re: Is our strength and conditioning program overrated?

I think they do the bench press at the combine for two reasons. It would be hard measure useable football strength exercises like cleans, push press, squats, etc due to they are also greatly dependent on form and technique and depth. Just to many variables. Where as bench is more straight forward. Two, it kind of shows who to stay away from in the draft. A guy with big bench numbers likely has short arms and/or spent to much time in the gym working on the 'glamour' exercises/muscles and probably is stiff and without good 'useable' strength. In other words, big bench numbers at the combine are probably looked at as a negative in most cases. A player would be well advised to sandbag his numbers a little on the bench at the combine.