Comparing NFL and high school 40-yard dash times, 2014 edition: The great slowdown

Nick Saban and Bret Bielema might have failed in their effort to slow college football down via rule change, but they've got all the help they need in slowing down individual players, according to one study.

For the second consecutive year, we have compared the 40-yard dash times of NFL Combine participants to their reported 40-yard dash times while they were being recruited, and the results are no less scandalous:

• Of 199 players who reported a 40-yard dash time to Rivals or Scout while in high school, 149 are as fast or slower after three-to-five years of development and college strength training.
• The average college football player entering the NFL Draft is nearly a tenth of a second slower (0.0884 seconds, to be exact) in the 40-yard dash than he was in high school.
• The average player in nine of 10 FBS conferences who had participants in the Combine is slower. Only players from the Mid-American Conference got faster (a result of all that #MACtion). All nine Combine participants from FBS independent programs were slower than they had been in college.

The biggest slow-down at the 2013 Combine came from Alabama offensive lineman Cyrus Kouandjio, whose 5.59 second 40-yard dash was nearly six-tenths of a second slower than the 5.00 he reported in high school.

Job well done, Nick Saban. Job well done indeed.

The full list:

They're power conferences, not speed conferences

Of the 163 players from power conferences that ran the 40-yard dash at the Combine and had reported 40-yard dash times in high school, 124 were slower after their time at well-funded and highly esteemed football programs. While 74.8 percent of players overall were slower, 76.1 percent of players from the BCS automatic qualifiers lost time.

In the weight room. In the community. But not in the 40.

The Big Ten lived up to expectations, with just four of 22 future pros getting faster during their Rust Belt years.

While the nation's oldest conference did not have any standout performers -- Illinois linebacker Jonathan Brown was 0.33 seconds slower than he had been in high school, good for just the 13th biggest slowdown -- it made up for it in breadth and depth of slowness. Fourteen Big Ten players, 64 percent of the conference's participants, were more than a tenth of a second slower than their reported high school 40-yard dash times.

Iowa dominated the slow-down movement, with three Hawkeyes among the five largest slowdowns in the Big Ten.

The 'S' on the helmet stands for 'slow'

No program contributed more to the slowdown of college football than Stanford. Three of the five largest slowdowns at the NFL Combine came from the Cardinal.

The "Stanford effect," as those who watch 40 times (should probably) call it, even extended to players no longer in Palo Alto. Baylor tight end Jordan Najvar, who spent one season with the Cardinal before transferring to Waco, suffered the second-biggest slowdown of all players in the Big 12. The only Big 12 player with a greater reduction in sprint time was Texas Tech defensive end Kerry Hyder, whose half-second of extra sprint time can be attributed to the fact that he attended the Stanford of West Texas.

The FCS: Small schools. Small 40 times.

Fully half of the ten players from schools in the FCS clocked faster than in high school. Princeton defensive tackle Caraun Reid showed the most improvement over his college career of any player at the combine, reducing his 5.39-second high school 40 to 4.91 seconds in Indianapolis.

Why would FCS players get faster while FBS players who were more highly recruited and publicized by scouting services slow down? It's probably those extra playoff games, which allow players to run more short sprints during games.

Quick, someone cancel the FBS Playoff. Preserve the slowness.

Related: Combine big men running to "Wobble Baby":