Football
The Speed Myth
By John PorentasYou know you have arrived in the sports media world when you get the title "analyst". The analysts are those guys who get paid the big bucks to fill all that air time between games and still keep you tuned in so those high-priced commercials can get sold.
Nothing puts a bigger glint in the collective eye of the analysts than an upset or a perceived under performance because nothing gives them more fodder than an unexpected train-wreck. You can talk for days about why the train fell off the tracks and people will listen. The winners want to hear about how good they are, so it makes them feel good to hear all that analysis about their superiority and they tune in. The losers want to know why they lost and feel so bad so they tune it too. It's just plain perfect for the analysts.
The Buckeyes have been kind to the analysts over the last couple of seasons, dropping two-consecutive national title games. That has been an absolute boon to the analysts who have returned the kindness by tweaking Buckeye (and by extension the entire Big Ten) noses by telling everybody that the Buckeyes were slow, at least in comparison to the red-caped SEC teams they faced in the Fiesta Bowl and Sugar Bowl. The Buckeyes themselves, however, don't quite see it that way.
"I was out there and they weren't faster than us, they weren't stronger than us, they just played better than us," said OSU safety Kurt Coleman. "We just didn't play as well as we could."
The Buckeyes seemed to be in agreement this fall when they checked into camp. It wasn't a difference in physical ability that made the difference in those games, but rather the way the teams played in that specific game.
"Everyone says that they're so much faster. I don't get it," said Alex Boone.
"We've got our players running downfield 80 yards for a touchdown, they have their players running down field, what makes them faster?"
But all those high-paid analysts can't be wrong, can they? Coleman was pretty sure they were.
"I have no idea. I don't know if someone(the analyst) is drinking some really fast water or what. It was not the speed that got to us. It was us not making the plays," said Coleman.
That may explain this year's tough summer conditioning program. conducted by OSU strength coach Eric Lichter. Sure, the Buckeyes worked on speed and strength, but more than anything else they worked on toughness, specifically mental toughness, the kind of mental toughness that brings forth leadership and elicits focus in tough situations and big games.
"It's just the fact that sometimes a team will crumble and that's what happened to us," said Boone.
"We broke down and we started beating each other up. We can't have that anymore," said Boone.
Lichter says summer conditioning is the perfect place to address an issue like mental toughness. This year it was as much about the intangibles as it was the measurables like speed and strength.
"They come on campus on June 13 and you're pounding them and they don' t like you so much anymore, but you see intangibles," Lichter said. "How do they respond to tough coaching? How do they respond to not being coddled?
"We spend more time trying to decipher how we can add in a demand that will allow someone to step up and show leadership in a workout.
"We'll craft a competitive drill to see who our true competitors are. All these things we try to do that are not about lifting and running, not about measurables. It's more of setting up things in the workouts to make certain intangibles come to the forefront. We could probably tell you who has the intangibles and where they are amongst the team."
Lichter said Buckeyes needed to find out who was tough and then put those guys on the field.
"Its absolutely true. Not only do you find out which guys are tough, you find out which guys can find some burst and some will to run fast and compete hard and talk to the other guys when times are really tough.
"You find out who's in shape, who wants to be great, and there are some times in the summer where you purposely don't have an end to your conditioning drills in sight. If you looked at my workout you wouldn't see hill suicides times six reps. You would see hill suicides until we're satisfied that everyone is mentally tough enough."
That approach probably didn't win Lichter too many friends at the time, but now that the season is here, the veterans on the OSU roster see the value in it. The Buckeyes have speed according to them. Now they have to have it when the going is tough, and that's what it was all about this summer.
We're betting that the on-air analysts weren't the only guys doing some analyzing. The OSU coaching staff has a bit more of a vested interest in figuring out the answer to the question of why the Buckeyes lost those last two title games than the on-air people, and we think their conclusions were different from those of talking heads. The talking heads after all just have to talk. The OSU coaching staff has to fix the problem, quite a different proposition.
So who is right? Is it speed or something else? We're thinking the OSU staff has a greater incentive to get the right answer, not one that creates interest, and that Lichter is reflecting what the OSU brain trust is thinking instead of reacting to what what is being said to get ratings. We're going with Licther and the OSU staff on this one, not the analysts. Boone for one is anxious to see for himself out on the football field.
"We have a lot of fast players on this team," said Boone.
"It's going to be interesting to see how fast we are when we get out there to play football."
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