FEET FIRST
GLENDALE, Ariz. – You would think this was the buildup for the U.S. Track & Field Championships and not the BCS Championship game.
Not an interview goes by without coaches and players being peppered with questions about speed.
Are players in the South (read: Florida) faster than players in the North (read: Ohio State)?
Twenty-five times in press conferences leading up to tomorrow night’s game between the Buckeyes and Gators, speed questions have been posed.
Asked which team’s style of play most resembles Florida, Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said “Texas” because of its team speed. Asked what primary attribute he looks for in a recruit, Tressel said speed.
Florida coach Urban Meyer also looks for the fast-forward button in players.
So when the Buckeyes (12-0) and Gators (12-1) take the University of Phoenix Stadium field, NFL scouts will be clicking stopwatches like a train conductor taking tickets. And the two players who will leave talent evaluators wondering if those watches are broken are Ohio State’s Ted Ginn Jr. and Florida’s Percy Harvin.
“You know, I wasn’t born fast,” Ginn said. “You just got to go and work as hard as you can. I work plenty of days. I stayed up plenty of hours. I just made me who I am.”
Actually Ginn is something the Lord made. He was the high school national champion in the 110 high hurdles as a junior and posted the fastest time in the nation as a senior at Cleveland’s Glenville High. Certainly Ginn, a 6-foot, 180-pound junior who surely will be a first-round NFL draft pick, worked at maximizing his speed. Most Division I-A schools have strength coaches. Ohio State also has a speed coach.
“Teddy’s the kind of guy, sometimes he sidesteps and takes a little move to the outside and he might be gone the next time,” Tressel said.
Harvin, a 5-11, 182-pound freshman who was hampered by a high-ankle sprain in the first half of the season, showed in the SEC title game how dangerous he is when healthy. Harvin was voted the MVP of the game after scoring on a 67-yard run and a 37-yard catch against Arkansas.
“We definitely game-planned for him,” Arkansas coach Houston Nutt said after the game. “He is very, very difficult to stop because he can catch the football and they move him back as a running back, a lot like we do with Darren McFadden.”
Which is exactly the plan Meyer had for Harvin when he signed him out of Virginia Beach’s Landstown High School, where he was the only athlete in Virginia history to win five gold medals at the state track and field championships.
“He’s going to be a slash guy,” said Meyer, conjuring up thoughts of Kordell Stewart. “You see a lot of people doing that across the country. USC did it with that Reggie Bush guy.”
That Reggie Bush guy went on to win the Heisman Trophy and help the New Orleans Saints to an NFL playoff spot. Harvin can have that kind of an impact on this title game.
“Any time, he can take it to the house,” Florida quarterback Tim Tebow said. “He is an unbelievable talent and one of the most special players in the country.”
As is Ginn. He arrived at Ohio State as the 2004 National Defensive Player of the Year as a cornerback and return specialist. But Tressel and his speed demons took one look at his 10.38 time in the 100 and moved him to offense. The results were immediately dazzling. He returned four punts for touchdowns as a freshman.
Ginn lit up Michigan on an 82-yard punt return for a touchdown in 2004, singed Illinois on a 73-yard touchdown catch and Minnesota on a 100-yard kickoff return in 2005, and burned Notre Dame on a 68-yard scoring run in last year’s Fiesta Bowl, when he had 260 all-purpose yards.
Ginn and Harvin can change the championship game in a heartbeat, because, ask any defensive coordinator: Speed kills.
