INDIANAPOLIS—Dylan Sampson positively lights up when talking about Simphiwe.

Sampson, a Tennessee Volunteers running back prospect in this year's NFL Draft, met Simphiwe—a 14-year-old South African native—while on a trip with Vol Leaders to South Africa and Botswana this past summer.

"He was infected when he was young and had to cut off a certain amount of limbs and a certain amount of fingers on his hand. Man, we met that kid. He's 14 years old, had the biggest, brightest smile, never took any energy away from anybody's day, still runs track to this day. Holds Paralympic records," Sampson gushed of his friend while meeting with reporters this week at the combine.

"So anything I took is just to be thankful for the situation that you're in because it could always be worse. You got to count your blessings before you have none."

It's a poignant life lesson, one learned at the mountaintop and employed in the valley, and the kind that can help determine the make of a man. Which is why it's also a story Sampson shared multiple times this week.

"I get excited when they ask me about that because I'm real passionate about it, you know," Sampson smiled. "I feel like they want to know a part of me that I'm active and showing about too."

Sampson and hundreds of other prospects descended on Indianapolis this week to prove their value as NFL football players, going through workouts and testing to show what they're capable of doing on a field and why they are worthy of a draft pick from one of 32 clubs.

However, few interactions at the combine are more important than the prospect meeting.

These meetings are labeled either formal or informal. The latter is as it sounds; less structured, they can last as short or as long as the conversation goes and takes place one-on-one. Formal interviews are just under 20 minutes and occur in the Lucas Oil Stadium suites. Clubs are allowed to conduct these meetings with 45 prospects and follow a much more structured schedule.

Every club has its own philosophy on how to conduct these meetings. Some elect to spend the time just talking football, wanting a player to break down their own film or that of the team with whom they are meeting to test their football acumen. This is why Notre Dame safety Xavier Watts broke down his interception versus Virginia multiple times this past week.

"I had broken before the receiver broke on the ball. It was third down. I knew the guy was going to be running the dig," Watts shared this week, as to what he told teams when they asked about the play. "And I had really good instincts. I trust, when I feel something, I'm just going to do it. So, I trusted he was going to run the dig. I broke for the dig, and he ran the dig, and I got an interception."

Some want to know about the little pieces that make up the prospects as a whole, which is why Alabama tight end CJ Dippre had a ready-made answer about his most visible tattoo.

"I have a big lion on the back of my calf," Dippre said. "It goes from my Achilles up to the back of my knee, so, you know, a lot of people ask me about that."

Still, other clubs use the 20 minutes to ask probing questions that are innocuous on the surface but help reveal tendencies and personality traits that can manifest themselves on the field. This is why Panthers legacy Bryson Nesbit, a UNC tight end, found himself talking a lot about fishing while in a landlocked city for essentially a football interview.

"I'm a big fisherman, so you know a lot of coaches knew that coming into it, asking me about fishing, the kind of things that I do outside of football," Nesbit shared. "A couple have (wanted tips), but a couple of them are big fishermen too."

Nesbit, being an avid fisherman, and Dylan Sampson's trip to South Africa are not things that show up on football tape. They do, however, come up in the extensive research scouts conduct during the year, diving into a guy with the skill of a psychologist—or, in the case of some teams, utilizing a sports psychologist on staff—as much as with a football eye. For those 20 minutes in a suite in Lucas Oil Stadium, coaches, general managers, and scouts try to take all the pieces of a player they've gathered from off the field and tape, then quickly assemble the whole puzzle.

"I really just want to hear them talk," head coach Dave Canales shared.

"So, I think that the better that we can ask general questions that create a little space for a player to tell us who they are, show us who they are, what makes them tick, how much they know about football, how much does it matter to them, you know, I think those are the things we're looking for."

How much football matters to them has become a pillar for general manager Dan Morgan's search for future Panthers. The philosophy being there are guys who are talented and athletic enough to make it to the league, and some guys might not have the innate ability but have the willingness to learn because not playing is not an option.

Some GMs prefer the latter, trusting their staff to develop the player. Others are more than happy with the former, believing talent is a foundation and the mindset is secondary. There isn't one true blueprint that all clubs must follow, and both methods have won championships.

