Combine time!

 The NFL scouting combine is happening this week in Indianapolis, and it's my favorite part of February. This is not because I find the combine particularly riveting. It's because it's February.

I mean, something's gotta break up the monotony, right?

The combine is just the ticket, because it provides endless opportunities for mirth for those of us who find the NFL's obsession with minutiae weird and hilarious. And the combine is a veritable minutiae-fest.

It's an entire week of weighing top-end prospects and looking at them in their underwear and interviewing them ("If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?"). It's seven days of watching them lift and run 40s and measuring their verts, which is combine-speak for "vertical leap." The various NFL teams poke and prod and measure and check under the hood of psyches, and the only thing they don't do is determine whether or not a guy can actually play.

The best part, though, happens tomorrow through Sunday.

That's when the various position groups do their on-field workouts, or at least some of them do. More and more prospects are opting out of that part of it, preferring to wait until their respective schools' Pro Days. This generally includes most of the quarterbacks and some wide receivers and running backs, but not always.

And then there's the Sunday workout group. Which might or might not be the NFL saving the best for last.

Sunday, see, is when they roll out the big boys,, aka the offensive linemen. Great blocks of humanity line shorts and T-shirts line up and run 40s. They run shuttles. They leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Well, OK. So probably not.

What's hilarious about this, to me anyway, is watching these tanks do stuff that has nothing to do with an OL's skill set. Running 40s, really? When does an offensive lineman run 40 yards in one burst? 

Don't know about you, but I don't want to know how fast an offensive lineman runs the 40. I want to know how fast he runs the 5. Seems to me that would be a more accurate read of how quickly he gets off the ball.

I also don't really need to know an OL's hang time. This may be a failure of imagination on my part, because I can't really see a bunch of NFL scouts standing around ooh-ing and aah-ing at 350-pound Marvin "Bridge Abutment" Clampett's jumping ability.

GOOD LORD! A 35-INCH vert! We could put him at tight end down on the goal line! And think how awesome he'll be on the jump ball when the NFL replaces the onside kick with that!

Even more exciting, no doubt, is hearing Bridge Abutment's answer to the tree question.

"I'd be an African baobab tree," quoth Bridge Abutment.

And well-traveled, too! Sign him, boys.