A common goal of NCAA Division IA Football Programs is to identify players who possess a high level of football playing ability. Football playing ability (FPA) is a construct that includes a wide array of disparate cognitive competencies and motor skills not easily identified or quantitatively measured. Much effort is directed at assessing players on factors that are assumed to underlie playing ability, i.e. strength, power, speed and agility. Henry’s Specificity Hypothesis posits that motor abilities, which underlie each task, are specific to that particular task. Thus, the correlation between two tasks, even those that are very similar, have been found to be low. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between FPA and selected performance measures (power - vertical jump; speed and agility - 10 yd. dash, 20 yd. dash, pro-shuttle-run; strength - squat, bench press, power clean, and Olympic snatch). A second purpose was to determine if the relationship between FPA and these performance measures were differentially affected by player position. The participants were returning players (N=40) at a NCAA Division IA program. Players were assigned to either offense (N=21) or defense (N=19) team groups and one of three position groups: offensive and defensive linemen, (OL-DL, N=9); wide receivers and defensive backs, (WR-DB, N=13); and running backs, tight ends and linebackers, (RB-TE-LB, N=14). Players were tested on the 8 performance measures prior to the 2000 season. Four senior coaches, two offense and two defense, independently ranked the players on FPA during the last third of the season. Interrater reliability of the ranking of players by the offensive and defensive coaches was extremely high (r=. 97 and r=. 95 respectively) verifying that the coaches had an inherent understanding of the construct FPA. The results indicated that vertical jump was the only variable, which was significantly correlated to FPA in all groups (offense r=-.50; defense r=-.64; WR-DB r=-.73; OL-DL r=-.75; RB-TE-LB r=-.74). Forward stepwise regression equations for each group, using the most significant performance measures, explained over half of the criterion variable FPA (R2 ranged from 55.1% to 56.0%). It was concluded that strength and conditioning programs, which facilitate the capacity for football players to develop forceful and rapid concentric action, as demonstrated by the vertical jump, through planter-flexion of the ankle, as well as, extension of the knee and hip may be highly effective.Keyword(s): athletics/sports, coaching, performance