Looking back on when Indy claimed the NFL Combine
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Before the Lucas Oil era, the Hoosier/RCA Dome was the home of the NFL Combine. Photo: Jim Rogash/Getty Images
Welcome back to Old News! A new series where we zoom in on Indianapolis' past to highlight the iconic events, entities and individuals that tell the Circle City's story.
While Indianapolis didn't host the first NFL Combine, the event's home has always been in Circle City.
Why it matters: Even if the NFL does eventually turn it into a traveling event with rotating host cities like the NFL Draft and Super Bowl, the combine's Hoosier roots will stick with it.
Driving the (old) news: Also known as the National Invitational Camp, the NFL Scouting Combine held its first event in Tampa, Florida in 1982.
- Indianapolis-based National Football Scouting Inc. (NFS), which brought 163 players to that first camp, organized it.
- After subsequent annual events in Phoenix and New Orleans, the NFL decided to move the combine to the home of the organizing committee in 1987.
- The NFL Combine has been held in Indy every year since then except for a pandemic interruption in 2021.
Flashback: The 1987 NFL Combine at the Hoosier Dome was very different from the party being thrown this week in Indianapolis.
- More than 300 players took part, but the public was unable to watch, and most of the reporters attempting to cover it were not allowed inside the Hoosier Dome.
- Former players and GMs also described early combines as far more cutthroat with teams vying after the same prospect resorting to spying and time-stalling tactics to secure meetings.
What they're saying: "There were more than a few occasions where people got a little testy," Hall of Fame Colts executive Bill Polian told the NFL. "You were taking someone to interview and another team would swoop in and say, 'Wait a minute, he was scheduled to interview with us.' But that wasn't quite the way it is."
