Football's annual Winterfest opens this week in Indianapolis, where the land is flat and the three-cone drill and 20-yard shuttle can help determine whether a 20-year-old turns instant millionaire in April.

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NFL Scouting Combine

• When: Wednesday-Feb. 26
• Where: RCA Dome, Indianapolis
• TV: NFL Network, 11 a.m., Saturday-Feb. 26

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More than 300 college juniors and seniors have been invited to the National Invitational Camp, better known as the NFL Scouting Combine, which opens Wednesday at the RCA Dome.

All that's on the line is the future for football players and the 32 NFL teams.

The combine has taken on such an important part of the evaluation process for the pros that it is now televised on the NFL Network, a reason some believe there are fewer no-shows at the event. Over the years, many of the star college players have refused to attend the combine for various reasons. That number has dwindled to the point where Kevin Colbert, the Steelers' director of football operations, expects all to attend when the event takes place Wednesday through Feb. 26.

"The participation in recent years has gone way up," Colbert said. "I hate to admit it, but the televising of the event with the NFL Network is probably the reason. At first we were concerned of that involvement [by TV] but now think it actually enhanced the players'" willingness to participate.

"It's kind of an unknown phenomenon. I think really because it's a televised event now, the players' competitive spirit is raised, and they really go out there and perform. They think they're performing in front of a wider audience."

While those performances can seem boring to many, it's Christmas Day for the more than 600 employees of NFL teams in attendance. Coaches, general managers, scouts, team owners and presidents attend the annual event. Players are timed in the 40, the shuttles of 20 and 60 yards, and the three-cone drill, measured in the broad jump, vertical leap and bench press. They are administered the famous Wonderlic test, in addition to individual psychological tests most teams have now devised, and interviewed individually by club personnel incessantly in hotel rooms at night.

There is no Best in Show awarded by this NFL kennel club, but it may help determine who is picked No. 1 at the annual NFL draft April 26.

The most important of all the tests next week involves no competition.

"The main purpose is to give us a chance to get a physical," Colbert explained. "The physical was the original purpose and still is the main purpose of the combine, the actual physical examination. Since then it's grown into the workouts, and after that it became to where we're now doing the psychological tests and interviews."

The combine can accommodate up to 335 players, who are chosen by an anonymous committee made up of NFL player personnel people. The list of all the players invited is on NFL.com.

Former Steelers coach Chuck Noll sometimes mocked the combine workouts, saying such and such a player "looked good in his shorts." Nevertheless, the Steelers drafted two future Hall of Famers in the same year after they got better 40-yard dash times on each by themselves -- wide receivers Lynn Swann and John Stallworth in 1974.

Besides being televised, the combine has become so important to prospects that most of them now prepare for it by attending various camps around the country that often are paid for by their agents. Attending such camps requires players to drop out of college if they have not already graduated; thus, while the NFL publicly encourages players to stay in school and graduate, the importance the league puts on the combine actually encourages them to drop out in the spring.

Many of the players at the combine, however, will return to their colleges, because another phenomenon has taken hold in the run-up to the draft -- the school workout days. Most colleges now hold mini-combines of their own for their pro prospects, which are attended by a slew of NFL scouts.

Those have become recruiting tools for the colleges.

"Originally, the on-campus workout was for players who didn't work out at the combine because they were injured or whatever, and those who were not invited," Colbert said. "Their school gave them an audience to do that.

"Now, the colleges view it as a positive. Some colleges are more open to it than others as far as allowing media in, inviting TV in. It's a way to show potential recruits that, 'Look, the NFL pays attention to our players.'"

And those looks won't end with the workouts on campus either. Each NFL team is permitted to invite 30 prospects to visit them at their headquarters, and most take advantage of it.

While it all can become a logistical problem, Colbert welcomes all opportunities to gain as much information as his staff can gather on prospects.

"The more exposures we have the better."