Football: Reunited Ohio State roommates go camping
When good buddies John Peterson and Matt Manifold get together, the stories they swap sound like testosterone-fueled fantasies.
Affectionately known to each other as "Pete" and "Mutt," the two were roommates during their playing days at Ohio State in the late 1980s.
Peterson went on to a coaching career and is now the Buckeyes' tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator.
So he can regale Manifold with tales of big-time football glory - such as being in Ohio Stadium when No. 1 Ohio State beat No. 2 Michigan in 2006, or being in Glendale, Ariz., and New Orleans for national championship games.
Manifold can one-up Peterson, though. He is an F-16 pilot, a 20-year Air Force veteran and a full colonel at age 43. He has flown more than 200 combat missions, including many over Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I got to blow a lot of stuff up and shoot a lot of things down," Manifold said matter-of-factly.
Given that, how Manifold spent last week might seem tame in comparison. At Peterson's invitation, Manifold took a week off from his job of training pilots at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas to be a volunteer coach at Ohio State's football camps.
So, on Wednesday, there was battle-hardened Col. Manifold in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, barking at grade-schoolers lined up for drills on the facility's indoor field.
"It's been a blast," he said of the experience. "We like to give back to the community, give back to Ohio State. They gave me a great four, five years of my life."
Peterson and Manifold became good friends soon after both arrived in Columbus in the fall of 1986. Peterson was a scholarship offensive lineman who earned four letters and was a starting guard in 1990; Manifold was a walk-on tight end.
Manifold did not see much playing time, but he was strongly influenced by his football experience.
For one thing, he credits former coach Earle Bruce with keeping him on track toward his current career.
"I had a lot going on, being an aeronautical engineering major and ROTC and playing football, and I was getting pretty crushed in the schoolhouse, in academics," Manifold said. "And I said, 'Hey, Coach, I've got to get into an easier major. This aeronautical engineering is killing me.'
"And (Bruce) said, 'Manifold, if you get out of aeronautical engineering, I'm going to kill you. I've never had a football player graduate in aeronautical engineering, so you don't have a choice. You're staying in (that major).'
"So I stayed in."
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