Colin Cowherd used to love the NFL Combine. He doesn’t anymore.
The FS1 host and Volume founder spent time on The Colin Cowherd Podcast with Danny Parkins this week explaining why he’s completely checked out on an event that used to captivate him. The stars don’t participate. The interviews are so rehearsed that they tell teams nothing. And what’s supposed to be a legitimate scouting event has morphed into made-for-TV content that serves no one but the networks broadcasting it.
“The NFL combine I am out on,” Cowherd said. “The last two years — I used to [watch it]. I think for a long time it was just NFL and I loved — I like the convergence of college and pro. I love the draft. I love the combine. But it’s so rehearsed. Many of the stars don’t show up. I don’t care about people’s hand size. I really don’t care.”
Cowherd’s frustration mirrors what John Middlekauff said earlier this week on the same podcast when he predicted the NFL Scouting Combine could be shut down within 10 years. Middlekauff, who hosts 3 and Out for The Volume, pointed out that Day 1 of this year’s combine had just a 37% participation rate for on-field drills. Projected No. 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza won’t throw in Indianapolis, continuing a trend of top quarterbacks skipping the throwing portion entirely. NFL executives are frustrated by the lack of participation from first-, second-, and third-round picks, according to Middlekauff, who said even the official interviews have become useless because agents prepare players so thoroughly that everything feels scripted.
The participation problem has gotten bad enough that some teams have stopped bothering with the combine altogether. Cowherd brought up the LA Rams as a franchise that recognized the combine’s declining utility years before other teams did and simply stopped treating it as essential.
“One of the things that’s really smart, one of the reasons I love the way the LA Rams do business is they’re not — they’re willing to say things and do things that other people won’t,” Cowherd said. “They just said several years ago, we’re not going. We do our own homework. We have tape. We can go to the Senior Bowl. We’re not doing a quick 15-minute interview where Johnny Manziel had NFL teams believing he was Peyton Manning… It’s a bullsh*t seminar.”
Manziel famously charmed NFL executives during combine interviews in 2014, convincing teams he was mature, dedicated, and ready for the NFL despite considerable evidence to the contrary from his time at Texas A&M.
The combine has become so rehearsed and manufactured that it tells evaluators almost nothing useful. Players spend months training specifically for these drills at facilities in Phoenix or other cities their agents send them to. They work with specialized trainers who teach them how to optimize their 40-yard dash technique, how to explode off the line in the three-cone drill, and how to answer interview questions without saying anything that could be construed as a red flag. They show up in Indianapolis running their fastest 40, displaying their best vertical leap, and showing off six-pack abs for the cameras. And then the regular season starts, and by Week 6, nobody’s running a 4.3 anymore because the league is dealing with bad hips, ankle sprains, and the general wear that comes from playing professional football.
“It doesn’t do a thing for me now,” Cowherd said of the combine. “I turned it on for 20 minutes the other day, and I moved over to the NBA and said, ‘More interested.’”
The combine has become a bigger media property over time while becoming less important for actual scouting. Networks treat it like a tentpole event on the sports calendar, major programming that fills the dead zone between the Super Bowl and March Madness. But as the combine becomes more made-for-TV and less useful for teams, guys like Cowherd, who used to love the event, are tuning out. And based on declining participation rates from top prospects and the general trend of players avoiding Indianapolis in favor of controlled environments at pro days, he’s far from alone in losing interest.