Penn's football rivals receive NFL Combine invite

Brawn may trump brain this April for two athletes from the Ancient Eight.

Yale senior running back Tyler Varga and Harvard senior defensive end Zack Hodges have been invited to attend the National Football League Scouting Combine, an event that showcases college football players to potentially interested NFL teams. The two Ivy League invitees would, if they choose to attend, travel to Indianapolis, Ind., with hundreds of other athletes, including standouts such as Oregon’s Marcus Mariota and Florida State’s Jameis Winston.

Varga and Hodges join a group of only a select few Ivy players to be invited. Last year, Princeton defensive tackle Caraun Reid and Cornell quarterback Jeff Mathews were the only invitees, with Reid eventually being selected in the fifth round by the Detroit Lions and Mathews going undrafted.

Varga earned a spot at the Combine after a standout career as an Eli, racking up 1,423 rushing yards and a Yale record 26 total touchdowns as a senior. Scouts were particularly observant at the annual Senior Bowl, as the senior drew attention from NFL scouts when he scored two touchdowns.

Hailing from Ontario, Varga has amassed a plethora of awards in his tenure at Yale, including Ivy Offensive Player of the Year, first-team All-Ivy and the NEFW Top Senior in New England. NFL.com, which ranks the tailback as a 5.18 on a 10-point scale, says that Varga “might have to show he can take snaps as a move fullback and shine on special teams to make an NFL team.”

“I want to go out there and show there is quality football in the Ivy League,” Varga told The New Haven Register. “There are players there, too. Everyone looks down on the league. I want to represent for them.

“Zack Hodges is out here playing hard, too. We’re working on making the transition to the next level.”

Hodges was impressive in his own right this season, helping to lead the Crimson defense on its way to an Ivy League title and perfect record. The 6-foot-3, 235-pound lineman dominated as a pass rusher, leading the league with 8.5 sacks in 2014.

The Atlanta native, who was named All-Ivy while with the Crimson, ranks at a 5.19/10 on NFL.com. NFL analysts claims that Harvard’s all-time sack leader “appears to be a project who must live in the weight room in order to be able to become a more complete physical talent.”

“To hear that I have the potential to play at the peak of competition in this arena, that’s amazing and humbling,” Hodges told The Boston Globe in November. “But for me, I’m just going to try to sit down, figure out what are the goals of my life, what are the priorities to me or my family, and how can I maximize that.

“It’s great to be able to say, ‘Oh, I can go to the NFL.’ But if I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it right.”

Whether “doing it right” means a career as a professional athlete is contingent on getting drafted for Varga and Hodges. While only one member of the Ancient Eight was drafted last year, three were drafted in 2013, so there’s certainly a precedent for Ivy Leaguers to be drafted.a

If not, both athletes will still have paths on which to “fall back.” Varga is an ecology and evolutionary biology major, while Hodges has studied government.

While the Quakers have had players on practice squads as recently as the start of last season, Penn will have to wait at least another year to send a player to the Combine.

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