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Future OSU Track

By Lawver_5 -20 March 2013
3 Comments
- Other Sports

Coming from a past in track, i've always loved the sport but never heard too much about Ohio State's track team. With Urban Meyer now at the helm of OSU football, he has placed a large emphasis on bringing speed to Columbus. During his tenure in Florida he had some real speedsters (Harvin, Demps, Rainey, etc.) and some of them were on those Florida track teams as well, and were part of some very good Florida track teams. I know that Parris Campbell broke the Ohio D2 60 meter dash record and has said that he is considering running in college, and we got some fast players in last years class as well. Now granted, Florida has slightly better weather so it is a little more appealing to run there than in Ohio, but could Coach Meyer's football recruiting also improve our track team? I'm not sure how many people really follow track ha, but any other opinions would be appreciated!

Deshaun on 20 Mar 2013 - 5:36pm #

In the early 1990s, there was a strong contingent of OSU football players running track, including Butler By'not'e and Robert Smith. Coach Tressel obviously wanted his athletes to specialize in football, the way nearly every football coach does now (most notably with Ted Ginn Jr and Santonio Holmes). Of course, the key to this is having both track and football coaches who don't mind sharing athletes as well, since collegiate track also includes year-round training. It would be great to see a Buckeye 4x1, 4x4, sprints, hurdles, and horizontal jumps crew led by the Bradley Robys and Philly Browns of the world (not to mention future contributions of Dontre Wilson and Ezekiel Elliott) if they can work out schedules of indoor track, spring ball, and outdoor meets.

BuckNutInAnnArbor on 20 Mar 2013 - 6:21pm #

lawver, you got me all geeked up with this track talk! I think if Meyer and Co. were to be as flexible with some of their athletes like in the Florida days, the Buckeyes could do some major damage not only in the B1G Indoors and Outdoors, but also at the NCAA level! Plenty of schools are have done it/do it on a fairly consistent basis - LSU, Clemson, Oregon, Southern Cal.

Here is a PDF of the best Track & Field performances by athlete who played college football.

Random not-OSU related fun fact... Joe Staley (LT for the 49ers) ran 21.9 in the 200m as a senior at the MHSAA D1 State Meet.

"...but then again 'Michigan' and 'huge mistake' are synonymous so that shouldn't have been much of a surprise to anybody." - Mark Titus