NORMAN, Okla. -- Wide receiver Malcolm Kelly lashed out at Oklahoma on Wednesday after a disappointing performance in a 40-yard dash in front of NFL scouts.
Kelly sounds off
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" This is my life. You know what I'm saying? This ain't no school. This ain't no classroom. This ain't got nothing to do with that. This has to do with me; my family. This is what I do. I play football. And I'm supposed to come out here and run as fast as I can."
Kelly, who left Oklahoma after his junior season, blamed his slow time of 4.68 seconds on an unexpected change in surfaces at his pro day.
"This is my life. You know what I'm saying? This ain't no school. This ain't no classroom. This ain't got nothing to do with that," Kelly said. "This has to do with me; my family. This is what I do. I play football. And I'm supposed to come out here and run as fast as I can."
Kelly skipped Oklahoma's original pro timing day last month while recuperating from a tear in his quadriceps, and said he had arranged with Oklahoma strength coach Jerry Schmidt to run on the Astroturf infield at the indoor track.
He said he was surprised when he arrived and found out he'd instead be running on the artificial turf inside the Sooners' indoor football facility.
"I already had everything set up for where I want to do it at," Kelly said. "I get out here and it's a whole different deal."
Kelly said he recently ran 40-yard dashes in 4.5 and 4.47 seconds on a firmer surface in Atlanta, where he has been training. The slower time could drop the draft stock for Kelly, who had been projected as a possible first-round pick in the April 26 draft.
"People want to say surface is surface, but it's a lot more to it than that," Kelly said. "You have to think about how much ground time you have running on this mushy surface here and how much ground time you have on Astroturf.
"Just a little bit of time could mean a whole lot of draft money."
Schmidt said he NFL scouts preferred Kelly run on the softer surface because "this is the surface that they run on" and that scouts could add fractions of a second to a 40-yard dash time if they perceive a track to be too fast.
"I told Malcolm it's up to him, wherever he wants to run," Schmidt said.
Kelly's agent, Chad Speck, said the surface was the slowest track that Kelly could have run on and suggested it could have cost him as much as two-tenths of a second.
"When it's a spongy surface and your foot sinks and is on the ground as long as it is on that surface, it's just going to correlate to a slow 40 time," Speck said.