POV: You’re a prospect interviewing with the Vikings at the NFL scouting combine

INDIANAPOLIS – If you were a prospect the Vikings chose to meet with at the NFL combine this week, you’d be greeted with a football tossed your way by head coach Kevin O’Connell or handed to you by General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah.

How you perceive the gesture is up to you: An additional, off-field test of your reflexes? A chance to ground yourself by holding something familiar when you may be on your fifth, 10th or 12th interview of the day? A way to calm fidgety hands?

Forty-five prospects visited the Vikings’ formal interview suite inside Lucas Oil Stadium from Monday to Thursday night as the Vikings did some of their most important scouting work to kick off draft season. Staff members spent roughly 32 hours in their formal meeting room interviewing prospects and had more meetings outside interview times.

It’s the same suite the Vikings have been in since interviews moved inside the stadium from a nearby hotel. They’re neighbors with the Saints, who share a wall, and the 49ers are a bit farther down the hall.

The meeting room is their base camp; the satellite office is their viewing suite in the northeast corner of the stadium. When broadcasts cut to coaches watching prospects run on-field drills Thursday through Sunday, this is where they’ll be.

The viewing suite’s location changes year to year, through a lottery system.

By the time the first prospect arrived at 7 p.m. Monday for his interview, both suites, but particularly the formal interview suite, were stocked to the level of a modest fallout shelter with snacks, supplements and supplies.

Jerky sticks, chips, candy. Single-serving Tylenol and Advil, cough drops, even Band-Aids. Four colors of pens, and other colors for highlighting.

There’s a bundle of stopwatches for unofficial timing, but everyone’s expected to bring their own pair of binoculars. Phone chargers are provided, though. Just in case.

Everything from the eight boxes of supplies to the AV equipment the Vikings need to watch film was shipped to Indianapolis or flown in with the crew of about seven — helmed by Kaitlin Zarecki, senior football operations manager and Luke Burson, football information systems director — who arrived early to set it all up.

“We have to think for everyone else ahead of time,” Zarecki said Monday. “What are they going to ask for? That’s why it’s like, ‘Let’s bring a mini office with us.’ ”

The setup for film viewing is fairly new. Before formal interviews moved to Lucas Oil Stadium, they were held in cleared-out rooms at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Burson said interviews used to be just that — interviews.

Now, the Vikings' video crew connects to two in-suite televisions, and more time is spent watching film during formal interviews. O’Connell is set up with Telestrator capabilities to annotate the film live.

If you were a prospect, the TVs would be to your right once you sat down in your designated chair, O’Connell and Adofo-Mensah to your 10. More staff — 10 of whom have name-tagged spots — would be across from you, closer to your left side and over your shoulder. Your chair would be backed up to an island in the kitchenette area.

Seating is set up tightly to ensure there’s still space in the center of the room if a coach wants to put a lineman in his set or demonstrate something.

The compactness of the setup can make it a dance to transition between prospects.

Each formal interview is allotted 20 minutes counted down by an on-screen timer, the background of which changes from green to yellow to red as time winds down.

The catch? The 20 minutes includes travel time between interviews. A prospect’s real time with each team is closer to 15 or 16 minutes.

There’s a warning beep at four minutes, then another at two. The suite door should be open by then to show prospect escorts waiting outside that a team is wrapping up and will be ready to send the prospect on his way.

Depending on who his next interview is with, the prospect could have to walk a decent chunk of the stadium’s suite-level concourse.

In between prospects, staffers like Burson might come into the room to reset things like the camcorder that films every interview.

They don’t always make it out before the next prospect enters and doors close. Burson said he’s found himself trapped in the nook between the door to the field-viewing portion of the suite and the main snack cabinet, waiting out an interview.

If you were a prospect at the NFL combine, the Vikings would gift you a hat as you left the room to be ushered to your next location.

You’d probably be gifted a hat by the next team you met with, too.

Though the swag has occasionally changed — one year sling backpacks were the rage, leading to prospects goofily wearing multiple as they went from room to room — the hats are consistent.

What becomes of those hats when prospects leave the combine is up to the prospects. They might hold on to them until April, when the hat they received as a memento from their first meeting with a team could be the same one they pull on after hearing their name called on draft night.