The nation's top prospects for April's NFL Draft began convening Wednesday in Indianapolis for the league's annual meat market that is the NFL Scouting Combine, where they will be interviewed, measured, weighed, timed and tested in every possible way as teams look for every possible clue about a player's potential as a professional player.

Among those players who arrived in Indianapolis was SMU wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders, who finished his college career holding just about every receiving record in school history. Sanders checked in with PonyFans.com to share his first impressions, and will provide updates throughout the Combine.

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I've been training for the last two months at Performance Gaines (Sports Performance Academy of Orange County) — there were 22 of us working out there to get ready for the Combine.

Amid the nation's top collegiate players, SMU's Emmanuel Sanders got noticed for his — and SMU's — performance in the Mustangs' win over Nevada in the Hawaii Bowl (photo by Travis Johnston).

The major difference between the workouts we did there and the workouts I did at SMU is that the workouts out there weren't as long. They were intense, but not as long. With (former SMU strength and conditioning coach) Vic (Viloria), they were long and intense. Their focus is not to try to get you that much bigger or faster, because you're not going to add that much in a couple of months. Instead, they're trying to get you to maximize what you've got, so you'll be as ready as you can be by the time you get to Indianapolis.

We got in yesterday and went straight to the hotel, and then we did a lot of paperwork and got our Under Armor stuff. They gave us a lot — so much I'm not sure how I'm going to get it all back to Texas.

I'm rooming with Nyan Boateng. He's a receiver from Cal, and we trained together at Performance Gaines, so he's already a good buddy of mine. When we were done with our paperwork and get our Under Armor stuff, we went out to grab a bite and then we came back to the hotel for the night and went to bed, because we had to get up early (Thursday).

The first thing we did today was go over to Methodist Hospital for X-rays, drug tests ... I had to get an MRI because of the meniscus I tore in my redshirt freshman year. Everything checked out.

Then we did a Cybex test, which was kind of weird. The Cybex machine is like the ones they have in a lot of gyms, where you're seated in a chair and you do quad extensions. When we did it, they had us sit there and tied one leg back, so you could only use one leg; then they did the other. They were testing explosiveness, so we had to do it twice. The first time, there was resistance on it; the second time, there was no resistance — they were just seeing how fast you could do it. The whole time, there were medical people right in your face, screaming "come on!" It was pretty intense.

They measured me at 5-11, and I weighed in at 184. I was hoping to be up to 190 by this time, but Travelle (Gaines — the director of Performance Gaines) said my body couldn't carry that much weight without losing a little quickness. My upper body can, but remember, I've got super-skinny legs.

I don't know how I'm going to lift, or how I'm going to run. Before I came out here, I lifted (the NFL standard bench press) 225 pounds 13 times — that's more than I ever did at SMU. And I'd like to run in the 4.3s (in the 40-yard dash). I don't know if I can, but at Performance Gaines, we also ran the 10(-yard dash), and they said if I could run a 1.38 in the 10 out there, I can run in the 4.3s. We'll see.

All of that — the running, the lifting, the drills — that starts Sunday. Tonight is the night they hand out cards to let us know which teams want to interview us, so that's what we'll be doing Friday and Saturday. I'm a Texas kid, so I hope the Texans want to talk to me, but really, I don't care — I just want to hear my name called on national TV in April and have a chance somewhere.

Being here is pretty amazing. Just seeing all of these players. I saw Tim Tebow yesterday — he's a regular guy, just like me. Thaddeus (Lewis), the quarterback from Duke, even came up to me and said he saw me play in the Hawaii Bowl. Getting recognized here — that was cool.