Pro teams, scouts and "pundits" will start to measure this year's crop of talent as the NFL combine revs up its engines this week in Indianapolis.

 

Here's a look below at the top-rated players, including all those expected to go in the first 114 picks – basically, the first half of the seven-round draft in April. We got this information from the folks at NFLDraftScout.com. They require an annual subscription to access all their top information. It's probably worth it for true draft junkies.

 

In any case, a couple things jump out from their list of top prospects:

 

Last we checked, Notre Dame was fresh off the worst season in its history, an embarrassing 3-9 campaign that included a loss to Navy for the first time since Roger Staubach played for the Midshipmen. The pigskin "pundits," including the Cold, Hard Football Facts, cited what seemed to be a glaring lack of talent for Charlie Weis's Irish. Yet, according to this list, four Domers are slated to go in the first 114 picks.

 

 

Never heard of Newberry College? That's O.K. Neither had we. Turns out it's a small Division II South Carolina school in the mighty South Atlantic Conference that's conveniently located near several back-country roads (actually, it's near I-26, as one Newberry College person pointed out today ... but back-country roads sounds smaller and more rustic). It's also the home of one of the top offensive line prospects in the draft, OT Heath Benedict (pictured here). He not only looks like he'd snap your head off and drink moonshine out of your cranial cavity, he's 6-5, 321 and has drawn favorable comparisons to a number of current NFL tackles (such as San Diego's Marcus McNeill, who's the same age as Benedict). But you have to wonder what happened in this dude's past. He played at two different prep schools, one in Pennsylvania (The Hill School) and the other in New Jersey (Peddie). He was the No. 1 high school player in New Jersey in 2001. He went to Tennessee, where he apparently struggled academically, which has to be a concern (but don't tell him we said so). The SEC football factory is not exactly Harvard here, folks. He transferred to play for the powerful Newberry Indians (motto: "Fear the Spear!"). He'll be a 25-year-old rookie this fall. It will be interesting to see what happens to this guy at the combine and in the draft.

 

There are certain universal truths in the realm of the Cold, Hard Football Facts: beer is tasty, nudie bars are good and USC is a fraud "dynasty." Sure, the Trojans project to send a slew of top prospects to the NFL (six on this list alone). But the rest of the Pac-10 projects to have just eight players taken in the top half of the draft. This annual disparity confirms what we've long known: USC has built its gaudy resume by beating up on a second-tier conference and if the Trojans played in, say, Tuscaloosa instead the glitzy and huge La-La Land media market, nobody would think twice about them. The onfield production of USC's 21st-century "dynasty" has certainly not merited the acclaim it generates. The school boasts just one unbeaten season this decade, zero undisputed titles and their big-name players routinely fail to live up to the hype in the NFL. If USC played in the SEC, they'd be 8-4 each year. These are not the 1990s Cornhuskers, folks.

 

Here's the list of NFLDraftScout.com's top 114 prospects (* indicates underclassmen).