A Trip to Scout Camp

Anthony Fasano’s road to the NFL is about to detour around three safety cones sitting on the turf inside the RCA Dome in Indianapolis.

No matter that the league has hours of videotape and thick scouting reports that detail his career as a tight end at Notre Dame. Nearly all those who hope to be drafted by the NFL still must complete a series of basic skills tests, including the three-cone drill that measures acceleration and the ability to change directions.

The NFL Combine, which opens Wednesday in Indianapolis, is, in essence, Fasano’s NFL job interview. And, like a growing number of players, the 6-foot-5, 255-pound Fasano is approaching it with the intensity due a big game.

Since Jan. 11, he has been sequestered at a camp in Orange County where athletes cram for the tests they will encounter at the combine.

Coaches have honed his bench-press technique and his 40-yard dash. A sports psychology consultant and veteran NFL players have offered advice on how to handle the pressure when 330 professional football aspirants step onto the RCA Dome field.

Fasano also jokes that he could probably run the cone drill in his sleep. A hint: Cover the five yards leading up the initial cone in two steps rather than the slower four- or five-step approach favored by most newcomers to the drill.

During a break in weight training sessions recently at Soka University in Aliso Viejo, Fasano offered a succinct rationale for the sessions, arranged and paid for by David Dunn, his Newport Beach-based business agent: “Football players train to play football, we don’t train for tests.”

Most of the athletes attending the invitation-only NFL Combine are in sync with Fasano.

“When you know what’s going to be on the test, you’d be foolish not to prepare yourself for the combine,” said Oregon State linebacker Keith Ellison, who has been in training at the Home Depot Center in Carson in a program operated by Tempe, Ariz.-based Athletes Performance. “You’re going to be in front of every important person in the NFL, which makes the combine the ultimate job interview.”

Some NFL scouts and general managers scoff at the time and expense, but a cottage industry has sprung up to offer what Herb Martin, a San Diego-based sports psychology consultant, describes as “a short-term prep school that can tell these athletes what to expect from the teams during the combine.”

Former quarterback Warren Moon, who’s now a sports agent, isn’t sure what to make of the camps.

“It’s become a competitive thing that we agents have to offer to our clients,” Moon said. “And I understand that. But at the same time, I don’t know if it makes sense to uproot yourself and start up again with a new trainer. Doesn’t it make more sense to just keep doing what you’ve been doing for the past four years?”

The stakes are high. The top eight picks in the first round of the 2005 NFL draft won guaranteed payments of at least $13 million up front, but the average guarantee was only $1.4 million for second-round picks and $526,000 for third-rounders. Players hope that a solid combine performance will serve as a springboard to higher draft position. Franchises will search for flaws that could turn draft-day dreams into high-priced nightmares.

And, for the first time, sports fans will be able to follow the action live in the RCA Dome. The NFL Network will beam 26 hours of programming.

The hoopla is in contrast to 1982, when the Detroit Lions drafted linebacker Roosevelt Barnes during the 10th round, making him the 266th overall selection.

“There wasn’t any NFL Combine back then,” Barnes said. “Scouts usually would come to your school and grab you from the dorm room to run a 40-yard dash. Some guys even ran them in the hallway of a hotel.”

After the combine was created in the mid-1980s, franchises began to focus on height, weight, speed and agility -- as well as what Barnes calls “the body of work a guy did in college.”

Barnes, who had begun representing players in contract negotiations, realized that athletes who excelled at the combine often got drafted higher than comparable athletes who didn’t perform as well.

“Once you get into the league it’s all about performance,” Barnes said. “But when you’re a rookie, how you do in the combine and your individual workout can affect your draft status quite a bit.”

During the early 1990s, Barnes linked up with Tom Shaw, then a track coach at Florida State, to create one of the first pre-combine training camps. Now, many college players demand that their agents provide training.

It can be expensive. Trainers want athletes in camp for at least a month. Food, lodging, automobiles and other expenses -- some agents toss in a trip to the Super Bowl -- along with specialty coaches, sports psychologists and other professionals can push costs to $20,000 or more.

Fasano’s expenses, like those of most athletes who attend camps, are being covered by his agent, whose future compensation will be tied to when the athlete is picked during the draft.

The days of scouts and general managers settling on a player because of gut feeling have been done in by salaries that, like most things associated with the NFL, are larger than life. So football, like other industries, uses testing to measure players against identifiable benchmarks.

Each year, bubble athletes turn in a workout that catches the eye of an NFL team.

Former Indiana quarterback Gibran Hamdan credits a strong performance in the three-cone drill and the 40-yard dash with helping him to become the 232nd player and 12th quarterback drafted in 2003. Hamdan, the Seattle Seahawks’ No. 3 quarterback during the team’s Super Bowl run last season, trained at St. Vincent Sports Performance Center in Indianapolis.

Meltdowns also occur.

“Maurice Clarett didn’t perform well in the 40-yard dash last year and went into the tank after that,” said Jeff Foster, president of Tulsa, Okla.-based National Football Scouting Inc., which operates the NFL Combine for the league. “It was how he reacted to the disappointment that told [scouts and GMs] an awful lot about him.”

Before taking to the field, athletes are examined by scouts, general managers, medical specialists and sports psychologists. Players undergo a full set of X-rays and a battery of medical tests that includes a drug screen. Some franchises send three or four doctors to Indianapolis and many players undergo CT scans and MRI examinations. One day is reserved for psychological testing.

Franchises arrange private interviews with athletes, but most information gleaned during the three-day affair is shared, in much the same way that the NFL pools its television revenue.

The combine is a rare instance where the best tight ends, linebackers and quarterbacks will line up side by side. Quarterbacks, for example, will run drop-back-and-pass routines, and linebackers will run such drills as the “four-bag shuffle” and the “pass drop and hip rotation” routine.

The combine can be unsettling for some athletes -- which is one reason why scouts and general managers spend long hours observing how players handle the pressure.

A team interested in drafting one of two tight ends “can get the kids standing side by side,” said Mike Barnes, director of education with the National Strength and Conditioning Assn. and a former strength training director for the San Francisco Giants. “They’re both going to be fatigued, and they’ve been talking to people all day. What you want to find out is which kid can focus, can give me the answers I want to hear.

“Some of them fall apart. And if I’m going to be investing millions of dollars in a player, I want to know what I’m buying.”

The combine doesn’t always get it right. Last year, 260 of the 330 athletes invited were drafted -- but so were 33 players who weren’t invited to attend.

“Every year we miss guys,” Foster said. “And agents for those players have been trying to knock down my door for the past three weeks.”

Athletes not invited to the NFL Combine can find other ways onto NFL rosters. More than 400 players made it on the strength of workouts at the Scout Camp Pro Football Regional Combines, an Indianapolis-based company affiliated with the Arena Football League.

Foster, who is in his first year running the combine after working for years as a professional scout, isn’t surprised that athletes and their agents are scrambling to get a competitive edge.

“What fascinates me about these programs is how they’ve become a recruiting tool for agents,” Foster said.

“But, as a matter of fact, 90% of a kid’s evaluation is completed before they get to the combine.”

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NFL DATES

* Combine: Wednesday-Feb. 28 at Indianapolis.

* Draft: April 29-30 at New York.