Like many people who were fairly fast runners in their youth, I thought I’d be capable of running the forty yard dash in less than five seconds.  Sure, there’s plenty of NFL-caliber players in the NFL who can’t, but most of those are offensive linemen and run-stuffing nose tackles.  But talk is cheap.  So about five years ago, I put myself to the test.  I was shocked – shocked – to find that, much like Rich Eisen, I couldn’t even break six.

That’s okay.  Most people who think they can run a five-second forty aren’t anywhere close to being capable of it.  But I wanted to at least spare myself the humiliation of being unable to break six, so researched some tips on how to improve my time.  What I learned wasn’t rocket science – the forty yard dash is primarily about acceleration (actually, the study of acceleration is what a lot of rocket science is about).  For the most part, your time is made (or ruined) in the first ten yards.  Those first ten yards is where most of your acceleration is taking place.  In fact, an awful lot of that acceleration is happening the instant you explode off the line.  Armed with that knowledge, I practiced my start, and by 2014 I was able to get my speed down below the six-second barrier:

In 2015, I didn’t see any improvement:

But in 2016 I was in my prime – or as much of a prime as a man can be when he’s forty years old – and I finally cracked the 5.5 second barrier:

I worked hard for my 5.46.  So do you think it pisses me off that the lackeys who work in Roger Goodell’s office are telling him that he ran a 5.41 on a stretch of carpet between cubicles in the NFL offices while wearing a suit? YOU’RE GODDAMNED RIGHT IT DOES!

And what pisses me off even more is that gullible fans of the NFL are eating it up like so much garbage diarrhea chili.

I would think that in this day and age, when every single person in the United States is equipped with a device that records video, simply saying you did something isn’t enough.  If you really did it, prove it.  It’s easy! And here’s video of Roger running his supposed 5.41:

Notice something missing there?  That’s right, the start.  The most important part of any 40 yard dash attempt.

Which is quite suspicious when you consider how much care went into this little production.  They went to the trouble of marking off ten yard sections of carpet.  There’s about five different people filming.  But nobody managed to start recording before Goodell started running? Here’s another angle.

What does Monday morning in your office look like?

#5.41 #runcommishrun @nflcommish @NFLprguy pic.twitter.com/7anzxwOAaF

— Sam Rapoport (@samrap10) March 5, 2018

Again, they don’t show the actual start.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison I put together of Goodell supposed 5.41 against Rich Eisen’s 5.98 as properly measured at the 2014 NFL Combine.  I’ve synced up them crossing the finish line.

Let’s take a look at a few stills from the sequence.  Here’s them both at the ten yard marker.

And at the twenty.

And at the thirty.

You’ll notice there’s not much of a difference.  Certainly not more than a single stride.

“Well,” you say, “maybe Roger Goodell is a MONSTER off the line and made up that 0.6 seconds right there.  You know, in that part that we conveniently don’t get to see?  You tell me.  Take a look at Goodell’s start technique from an attempt a couple years ago.

Bo Jackson himself would have a hard time making a decent time with such a casual start position.  Which makes Goodell’s reported time of 5.53 seconds for this run even more ridiculous than this year’s claim.  You’re telling me that a man with that start and wearing those shoes is running a 5.5?  Get real.  At least in 2018 Goodell is wearing running shoes.  And just like this year’s edition, this older video is conveniently cut up so that you can’t actually run a clock against it to see what it really comes out to.

Do I think this is some kind of grand conspiracy? Not really, no. My theory as to what happened is that when Goodell was asked to run a charity spot for St. Jude’s, someone in the office asked him how fast he thought he could run the 40.  And Roger said, “eh, probably a 5.5.” And look at that, the people who depend on the NFL’s largesse to pay for their mortgages and their kids’ health insurance found out that their boss was almost exactly correct in his assessment!  So of course this year when he did it again – with running shoes this time – they couldn’t have him run slower, so they bumped him up by a tenth of a second.

Roger Goodell sucks.  I hate his stupid face.  I hate the way people suck up to him.  And I particularly hate that now he thinks he can run a 5.41 forty at fifty-nine years of age.

Screw you, Goodell.  Next time try it at the combine – in shorts, even – and let’s see what happens.