I think last year it was said that it was a hand timer on the athletes first movement and laser at the finish. Then I remember someone saying it was an average between that and 3 scouts hand times. lol
We all know that Holiday is as just as fast if not faster than Demps and Demps has already ran 6.60 in the 60m this season with a 6.62 in trials today at SEC’s. We also know Spiller is around the same if not faster so It’ll be interesting to see what all these guys who are in the same “boat” run in the combine 40. That waY we may be able to make a generalization and say that a 6.5-6 60m track guy runs a 4.2-4.3 40 which will call bullshit on all these 4.4 high school hand time guys who would be lucky to run sub 7.2 in the 60 myself included who has a pr of 7.09 and has run 4.4 handtimed 40’s.
There are two different electronic timing systems set up with gates at 10yd, 20yd, and 40yd line.
They are both started manually.
They are there only to provide the hand timers with something to compare their watches to.
The unofficial times you see reported on the television are hand times. The official times are usually an aggregate of the hand time and the laser; although this is inconsistent because it’s not always an accurate average of the two.
The laser times are not revealed to the public; however, I’ve seen them and they’re generally .10 slower than the unnoffical times.
Also important to note is that all the NFL personnel you see in the bleachers, on the 10, 20, and 40yd lines, have their own stop watch and data recording sheet.
As a result, while the NFL network publishes their version of the times on the TV and internet, each of the 32 teams has their own version of the time according to what their scout/coach recorded on their respective watch.
My suggestion to viewers is to accept the unofficial times as a reference point because those are hand times. If you want to form some sort of comparison to track sprinters then add the accepted differentials for human error and no reaction time and make the necessary conversions from the first 40yd segment of a 60 or 100m and you’ll get an idea of how these American footballers compare.
So those times mean nothing then. The difference in reaction from person to person and if they have a different person starting the clock could be huge. I’m guessing that the combine would lose some of its luster if they went to full FAT and times didn’t dip under 4.40.
This shows you that these combine gurus aren’t that good, these guys are getting elite track guys and can’t get them to run 4.2’s and are making them slower. Would love to see what Charlie could do with CJ, Ford, or Trindon for 6-8 weeks combine prep.