Running the Combine...

As a fan of perhaps the worst team in the NFL, this is always a slow but interesting time of year as the combine results come in and free agents are announced. If you don't know what the combine is, it's an NFL production at which potential NFL players come to be poked, prodded and graded by the entire mass of the NFL.

And each year this results in some breathless headline like..

Davis runs the 40-yard dash in an unprecedented 4.38 seconds

Which is not only.. well. unprecedented.. but also awfully precise. That last digit represents 8/100s of a second. As distinct from 7/100s and 9/100s. And it's fast. So how do they arrive at this precise measurement?



Two fat guys point at the finish line and click when they think the athlete crossed it.

What do you suppose the reaction time of the average fat guy with a stopwatch is?

I doubt it is anywhere near hundredths of a second.

How silly is that?