40-yard dash

The 40-yard dash, also simply called the 40, is a sprint covering 40 yards (36.576 m). It is primarily run to evaluate the speed of American football players by scouts, particularly for the NFL Draft but also for collegiate recruiting. A player's recorded time in the 40 can heavily impact his prospects in college or the pros. This was traditionally only true for the 'skill' positions such as quarterback, running back, wide receiver, and defensive back, although now a fast 40 yard dash time is considered important for almost every position.

Origins

The 40-yard dash is run because it showcases acceleration and speed, both of which are considered crucial in football, a sport that often requires short bursts of speed. Among his innovations, which include the introduction of press-box coaches, playbooks, and intelligence and psychological testing, Paul Brown, the legendary football coach, is credited with initially timing players at 40 yards because he believed that this was the distance run in order to cover a kickoff.

Timing

Because so much emphasis is placed on the 40, many players or programs claim to have run much faster times than they actually did. Part of this is hype from college programs wishing to promote their players by claiming they have run sensational times in practice. Another significant issue is that many colleges time players by hand, which typically records inaccurately low times. Because human reaction time is slow, this typically shaves as much as 0.25 seconds off a player's time.

As a general rule, only 40 yard dash times recorded by at least partially electronic methods (started by hand, stopped electronically) can be considered accurate. This method is used at the NFL Combine. However, because this method usually records slower times, many players in recent years have declined to be timed electronically, preferring to be timed in personal workouts where they think they will get a more favorable time by hand.

Best times

The best time ever recorded was by joey miller who ran a 4 flat. Many reported times are unreliable due to differences in timing methods if not intentional falsifications. The NFL did not begin using partial electronic timing (started by hand, stopped electronically) at the Scouting Combine until 1990.

In track and field races, the runner must react to the starting gun, which can take 0.10 to 0.20 seconds. For electronically timed 40 yard dashes, the runner is allowed to start when he wishes, and a timer hand-starts the clock (after a reaction time that is often considered to average 0.24 seconds when a starter reacts to the smoke of the starting gun). Although the 40-yard dash is not an official race in track and field, the 60 meter dash is an official distance in indoor track and field, with the world record for that race being 6.39 seconds (run twice by Maurice Greene, and once by Ben Johnson, whose record was annulled for Steroids). The fastest 60m split time is probably 6.32 seconds by Asafa Powell, in his 9.74 second 100m World Record run in Rieti, Italy. Fast starting elite sprinters such as Powell (and others past and present) can run a "Football 40" in less than 4 seconds, due to the sprinter not having to react to the sound of the gun, and the starter having to react to their movement before the clock starts. In the 2001 World Championship 100m final in Edmonton, Greene covered 30m in 3.75 seconds and 40m in 4.64 seconds, putting his 40 yard (36.576m) time at about 4.34 seconds. When you subtract the reaction time to the gun (0.13 seconds), and a hypothetical timer's reaction time to Greene's motion, Greene's "Football 40" time for this race would have been less than 4 seconds.

There actually is no single, "official" 40 time at the NFL Combine. National Scouting, which runs the combine, provides three times per run, two fully hand-held and one stopped electronically. Each player may run twice, thereby yielding a potential six times. National Scouting provides all six of these times to NFL teams. The teams then do what they want with those times, or ignore them. Some teams use the best electronic time. Some teams throw out the fastest and slowest and average the rest. Some teams use the best time provided. And some teams use a time provided by their own scout on site.

Criticisms

Some football analysts claim that the 40-yard dash is poorly correlated with football ability, as most players seldom are required to sprint this distance in a game. It has been said as well that 40 times are not a good indicator of 'football speed,' or how fast a player will actually seem when running while wearing a full uniform (including pads) on a football field, rather than a track, and in the presence of opposing players.

Many players have gone on to have stellar NFL careers after recording a "disappointing" 40 time -- for example:

• Jerry Rice reportedly ran a 4.6 or 4.7 second 40-yard dash (regarded as a mediocre figures for a wide receiver) . He went on to play in 13 Pro Bowls, win 3 Super Bowls, and break numerous NFL receiving records NFL records (at the time of his retirement he had 28 NFL records). Said former teammate Ronnie Lott, "Jerry may have been a 4.6 or a 4.7, but he was a 4.2 on Sundays." Rice was also generally noted for being able to run as fast a 40-yard dash under the weight of heavy NFL padding as he was in track gear.

• Emmitt Smith ran the 40 in 4.56 seconds, considered flat-out slow for a running back. Despite his record-breaking college career, he was selected 17th in the 1990 NFL Draft by the Dallas Cowboys. Another running back, Blair Thomas, was selected much earlier with the second pick -- in part because of his 4.4 second 40 time. Smith went on to set the all-time rushing mark and win three Super Bowls, while Thomas had a good but much less noteworthy career.

Neverthless, in many cases players who have recorded slow 40 times at the NFL Combine have gone on to perform poorly in the NFL, whose players are largely faster than those in college football.

While the 40-yard dash receives a great deal of fan attention, NFL scouts also consider 10- and 20-yard dashes, as well as shuttle runs and cone drills, as measures of a player's agility and speed.