maverick4 said:
1. The fastest man in the world Ben Johnson, while pumped up on steroids and in perfect conditions, only ran a 4.38. So NFL players who supposedly ran under that time have bogus times.
Ben Johnson was at 40 yards in 4.37 seconds (not 4.38). But that INCLUDES his reaction time of 0.13 seconds. So his actual running time was 4.24 seconds. Here were his 10-meter splits --
RT 0.13 (0.00 running time, 0.13 total time)
10 1.70 (1.70 running time, 1.83 total time)
20 1.04 (2.74 running time, 2.87 total time)
30 0.93 (3.67 running time, 3.80 total time)
40 0.86 (4.53 running time, 4.66 total time)
50 0.84 (5.37 running time, 5.50 total time)
60 0.83 (6.20 running time, 6.33 total time)
70 0.84 (7.04 running time, 7.17 total time)
80 0.85 (7.89 running time, 8.02 total time)
90 0.87 (8.76 running time, 8.89 total time)
100 0.90 (9.66 running time, 9.79 total time)
Forty yards is 36.576 meters. He was at 30 meters in 3.67 seconds running time (3.80 total time), then covered the next 10 meters in 0.86 seconds. Given his rate of acceleration, he covered those initial 6.576 meters in 0.57 seconds, putting him at 4.24 seconds running time (4.37 total time) when he was at 36.576 meters, or 40 yards.
And Johnson doesn't even hold the record. When Maurice Greene ran a 9.82 in 1999, he covered the first 40 yards in 4.18 seconds. His splits were 1.69 for the first 10 meters (tied for the fastest ever), 1.00 for the second 10 meters (tied for the fastest ever), 0.92 for the third 10 meters and 0.86 for the fourth 10 meters. So he covered the first 30 meters in 3.61 seconds. We have to extrapolate the next 6.576 meters, and it comes out to 0.57 seconds. Total running time over 40 yards: 4.18 seconds.
And when Asafa Powell set the world record in the 100, he covered the first 40 yards in 4.25 seconds.
2. NFL times are measured by coaches' stopwatches, which they start and stop with their fingers.
At the Combine, they use a hand start (on the runner's first move) and an electronic finish. So the only adjustment to make between a fully electronic 40 and an electronic 40 at the Combine is the hand-timer's reaction to the player's first move, which could be anywhere from 0.10 to 0.25 seconds. In other words, had Maurice Greene been running at the Combine, his electronic 40 would have been recorded as somewhere between 3.93 and 4.08 seconds -- or more than 0.20 faster than the Combine record.
Really, it shouldn't be difficult to figure out the inherent differences between an NFL 40 and a track race, but none of these articles that supposedly debunk the 40 have realized what those differences are.
