NFL Draft 2019: Combine the colorful and controversial issues of prospects

You are in a hotel, the furtively luxurious type who specializes in the drying up of business expense accounts.

Just out of college, you are here for a job interview.

It's a dream concert, with a salary well above that of your fellow students, regular trips and a dash of star dust.

There is a knot of nerves in the stomach. Contender candidates, prepared and prepared, sit next to each other.

You are called to a small meeting room. Four faces stand up to greet you.

"If you were a fruit, what kind of fruit would you be?"

"Are you afraid of clowns?"

"How long can you look without blinking?"

"Do you have your two testicles?"

"Is your mother a prostitute?"

"Are you gay?"

It's the NFL Combine – where top college football players prove themselves to NFL teams before being integrated into some of the richest locker rooms in the sport.

Nearly 335 young men attend the event in Indianapolis every February. Everyone goes through a medical examination and a battery of physical tests. NFL officials record their run on the 40-yard scorecard, the number of representatives they manage on a 102-kilogram (225-pound) bench press and their furthest jumps, both vertical and horizontal.

There is also a written verbal reasoning test – the Wonderlic – to test the cognitive abilities of players.

One might ask, for example, how many handshakes occur at a meeting of five people where each shakes hands with each person once.

But the questions in the interviews section, in which the coaching staff of the 32 NFL teams interview potential candidates on game notebooks and personal life, can be the most disconcerting.

Menelik Watson went through Combine in 2013 before being retaken in the second round by the Oakland Raiders a few months later.

"In the evening of the interviews, you have these big rooms and many tables, it's like speed dating, people move every 15 minutes," BBC Sport told the offensive tackle born in Manchester.

"Some teams were in separate rooms.

"You would go into some of them and the general manager would only ask you questions while the deputy general manager, the head coach and the defense or offensive coordinator would remain silent. .

"In others, everyone would talk and you would have it from every angle.

"I walked into a room and Tom Cable, who was now the coach of the Raiders offensive line but who, at the time, was in Seattle, pushed my buttons.

"It was not abrasive or about the family, but it kept asking strange and antagonistic questions

"I was frustrated, I showed anger and he said" Oh, I love it ".

"You are in a job interview and your boss is trying to liquidate you before he is your boss.In fact, he plunges you in and benefits from it. I understood that it would be a strange experience. "

As a result of each combine, strange stories infiltrate.

Some are weird. In between discussions of games on a white board, players may have preconceptions about the animal they consider themselves, the benefits of boxers and underpants, or the different ways they could use a brick in a minute.

Others do not even go through the lines in conventional job interviews.

In 2018, Combine Derrius Guice, now one of the Washington Redskins, said that a team had asked him about his baduality. Two years ago, an Atlanta Falcons coach had apologized for asking if he was gay to Eli Apple, now a corner half of the Saints of New Orleans.

This year, Texan midfielder Kris Boyd said he was invited to counts for his testicles. In 2016, Obum Gwacham was asked when he lost his virginity. In 2010, Dez Bryant was asked if her mother was a prostitute during a visit to Miami's dolphin facilities.

DeMaurice Smith, Executive Director of the Players Union, called for any team that asks questions about a player's baduality to be banned from Combine. The NFL pointed out that such investigations were contrary to its policies at the workplace.

However, since breaking Combine omerta is the type of behavior that hampers your stock, it is fair to guess that many similar cases have not been reported.

So, why do the teams do it?

Neil Stratton leads Inside the League, which follows the repechage process and informs players of what to expect at the Combine.

"Some teams are quite contradictory in their approach," he told BBC Sport.

"They want to put an uncomfortable player because many players have been trained and are able to homogenize their responses, speaking without saying much.

"They hope, by taking the skin of a player, to convince him to say something more revealing."

Before arriving at Combiner, the teams will have already thoroughly delved into their previous goals.

Colleges employ professional liaison coaches who interview teams about player behavior off the field, while each NFL team will also have a network of insiders on whom to support them.

Some employ outside specialists in football. Brian Decker used to select soldiers for the US Army Special Forces, but he is now evaluating the character of potential players as the director of Indianapolis Colts' player development.

For some teams, the side impact of an unexpected personal issue is one last way to hide behind a facade and determine if their multi-million dollar investment will be under pressure.

"These teams are specialists in the search for information that players do not want to have," says Stratton.

"In general, they can ask very few questions without knowing the answer.

"But there are still people on the ground who will try to gain some insight or additional benefit, whether by will or force."

The focus on the citizens of the vertical and unstoppable locker rooms seems strange in the light of history.

The teams have steadily flourished despite – often because of – some questionable characters.

The Dallas Cowboys won three Super Bowls in four years in the mid-eighties. Only after the group of players was a delicate mixture of ego, rivalry, dependence and scandal.

The Patriots, who have won three of the last five wins, have almost adopted the policy of recruiting players rejected by other teams for off-road problems.

Could there be another reason for such a focus on character?

NFL players recently found themselves on the brink of the ongoing cultural war in the United States, when President Trump and some of the league owners opposed their right to protest discrimination during the anthem national.

In 2011, once again, players were collectively opposed to their employers, stranded in training facilities and banned from communicating with their coaches for weeks because of a wage dispute that escalated into industrial action.

Watson says that the Combine itself promotes a similar mentality of "us and them" – "this is certainly not a rivalry, you share tips, you give yourself information about the type of interviews that you could have "- among the recruits.

Could these questions be a hidden test of how new recruits respond to authority, confrontation and conflict? Will they follow the line or take a knee?

Not for Watson. He thinks that the interview is a legitimate way to predict how a player will fit into a tricky locker room ecosystem and will withstand the rigors of the league.

"The superstars of some teams may be strong personality types, character types, ambitious types with which to work," he says.

"Maybe you have an offensive line group of older people, older guys with families, and do the teams want to see if you can join this group or if you're a sbady boy who likes go out and party.

"They must know what they are getting.

"A coach can not give you an opportunity because of your appearance and your game, but do not test yourself mentally.

"You will be hurt, you will be tired, it will be the seventh week, the ninth week, the twelfth week and you are absolutely shot.

"You broke two, three fingers, your knee hurts, your ankle, your shoulder and mentally, you do not know if you can go out and participate in competitions.

"But you do not have a choice, you have to mentally convince yourself that you're ready to go, that's part of it.

"I do not know how I would have answered a question like the one Dez Bryant had and I do not know how it relates to football, but there are really a lot of things that translate."