Those individuals who provide the ‘unofficial’ times that you’ll notice on TV, if you watched the combine footage on NFL network, are using stop watches.
There are two different individuals manually starting a Brower system and an older system (can’t remember the name). So even the electronic systems are started manually.
A touch pad would pose much too great a logistical problem due to the sensitivity of the pad.
I speak from experience regarding teams I’ve coached at the high school level as well as this one.
My preferred method of timing is an electronic timing gate system in which the starting gate is wired as a ‘reverse gate’. In this way, the system does not start until the beam is connected. The athlete starts in the gate, breaking the beam, and when the athlete leaves the gate the beam connects and the timer starts.
I don’t actually have a system like this; however, I spoke with a company that makes various timing systems and offers such an option.
This would provide for fully automatic times, void of human error; although reaction time is not a factor so these times could not be accurately compared to T&F times.
James: Espn’s Lynn Pasquerella rated Doring Dickerson as the athlete that helped himself the most so far in the draft. He thinks he will be used like Chris Cooley as an H-Back
-They aren’t training with the people who got them to 6.5s in the 60m
-They haven’t been competing and simply aren’t in 6.5 shape at this moment. They have both typically opened up 6.6high-6.7 and then dropped time after getting in races and getting in better shape for the 60m.
-The 40s are essentially handtimed and quite inaccurate and imprecise (as in, there are large variations in addition to being inaccurate)
-A lot of guys have good 30m or so ability even if they don’t run track and most of the truly fast guys in the NFL can probably run 6.7-6.8 first time out (most of these guys ran track in HS and went 10.6-10.9 anyway, which is close to that, combined with the fact they have relatively better acceleration anyway). Even some questionable S&C programs do a fairly good job of getting people to run a fairly fast 30m. Not 6.3-6.5 60m caliber acceleration, but better than would be expected because of the nature of their training and the fact they are very gifted, IMO. Very few are going to be in 6.5 shape, even if they were doing track in college, but it is quite reasonable to think many would be in the 6.7s and even 6.6s when fresh and after some races if they dedicated themselves for 2-3 months when healthy.
Well, remember that the official times are some form of aggregate of hand and manually started laser.
So the 4.24 was undoubtedly the time of one single timer using a stop watch who immediately reported his result up to the analysts. The official 4.43 is then, presumably, the result of the fact that that particular individual with the stop watch was quick to stop the time. I suspect that 9 out of 10 qualified timers had Taylor in the mid to high 4.3 range on their watch and this weighed against whatever the laser said is what yielded the official 4.43
Alternatively, as one example, whoever hand timed Dorin’s 40 was obviously much closer to the laser time because his official time of 4.40 remained the same as the unofficial time that posted immediately after he ran his first 40.
It’s definitely an academic scenario due to so much room for human error on both the stop watch as well as the manually started laser systems.
Regardless, these guys are fast and it;s impressive to consider their movement rates weighed against their bodymass.
I expect quite a bit of uproar after the Simulcast of the fastest players from each position group, minus Holliday, revealed a massive discrepancy with the “official” times. Ford (4.28) was in first with Mays (4.43) a little less than a yard behind. Behind Mays by about a yard was Jahvid Best (4.35) who was about a half yard ahead of Dorin Dickerson (4.40). The QB (4.54) and the LB (4.54) were way behind with about a yard separating the two.
It’s time to make drastic changes to the timing in Indy.