But Morgan's conviction is that the best players, who he wants to make up his team, combine both, with the latter as a non-negotiable.

"Really, it's just kind of getting to know these guys, their personality, just kind of what they're made of, just how they got to where they're at right now from a football side of things, the football journey," Morgan explained of his goal with each prospect meeting.

"How did they get there, who got them into it and just kind of find out where their love of the game came from? And it's interesting just kind of hearing all the stories that all these guys have because every story is unique, and all these guys are unique, and it's just about finding the right fit for us."

For years, a significant part of this conversation revolved around certain players' decision to transfer schools and/or sit out of bowl games. Both have become more and more prevalent as the NIL culture has implemented itself into college football. NIL allows players to enter into contracts with outside businesses, thus earning money through their "name, mmagine, and likeness."

Chasing NIL contracts has led to more transfers, helped along by new rules allowing for easier transfers between schools. At the same time, with the introduction of the College Football Playoff in 2014, many top NFL prospects have chosen to protect their future by sitting out of what are now deemed "meaningless" bowl games, such as the ones that don't feed into the playoffs.

But surprisingly, or perhaps naturally, as both actions have become more common, the discussion around them has decreased in the combine prospect meetings to the point of not being a topic at all with some teams.

"I'm really not going to hold it against them if they decide not to play in a bowl game or, you know, do what's best for them financially," Morgan admitted. "I think it's no different than anybody else in any other job that they're going to do what's best for them and their situation and their family, so I don't really hold that against them."

The statement from Morgan makes it easier to believe players like Miami quarterback Cam Ward, who didn't play the second half of the Hurricanes' Pop-Tart Bowl loss to Iowa State, but said it wasn't a talking point with teams.

"No discussion at all," Ward told reporters of the topic not coming up in meetings. "The end of the day, it's March, the bowl game's in December, and at some point, you've got to move on. I've never lived my life in the past. I don't know who would want to live their life in the past, so I take it on the chain. I just keep pushing every day."

The decision to enter the transfer portal arises more often in meetings but with a different point of view than in years past.

For some, like Austin native and Texas safety Andrew Mukabe, who transferred after three years at Clemson, it's just a matter of explaining to teams he wanted to be closer to home.

"My mom was able to come to one game in three years," Mukabe shared of what he told teams. "And she couldn't make the rest of the games just because she had to work, and then you had to catch two flights to get to South Carolina. So it was it was hard on her, and it was hard on me not to be able to have a support system."

Dipree, who transferred from Maryland to Alabama, explained the question is typically in the form of wanting to know what each team taught him.

"(They ask) reasons like why I wanted to transfer or how the process went or how I was able to pick up new stuff when I got to Alabama," he said. "But not necessarily like, oh, it's like a bad thing."

It echoed what Canales told reporters earlier in the week, admitting he saw the transfer portal less as a knock against a prospect and more as a chance for extended research.

"I don't see it as a challenge. I think the opportunity is you have two schools you can ask about the player," Canales said. "Do their stories corroborate, or was he one guy here and then somebody different? So I think you have more eyes on these players, which does help us evaluate the character and go into those things.

"I understand players that have opportunities financially to go from one school to the next that makes sense. They don't know how long their careers are so all these things kind of help us to be able to evaluate them.

"There are some challenges in terms of if they're going from one scheme to the next, sometimes there's a little bit of a hurdle for them trying to learn a new system, you know, but there's information that you can gather about that as well."

While college football purists will rail against the portal, it makes sense NFL clubs would put less stock in the act of transferring. It follows the format already employed in the league once players have the ability to make their own choices.

"I think it's super common now. I mean, it's like free agency in college football," said former Florida and Wisconsin quarterback Graham Mertz. "So it's really what did you learn through that process, how to make you better, what were the challenges in it? So they do like to ask questions about that, but it's all good stuff."

The combine meetings are a unique and vital part of the draft process. The philosophy employed in those rooms and meetings changes from team to team, coach to coach, prospect to prospect. However, one constant remains the same: those 20 minutes can determine a player and a team's future.

"All the coaches are able to turn on the film and kind of see me as a football player," Nesbit said. "So I think it's been really good for them to be able to see my personality and see how I interact with them."