Does football destroy promising track careers?
Tyreek Hill is arguably the best wide receiver in the NFL right now. You don’t have to take my word for it because Stephen A. Smith will tell you for me. He’s also a Super Bowl champion. So it’s safe to say football is working out quite well for him. But Tyreek Hill is really fast, so fast in fact that he jumped into a USATF Masters event in the 60 meter dash, and ran 6.70 seconds. If you don’t know much about the 60, that is a time fast enough to get him into the USA indoor championship meet, and he ran that time basically sprinting by himself.
The only reason he could pull that off is because even though Tyreek Hill is a football player now, he used to be truly dominant on the track. When he was back in high school, he ran 20.14 seconds in the 200 meter dash. That made him the fastest boys sprinter in that event since the year 1985! Tyreek Hill was perhaps one of America’s greatest threats to eventually dethrone Usain Bolt.
The truth is that Tyreek Hill was a track and field phenom, who was literally on track to dominate the world. We never got to witness what he was truly capable of because he quit track and field. In reality his attention was never 100 percent on the sport to begin with. He is proof that football itself is the biggest threat to America’s dominance in the sprints. Which has to make you wonder what could he have done if he actually tried his best for a while longer?
The best high school boys track and field athletes play football
Losing Tyreek Hill from the sport of track and field is only just the most high profile name that you might recognize. When studying the top college freshmen in the year 2024, I went back to the high school leaderboards for 2023. I quickly noticed that some of the top boys weren’t coming up. That’s because Dijon Stanley, and Eric Singleton would have been 2 of the best sprinters entering college this year, in the 200 and 400 meter dashes. But both of them are football players who chose not to compete in college. Dijon went to Utah which doesn’t even have a men’s track team, so he can’t change his mind even if he wanted to without transferring. But Eric is at Georgia Tech which does have a track team, the only problem is that he isn’t on it.
Football players dominate on the track all the time. But they are forced to make a decision going into college. Most of them choose to focus on football exclusively, which I don’t blame them for. That sport is the most popular of all the college sports, and is where all the money is made. Track and Field on the other hand, barely has enough scholarships to offer to even a quarter of any fully funded team. When I was in college I witnessed how my track teammates who also played football were asked to basically do double work. There was no working agreement between the football coach and track coach. The only thing they agreed to was their football players would do 100 percent of everything they needed to for football, and maybe be allowed to do track and field with whatever time was left. It’s easy to see why most don’t even bother. Tyreek Hill wasn’t in that group. He actually tried to do both, but he couldn’t prove his full worth in either sport until he made a clear decision.
How good was Tyreek Hill in track and field?
At the high school level Tyreek Hill dominated the state of Georgia running 10.32 in the 100 meter dash and eventually 20.14 in the 200. He was a double state champion as a senior in both events, and actually started his college career at the junior college level. There he became a star in the NJCAA on the track. He actually got second in the 100 meter dash at the JUCO championship meet losing only to Andre De Grasse who became a double NCAA champion the immediate year after, and is now an Olympic Gold medalist. Tyreek Hill wasn’t just good on the track, he was amazing, and that’s basically without trying that hard, because football was always demanding most of his attention.
He transferred from there to Oklahoma State where we would see the last of him on the track, at least formally. He only ran one indoor season in the NCAA where he won the Big 12 championship in the 200 meter dash, and finished second in the 60 meter dash. That was just a set up for the NCAA championship meet where he would finish fifth in the 200 when all was said and done. He actually beat Aaron Brown of USC who is today a World Champion in the 4x100 meter relay for Canada. That season and those races, are the last races we ever got to see him run. You could count that 60 meter dash he ran at a USATF Masters event in 2023, but that is not where he belongs.
The Bottom Line
Tyreek Hill had the chance to become one of the greatest sprinters in the world. He was already one of the greatest young sprinters, and right now could have been competing against Noah Lyles himself to prove it. Tyreek Hill in high school was faster than Kenny Bednarek and Christian Coleman. One is an Olympic silver medalist in the 200 meter dash, and the other is a World Champion in the 100 meter dash. That is some pretty good company for a man who only ran track and field while working around his football schedule. On the other hand, we know what can happen when a special talent actually gives his all on the track. Grant Holloway and Erriyon Knighton were both football players who had a chance to play at the FBS level. They turned it down to focus on track and field anyway, and the results have proven to be worth it.
Tyreek Hill may have made the right decision. He is an NFL player, who has had more success than almost anyone could have imagined. His superior speed is no doubt a large part of that. But there is a big difference between being one of the best at what you do right now, and perhaps being the greatest of all time. Tyreek Hill is perhaps a once in a generation talent, who had to make a decision that would change the course of his athletic future. I’m not saying that football was a mistake, but it’s about time we give him the credit he deserves. Tyreek Hill gave up a lot when he chose football, including the chance to do something that he was honestly born to do. They don’t have Olympic medals for football, but all that NFL money is a really nice consolation prize.
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