Minny draft prospect becoming 'mini' draft prospect?

In their obsession with Daniel Faalele’s weight, the mainstream media are missing the real story of the Minnesota offensive tackle at the NFL scouting combine.

ESPN, the New York Post, and even People all touted Faalele measuring at 6-foot-8 and 384 pounds, the heaviest combine weight since 2003 according to the Post, and “believed to be” the heaviest since 1999 according to ESPN.

Point taken, he’s a big dude. Not as big as he once was, though, and not because Faalele showed up to college at 426 pounds, before being reported at 385 pounds on Thursday. Faalele is listed on his Minnesota bio as 6-foot-9 – an inch taller than he was measured in Indianapolis.

How could Faalele have gotten shorter? According to the Canadian Space Agency, gravity does make a person shorter as a day goes along, as vertebrae compress throughout a day of verticality, then space out again at night when you lay horizontally.

Perhaps Faalele, a right tackle who was voted first team all-conference by Big Ten coaches last year, was measured in Minnesota after a good night’s sleep, and only snoozed on a plane on his way to the combine, then got his measurements taken after many hours of gravity pressing his spinal column together.

Faalele also could have been measured at 6-foot-9 in his hometown of Melbourne, Australia, which is two degrees of latitude closer to the equator than Indianapolis. As you get closer to the equator, gravity becomes weaker, so again, decompressing vertebrae.

Another possibility is that Faalele, being from Australia, has previously measured at 205 centimeters, which is 80.7 inches – not quite 6-foot-9 though it would round up in a conversion chart.

Or, possibly, even very tall men exaggerate about their height. Or maybe he’s shrinking. But it might be that gravity thing.