents are thoroughly training them to say the right things and exhibit the right image in the public forum that will make them attractive to an NFL franchise. It is so easy to scare a team off from taking you. For example, during an interview top prospect Cameron Newton revealed that he not only wants to be a football player but also "an entertainer and an icon". Bad news.

Within minutes these comments, which taken out of context, hit the internet. Only a brief comment such as that can make a player look like a man who will not care enough about the game of football to focus all of his energy on winning. It comes off like he is a guy that will make poor decisions once he is rich and famous and propel his stardom amongst football circles to become a star amongst celebrity circles. This comment, paired with other many off-the-field issues for Mr. Newton, could prove to make him drop down drastically in the draft and cost him (and his agent) millions of dollars. These agents know that every word is as heavily examined as every physical test they perform atb the combine. A quality media trainer, especially for a player who needs to already shake a bad image, is just as important to a prospect as is their personal trainer.

Super Bowl XLV

Last nights game will be one to remember, though I will try very hard to forget. As a die hard Pittsburgh fan it was extremely difficult to watch my beloved Steelers fall just short of their seventh Lombardi Trophy. Many romanticizing football fans, when they look back on this game they will remember whatever cinematic beauty the geniuses at NFL Films edits together to make the game and the players involved seem legendary. Most will remember a surging Aaron Rodgers picking apart the daunting Steelers D in a near perfect performance that ignited his meteoric rise to super-stardom. Do I disagree with this assessment? No, not at all. I will, however, remember this game for so much more. I will remember this game for all of the little intricacies that only live sport can express. i will remember all of the entities hat played a crucial role in that game, that will most assuredly be edited out of the history of the NFL.

First off this game was indeed a battle of two of the game's best young quarterbacks with potential Hall of Fame inductions in their future. However, last night was not a duel of two heavyweights at the top of their game going shot for shot, blow for blow, in a square-off for the ages. Aaron Rodgers had an amazing game, enough said, that can never be argued. He was BEYOND deserving of the game MVP. He was flawless in his decision making, precise on his throws, and showed the leadership and calm necessary to win a Super Bowl with a supporting cast. His statistics should have been even better if his nervous receiving corps could have held on to their five dropped passes throughout the competition. Big Ben Roethlisberger on the other hand looked off. He missed open receivers and made very questionable decisions throughout the contest. His two interceptions lead to two touchdowns for the Pack, one was directly returned for a touchdown which proved to be the difference maker in the game. he just did not make the same kind of plays that won his team their sixth ring in 2008. A better performance by Big Ben on Sunday could have meant a seventh ring for the Steelers. He had the heart of a champion and never gave in to the pressure playing from behind all game, but in a game that surely could have defined his career and put him in a elite category of owning 3 super bowl rings as a starting QB, his play just did not meet the mark.