Fallacy of the Forty : Purported 40-Yard Clockings of Players Fail to Account for Reaction Times

Canyon High football Coach Harry Welch refers to them as “Liars Poker.”

Kennedy High mentor Bob Francola says they are important barometers in the evaluation of a player’s capabilities.

Whatever your opinion, 40-yard dash times have become among the most vital statistics in football, be it at the high school, collegiate or professional level.

The 40 is oftentimes a major determinant in how highly recruited a player is coming out of high school or how high he goes in the National Football League draft out of college.

But what exactly do the times mean? For years, track and field purists have scoffed at the reputed 40-yard times of football players, and with good reason.

After all, according to these times, there are several players in the NFL who could blow away Canadian Ben Johnson--steroids and all--in the 40.

This is the same Ben Johnson who is considered by most track experts to be the fastest starter in history. The same Ben Johnson who set a world record of 9.83 seconds in the 100 meters in the 1987 World Championships in Rome, and the same Ben Johnson who lowered that mark to 9.79 in last year’s Olympic Games in Seoul before being stripped of the record and his gold medal after testing positive for steroids.

Bo Jackson (4.18 seconds) of the Los Angeles Raiders and Deion Sanders (4.25) of the Atlanta Falcons are just two NFL players who could outrun Johnson based on their 40 times.

There are even a handful of high school players in the Valley who could give Big Ben a run for his money if their times are correct. Players such as Jerome Casey, Tobaise Brookins and Girmar Johnson of Sylmar, all of whom sport 40 times of 4.35, according to Spartan Coach Jeff Engilman.

If you’re looking for more phantom speed, try Green Bay Packer offensive tackle Tony Mandarich, all 6-foot-6, 315 pounds of him, who has reportedly run 4.65.

The aforementioned players’ times are even more startling because they came without the aid of starting blocks and were run on football fields--a slower surface than the synthetic tracks on which Johnson runs.

During Johnson’s world-record 100 in Rome, he was clocked in 4.67 at 40 meters, which converts to 4.28 at 40 yards, one-tenth of a second slower than Jackson’s reported time. And Carl Lewis doesn’t even belong on the same track as Jackson: His 40-meter time of 4.78 converts to 4.39 at 40 yards.

Bo may know track but not that well.

So what do 40 times measure?

They measure the ability to run 40 yards after the runner has reacted to a starting gun or command. And after the timer has reacted to the runner’s reaction. In other words, when a coach times a player in the 40, he or she waits for the player to react before starting the stopwatch, then stops it when the player crosses the 40-yard mark.

Those procedures alone can produce a time that is about a half-second faster than if the player was timed in the manner employed at major track meets.

Studies have shown that it takes humans an average of .24 seconds to react to a starter’s gun, and that average also holds true for the timer holding a stopwatch.

Based on these figures, an athlete’s 40-yard time is actually .48 seconds faster than what he ran.

Half of the .48 figure is the time it takes the athlete to react to the starting command, and the other half is the time it takes a timer to start a stopwatch.

Also, none of the reported times can accurately be measured in hundredths of a second. Only fully automatic times can be recorded in this manner. These are times whereby a clock is electronically started by a starter’s pistol and automatically stopped when the runner’s torso breaks a beam of light at the end of a race.

Granted, Jackson and Sanders are not your average humans, but Bo’s hand-timed 4.18 is more like a fully automatic 4.58 or 4.63 and Neon Deion’s 4.25 is probably equivalent to a 4.65 or 4.70.

Their times are still fast but no longer phenomenal.

Even with the “standardized” procedures for timing a football 40, coaches still disagree about the validity of times. Montclair Prep Coach George Giannini agrees with Welch, saying that “they’re real arbitrary.”

Welch’s opinion is based on the abundance of high school players with reported 4.3 and 4.4 speed.

“I’ve never timed a kid faster than 4.55 . . . yet I constantly hear that this kid has run 4.4 and this kid has run 4.35. I guess it’s possible, but I’ve never had one of those kids,” he said.

In an effort to legitimize 40 times at Montclair Prep, Giannini clocks his players five times and takes the average of those clockings.

Based on this method, Michael Jones, Derek Sparks and Leland Sparks all ran 4.5.

“They’re all legitimate 4.5 sprinters,” Giannini said. “Those times are valid.”

Still, under fully automatic timing, they would be hard-pressed to break 5.0.

Francola admitted that there are some innate discrepancies in 40 times, but that doesn’t eliminate their importance.

“The 40 is as important as any of the parameters we use in measuring a player’s ability,” he said. “The players are very conscious about their times and so are we. Speed is important. Speed is something that you cannot coach.”

Francola, who claims that he has two 4.44 sprinters in Ontiwaun Carter and Vince Solomon, pointed out that blazing speed on a straight line doesn’t always translate into a breakaway threat at running back. “Vince has 4.4 speed, but he can’t cut like Ontiwaun can,” he said.

Then there’s San Fernando’s Michael Wynn, one of the top-ranked high school quarterbacks in the nation, who has a listed 40 time of 4.6. He has never actually run that fast.

“The reason they say 4.6 is because I haven’t been timed since my sophomore season and that’s when I ran 4.7,” Wynn said. “But they say I’ve gotten faster since then. The 4.6 is an estimation.”

So the next time you’re watching a football game and the announcer says a player built like a gorilla can run like a gazelle, remember it is a sign of the times.