It's not that different on the video. It's not that different on a stop watch. It's only .15 of a second difference. It's why the 40 time is so utterly stupid in terms of people thinking one guy is blazing fast and the other is a snail when they are running in a track environment with no pads.

But yet, people got freaked out and insane about thinking that he ran a 4.24 and was suddenly a top ten pick, but he goes back to the second or third because he only ran a 4.43 40. (See The Bad Guy's post in this thread regarding unmitigated enthusiasm about a fifteenth of a second difference in a 40 time.)

I agree, and they should go to a pure electronic timing system for the highest degree of consistency and accuracy possible. I'm just going off of what the NFL is listing them at. For now, that's as official as it gets.

Exactly. If someone opens their cell phone stopwatch feature they can hit the button as fast as they can and probably get .07 - .09. A 4.45 may be acceptable for someone, but the 4.53 means he is slow. It's just a fraction of a second.

Mays is the biggest fastest DB, all those CB's should be ashamed a guy 30lbs heavier than them outran them.

How do you think all those sprinters feel when some eight foot tall giraffe goes by them in a blink? The way Bolt's built, he should never be able to run that fast.

Its pretty amazing actually.

Mays real 40 time is roughly a 4.28, that 4.43 is so off.

Hershel Walkeresque

maybe that 4.28 is really more like a 4.35?

All you have to do is looking at the freeze frame picture.

I agree...but who's to say that Ford really ran that fast?

Who cares?

I really think 40 times are so overrated...A 4.3 or 4.4 for Mays makes no difference...he's lightning fast and is athletic as hell...lets see if he can play football...that's his next step

CJ Spiller ran a 4.26.

I'd still advocate taking him with the #5 overall over essentially everybody except Berry.

Hershel Walker was a freak. The super freak was Bo Jackson. He was clocked at 4.12 before electronic timing.
http://www.derrich.com/img/bo-jackson-40-yd-dash.jpg

I doubt that time is accurate, but it's still amazing that a guy so big was so damn fast. I've heard of him being timed anywhere from 4.12 to 4.19 several times....so who knows.
I think if he wouldn't have played baseball and if he never got hurt, he would have broken probably every RB record.

I've never seen an athlete quite like Bo, and I wonder if I will ever see another quite like him again. He was pure power. He couldn't hit a curveball to save his life, but when he did connect with a baseball, I was surprised that it didn't go into orbit. The man would snap baseball bats the way other men would snap twigs. He was simply amazing and awe inspiring to watch.

Not necessarily a reply to your statement but I'd think an electronic-timing motion-sensor of some sort, set just inside the starting line, would work.
Maybe its a camera, like you mentioned, that has a freeze frame picture of the first part on the body to break the plane that starts the clock and another camera at the other end that captures the same to end it.

All the inconsistency is absurd at the combine. How do they time it when an olympic runner breaks a world record? They should time it the exact same way and maybe they do, I really don't know.

I get tired of all the re-starts. Who cares if a guy twitches his hand before he crosses the starting line? Point A is the starting line and Point B is the finish. Whatever happens before Point A has absolutely nothing to do with how fast a guy is.