What's up, everyone? Welcome back to the Charter podcast brought to you by St. Xavier University.

I'm Ruthie Polinsky, back with Clay Harbor. And it's lovely to see you, my friend.

It's great. We got a lot to talk about combine, trade rumors, everything you want for march was it march third

march third yeah we're taping this on tuesday march third it was a busy week in

indianapolis clay talking about all the football things this is not going to be a stadium

update podcast because it seems to be changing ever freak ever so frequently so we're going to

talk about everything football okay everything that

football happened in indianapolis last week i love football football's the best so obviously the

combine is a blast for the potential draft picks who get to work out we'll get to that let's start with

what we heard from ben Johnson and Ryan Poles.

I know we spoke about that last week's episode. We talked about some of the things they said.

And then it's kind of interesting to put it into context after everything we saw last week.

Yeah. Also very funny news that has kind of trickled out of the combine is that Ben Johnson did a round trip of the day of his media availability.

He talked to the press and then drove home.

And he wasn't alone.

A lot of coaches didn't even show up for their media obligations.

How do you feel about that?

You know, I think the NFL is going to have to take a look at the combine because obviously we were talking about how fast these guys are, right? It was the fastest combine. Well, you know, I was the fastest combine. Because nobody that was slow ran. Right. Slow guys were like, I'm not running. Why? No one's making me run. You know, it's just, if it doesn't hurt me, if it doesn't help me, I'm not going to do it.

And so I think the picking and choosing of the events sort of hurts the, the, like, nature of what the combine is supposed to be. You're supposed to be learning about these players, the good and the bad. And I think now that it's kind of up to the player's hands, like the coaches and GMs don't necessarily see the total value in it because they can A, go to pro days, they can B, zoom into these meetings, they can have 30 visits. Like there are just other ways to get this information. And at the end of the day, we talked about this on the big pro football show. You're talking to me about a guy who didn't have a great broad jump i'm like why does that matter like there are just sort of some of these things where it's

like is this how we should we be yeah should we be evaluating talent in this manner so i think the NFL's

going to have to take a look at how they can get the combine to be sort of more appealing, make it a better TV event. Like there were just some parts of it this year where I felt like it lacked buzz and, like, drama. Whereas in other years, I haven't felt that way. And maybe a part of it is because coaches and GMs just don't see the value in it. the biggest headline we heard from the combine clay and i'll be honest with you like i wasn't really

studying the guys working out. I like to listen to you to tell me what I should learn from that. But the biggest thing we learned was that Aaron Glenn was sleeping in the suite. Exactly. Like, I don't think that's, these are long nights. Like, these guys are having meetings. They're talking to agents. They're going out. They're networking. Everything's taped too. You're on camera. Like, there's no need for Ryan Poles to be sitting in the suite and watching that in person when he could just watch it from home. So with that being said. Let me say one thing. Yeah, of course.

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