Upon arriving to the baggage pickup at Indianapolis International Airport, you are quickly reminded why you traveled to Indiana in the dead of winter.

So Joe survived frozen Indianapolis. For a few minutes there last week, that wasn’t a sure thing.

Joe grew up three hours from Indianapolis and went to college two hours away. Never has Joe been so cold. Wednesday was simply brutal.

The charm of Indianapolis, aside from so many craft beer houses within a couple of blocks of each other, is the labyrinth of skyways connecting buildings and hotels, where one could work in Indianapolis for a week and never have to step outside.

Sadly, Lucas Oil Stadium is not connected but is across the street from the Indiana Convention Center (nee: Hoosier Dome), a main hub of the skywalk maze. Joe’s hotel was on the outskirts of downtown, about a half-hour walk from Lucas Oil, maybe 10 minutes of which is walking inside the Indiana Convention Center.

Joe was so bundled up even while walking through the convention center, he didn’t notice a man who called out, “Alright, Joe!” The voice was that of Lovie Smith.

Wednesday, the temperature barely hovered over zero, with a 22 mph bitter wind from the north straight in Joe’s face on the walking route back to the hotel. It was torture. Joe’s very good gloves didn’t even stop the wind. That had never happened to Joe before.

Joe learned — to take a different path, in part using downtown buildings as offensive linemen against the wind, in part to use more of the skyways. Had Joe’s brain not been frozen, ducking into a car and calling a cab would have been the way to go, which is what Joe did the rest of his stay except for Friday night and Saturday, the final combine day for media.

Saturday brought heavy snow and no wind. Temperatures pushed to the high 20s. Compared to seven-below (which it was Thursday morning) and 22 mph winds, it almost felt good. The gross thing is your body adjusts. The high 20s was like light jacket weather.

Funny thing is, in four days, Joe went from seven-below one morning with a horrible wind, to 80 degrees and sunshine in Florida.

Hoosier Hospitality

A neat thing about traveling to Indianapolis is a trait Midwesterners refer to as “Hoosier Hospitality.” The locals are impossibly kind. Always offering a polite word, always helpful beyond fault.

How friendly are the Hoosiers? The Saturday morning walk to the stadium saw about five inches of fresh snow on the ground and more falling through the air. Yet there was a marathon being run in the downtown area, which had traffic all fouled up, as if the snow didn’t do a good enough job at that to begin with.

As Joe was near “City Center,” a downtown shopping mall/entertainment district, a police squad car blocked the intersection to both halt traffic and keep the runners safe. The cop was standing outside his car, in the cold and the snow, constantly clapping for the runners and barking vocal support.

The NFL Winter Festival

Ah, yes. Football. That’s why Joe went. It is only Joe’s third combine, but man has it grown. Two years ago, the east concourse of the stadium may have had four or five radio stations and two TV setups.

Last week? The entire concourse was nothing but radio outlets and TV setups. It was easily four times the size of two years ago. Joe suspects the media center will be moved to the Indiana Convention Center across the street. There really isn’t much more room to grow at Lucas Oil Stadium.

There were 1.071 reporters credentialed. Peter King, at his Tweetup Friday night at Sun King Brewery, said in 2000, there may have been 15 NFL reporters roaming various hotel lobbies crawling for any morsel of access to any coach or general manager.

Now, it is a full-blown NFL winter festival. Smart on the NFL’s part. In the dead of winter when many folks have yet to overcome the hunger pangs of football-less Sundays, the NFL provides oodles of information and access that fills papers, magazines, TV shows, radio shows and countless websites for days if not weeks.

Waiting on Jameis

Joe didn’t get as many interviews as in previous years. That’s because for two days, half of Joe’s time was a holding pattern waiting for Jameis Winston. Aside from Marcus Mariota, Joe wanted to talk to no player more than Winston, for obvious reasons.

It’s known what position players will be brought to the media center on what day, but you don’t know when. It could be 9 a.m., it could be 4 p.m. If you are very lucky, there may be a 15-minute heads-up that a player will arrive and go to a podium. There is no rhyme or reason to it. The practice is very random. This happened for just two folks: Mike Mayock and Winston.

 So when Winston was delayed for a day due to additional medical tests, Joe was in a holding pattern. Joe didn’t even dare risk the bathroom and miss Winston (this happened last year when Joe, um, took a break and while on the throne, heard the announcement Aaron Murray was speaking). You didn’t dare risk leaving the media workroom for any reason.

Thus, Joe couldn’t wander the concourse those two days hunting for interviews.

Oddly, for coaches and general managers, they are on a very strict schedule by the NFL, and you know when each is speaking before the combine even starts.

Craft Beer

As Joe has stated before on this very site, one of the biggest scams in the 21st Century is craft beer. Oh, there is good craft beer – almost all on draft. And there is a whole lot of slop peddled as craft beer. Just because you put fruit in a beer (a ghastly concept to Joe) with a weird label (“Goat Nuts” or some such wild name) and it is not produced in St. Louis or Milwaukee, does not a beer make.

To the best of Joe’s knowledge, Indianapolis may be the craft beer capital of the Midwest. Again, within a few blocks, there are all kinds of craft beer joints and they all have some damned good beer. Very good. Joe likely has never swilled so much beer in so many days without one of them originating from St. Louis.

Indianapolis is sort of like downtown St. Petersburg for craft beer. Both cities are one of the rare exceptions (for Joe) where craft beer is the primary choice. Whether it is Sun King Brewery, Rock Bottom Brewery or the RAM, you can’t go wrong in downtown Indianapolis for beer.

Yes, Joe still has a fridge stocked full of Bud Light. To quote Maxwell Smart, “And, loving it!”

Even though Midwestern winters can be more than harsh, the NFL Scouting Combine is one of Joe’s favorite assignments both for professional and personal reasons.