Okay so last night I was just chilling, scrolling through football stuff, and that Jack Campbell run popped up again. You know the one? It looked smooth, looked fast. And everyone was chatting about “How fast was he really?” People were throwing numbers around, guesses mostly. I figured, why not break it down myself? Like, frame by frame. Just grab the raw footage and time it. Simple, right? Heh.
Grabbing the Tape & Finding the Spot
First step: Find the actual video. Didn’t need the fancy broadcast version, just the clear sideline view from a college game replay. Needed a straight shot of him running the whole way, no cuts. Took a bit of searching through some archived stuff, but I found a perfect angle. It was during the Ohio State game last year – clean run, sideline camera locked on.
Then I had to find the exact start and stop points for the 40 yards. Tricky! It’s not like they paint lines on the field saying “START 40 YD DASH HERE.” I looked for clear landmarks. Used the hashmarks as my guide. Found where he started his sprint – basically when he shifted from his backpedal or shuffle into that full stride driving forward. That felt like the “Go” moment. For the finish, I counted exactly 40 yards downfield from that start point, aligning it with the yard lines. Took a few tries to feel confident I had those points marked correctly in the video player.
The Nitty-Gritty Timing Mess
Alright, the meat of it: Timing the damn thing. I used that frame-by-frame control on my video player. You advance one frame at a time… click… click… click. It was tedious as hell.
- Start Frame: I went frame by frame until his first definite forward motion driving out, not the wind-up. Click, click, click… there! His plant foot pushed off. Marked it.
- End Frame: Then I advanced, frame by painful frame, watching his helmet or torso cross the exact point 40 yards downfield. Click, click… yep, when his head clearly crossed my marker line. Marked that frame too.
My video was shot at a standard 30 frames per second (fps). So, the math is: (Frames Between Start & End) / 30 = Time in seconds.
I counted the frames between my start mark and end mark. Did it three times to be sure. Got 129 frames. Every. Single. Time.
So: 129 frames / 30 fps = 4.30 seconds. Boom. That was my raw number.
But Wait… Reality Check!
Now, I wasn’t dumb enough to think this was some magical official NFL combine laser time. Nah. I know the limits:
- Human Error: Did I pick the exact right frame for start and finish? Maybe off by a frame or two? Probably. My eyes ain’t lasers.
- Hand Timing: Everyone knows hand times are faster than electronic. Always have been. Coaches shave tenths off routinely. My 4.30 was absolutely a hand time.
- Video Angle: Was the camera perfectly perpendicular? Nope. Slight angles can mess with perception of the crossing point. It was good, but not perfect.
So right there, I mentally added roughly 0.05 to 0.10 seconds. That felt fair.
Wrapping It Up
So, from my armchair, frame-by-frame breakdown: Campbell ran that specific play at around 4.30 seconds by hand timing from the tape. Taking the natural fudge factor of hand timing and video limitations, I’d peg his “true” speed on that run as more realistically somewhere in the high 4.3s to low 4.4s electronically. Still fast for a linebacker, no doubt. But it puts him clearly in that athletic range teams look for, without pretending it was some once-in-a-generation 4.2 flat blazer.
Was it worth the hour spent clicking frame-by-frame? Meh, probably not. But at least now I know, based on actually doing it, not just guessing. And honestly? It was kinda fun seeing the mechanics up close.
