2012 NFL Scouting Combine: Selling Combine Tickets to the Public Is a Bad Idea

For the first time ever, this year tickets were made available to the public for Super Bowl media day. The $25 tickets quickly sold out (with some finding their way onto the secondary market for $350), and the success of the event has led some to wonder if tickets will someday also be offered for the NFL's scouting combine, which kicks off February 22 this year in Indianapolis.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello stated at the Super Bowl that the NFL has no plans to offer tickets for this year's event.

However, New York Giants co-owner John Mara, speaking to the media while at Super Bowl XLVI, didn't rule out the idea for future combines, stating:

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I think it's worthy of discussion. Our trouble at the combine is trying to get as many players as possible to actually go through the drills. Whether [media day] would encourage that or not, I don't know. If there was a feeling it would encourage it, then maybe it would be discussed.

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I have no doubts whatsoever that if tickets were made available for even one day at the combine that those tickets would be gobbled up rapidly, as are any and all things NFL—I don't have a huge issue with some being made available for one day where players are not working out.

However, from a scouting perspective, allowing public access to the players' workouts would be ill-advised at best and a nightmare at worst, skewing even further the results of workouts that are already over-emphasized by the magnitude of the media event the combine has become.

These results can make or break the draft stock of lesser-known players, and even college football's greatest stars can lose millions of dollars if a bad showing in Indianapolis causes their perceived value to drop, which is why a number of players skip the event each season, usually due to a mysterious "injury" like a dislocated eyelash.

Allowing fans access to these workouts wouldn't decrease the number of elite players that attend the event but would instead increase it. Why add the risk of some heckler causing you to lose a 10th of a second off your 40 time if you were already worried about running at the combine at all?

For the 300-plus young men invited to the NFL scouting combine every year, Indianapolis is already a nerve-wracking circus, and the scouts, coaches and media ensure that the circus has more than its share of clowns.

With the exception of potentially one "meet and greet" day, let's not make things even more chaotic than they already are, or we might as well abandon all pretense that the combine actually has anything to do with scouting.