Ohio State Olympic gold medalist Butch Reynolds says the Buckeyes' Dontre Wilson is about to open some eyes around football: Bill Livingston
Dontre Wilson burned Penn State for a touchdown on a swing pass last week. There's more where that came from, says Bill Livingston.
(AP Photo/Paul Vernon)
By
Bill Livingston, The Plain Dealer
November 01, 2013
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Baseball, a slow game, drives the former Olympian crazy because he knows he could speed it up. Literally.
“I watch those baseball guys get thrown out in the blink of an eye, within a yard of first base, after running 90 feet up the baseline, and it’s because of their technique. Their arm swing is all over the place,” said Butch Reynolds, the former Akron Hoban and Ohio State 400-meter runner.
He spent years making sure such flailing did not slow down Ohio State's football team.
Ohio State's Butch Reynolds, center, begins the 400-meter leg of the distance relay at the 1994 Penn Relays.AP Photo/Chris Gardner
A former world record-holder in the 400, a 1988 Olympic silver medalist in the individual event, as well as a gold medalist in the 4 x 400 relay at Seoul, Reynolds was the speed coach for the Ohio State football team from 2005-08.
It was part of the vision of former coach Jim Tressel, who looked past Reynolds’ disputed suspension by world track authorities for a positive drug test -- on which his urine specimen was incorrectly identified by a Paris lab -- to see what Reynolds could bring to OSU.
As a coach, Reynolds was persnickety about proper placement of his students’ arms, feet, hips and head. “I feel we began that process (of speeding up the Buckeyes),” said Reynolds. “I said then, we will have speed. We will bring (recruit) it, or we will teach it.”
Reynolds said proper mechanics can shave a half-second or more off 40- and 60-yard times.
“Slo-hio,” the sneer SEC teams directed at the Buckeyes, certainly no longer applies. Coach Urban Meyer has made speed one of the defining characteristics of the Buckeyes, who are unbeaten in 20 games under him.
cont...