INDIANAPOLIS – NFL coaches have gathered here this month to watch last year’s top college football players run, jump, and lift at the league’s scouting combine. But the elite prospects will leave town without breaking a sweat.

That’s because most of the very best players, including Texas quarterback Vince Young, Virginia tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson, and USC’s trio of quarterback Matt Leinart and running backs Reggie Bush and Lendale White, have refused to work out for NFL teams at the RCA Dome. Instead, they came here for physical exams and one-on-one interviews with coaches, but will wait another few weeks before working out in front of scouts at private “pro days” on their college campuses.

“It’s disappointing to everyone involved, primarily the 32 clubs,” Jeff Foster, executive director of National Football Scouting, which runs the combine and charges each team $70,000 to participate, said. Foster noted the physical exams and the interviews alone make the combine a valuable experience for the teams, but he added that players who wait until their pro days to go through a complete workout often regret it.

“When you have a pro day, let’s say you get sick a couple of days before and you don’t have a good day,” Foster said. “That could hurt your status.”

Tennessee Titans head coach Jeff Fisher, whose team owns the third pick in the April 29-30 draft, agreed. “I wish everybody would work out here. I find it difficult to understand why they don’t. If you set your pro day up and it rains, you still have to work out. If it’s windy, you still have to work out.”

NFL combine workouts include tests of athleticism like the 40-yard dash, the vertical jump, and the bench press, plus position-specific drills like running pass patterns or demonstrating proper footwork. Players hardly ever skip the combine completely for fear of coming across as aloof, but skipping the workouts has become commonplace.

Players who don’t work out cite several concerns, including the perception that the surface at the RCA Dome yields slow 40-yard dash times, a desire to spend another few weeks working with personal trainers, the belief that elite prospects have nowhere to go on draft boards but down, and their preference for the familiar surroundings of their campuses.

In USC’s case, the April 2 pro day will become almost a second scouting combine. Leinart, Bush, and White head a class of about a dozen USC players whom scouts will watch. Bush, the Heisman Trophy winner and consensus top player in the draft, said he has worked hard at lifting weights in the last few weeks, but that he would focus less on strength in the next month as he prepares to show off his blazing speed at the pro day.

“I haven’t really worked on my 40 time yet,” Bush said. “I haven’t done too much focusing on that area as opposed to just trying to gain weight and get bigger and stronger. Now, this month, I’ll put more emphasis on the 40 and maybe not as much on the lifting. I’m going to have plenty of practice at the 40 before I actually run one.”

Although the Houston Texans, owners of the first pick in the draft, would most likely take Bush even if they never got the opportunity to time him in the 40-yard dash, teams look down on secondtier players who decline to work out. That includes Penn State quarterback Michael Robinson, who passed on working out even though he needs every opportunity to impress NFL scouts, who are not convinced he has the passing skills necessary to play in the NFL. Nearly everyone at the combine agreed that Robinson made a mistake by waiting until Penn State’s pro day to work out.

Scouts generally consider Leinart and Young the top two quarterbacks in this year’s draft, but some have questioned whether they have the requisite arm strength to hit receivers in stride on deep sideline routes. By skipping the workout at the combine, both quarterbacks have left that question unanswered.

One player who impressed teams with his willingness to throw every pass the scouts asked of him was Vanderbilt quarterback Jay Cutler, who is just a notch below Leinart and Young in the eyes of most observers, but is rapidly moving up draft boards.

“I wanted to do everything,” Cutler said. “It’s just throwing. I’ve been doing it a long time.”

If the 6-foot-4-inch Cutler, who threw for 3,073 yards last season, does move up on draft boards because of his combine performance, he’ll join a decidedly mixed fraternity. For every Don Beebe, who went from Chadron State to the third round of the draft with a great 40-yard dash at the 1989 combine, there’s a Mike Mamula, whose amazing athleticism at the combine led the Philadelphia Eagles to select him seventh overall in 1995. Beebe had a long and distinguished NFL career. Mamula did not.

Although the original purpose of the combine was to create a level playing field on which teams could compare each prospect’s abilities to perform under the same conditions, the players who skip the workouts are the ones who are truly being judged on their merits. Without any workout numbers to scrutinize, coaches can only use game film to judge players like Young, Ferguson, Leinart, Bush, and White. If those players look good enough to play in the NFL when scouts watch them in helmets and shoulder pads, it shouldn’t matter how they look in shorts and sneakers.

And that is why, even though teams are disappointed they won’t get the opportunity to see the best players compete at the combine, coaches agreed that the truly elite didn’t hurt their draft status by standing on the sidelines.

“Any time someone skips a chance to get in front of this many people, he’s wasted an opportunity,” Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy, whose team owns the fifth pick in the draft, said. “But as far as whether that would affect whether we’d pick him at no. 5 or not, I would say no.”