Steelers GM wants focus at combine to be on football, not entertainment

The next event up on the NFL calendar is the scouting combine, which begins Tuesday and runs until Monday.

The combine allows for all 32 teams to evaluate and interview more than 300 prospects available to be selected at this year's NFL draft. Yet, since the league began broadcasting combine drills on national television, the entertainment value of the event has taken on greater importance.

This year at the combine held in Indianapolis, fans will be provided access to watch the bench press in person and listen to interviews with players, coaches, and general managers. It's all too much for some.

"I don't want it to become a marketing opportunity that supersedes the necessary football business that has to happen in that seven-day period," Pittsburgh Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert told Joe Rutter of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review recently. "There's so much work that gets done, because to get 330 physicals and visits, if we didn't do it in that setting, it would be impossible.

"So we can't lose sight of the fact that it's football first, entertainment second."

With entertainment in mind, some notable draft prospects weren't afforded invites to the combine due to their controversial or - in some cases - even criminal past. Such a decision didn't draw an objection from Colbert, but it's another example of how the NFL has more than scouting in mind during the week-long event.

"I think we have to be careful that it doesn't become an event other than a necessary tool for us to complete the scouting process," Colbert said. "Again, the history of that, the combine was to get medicals. Then, it grew into physicals. Now, it's into the character, the interviews. So all of that stuff has to stay at the forefront of the event."

- With h/t to Pro Football Talk