Texas first-year strength and conditioning coach Bennie Wylie is getting rave reviews from the Longhorns.
During offseason workouts, Wylie has been leading the players in sprints, pushing the Longhorns to their limit.
“The guy’s a machine,” said senior safety Blake Gideon. “He’s the epitome of being the same every day. He injures himself working out with us, and he’s still going.”
Gideon says Wylie relates well to the players because he’s a young coach who has played the game — he was a running back at Sam Houston State — and knows what the college sport is like.
After joining Mack Brown’s staff in January, Wylie got to work implementing a new workout program emphasizing speed.
“Coach Wylie has done a good job in his little time here of getting us all bigger, faster, stronger,” said senior linebacker Emmanuel Acho. “The guys that needed to lose weight, he’s had them get their weight down, and the guys that needed to gain weight, he’s had them get their weight up.”
Acho said he’s seen an improvement in his own physique and has been pleased with Wylie’s offseason programs.
Wylie coached four seasons with the Dallas Cowboys and has collegiate experience at Texas Tech and, most recently, Tennessee.
<strong>Texas shifting dates of games</strong>
Men’s athletic director DeLoss Dodds said Monday that he will consider moving a Texas home game in 2012 if it lands on the same weekend as Austin’s inaugural Formula One race.
A date for the F1 race, scheduled for 2012, will not be set until later this year, but there is widespread speculation that an autumn weekend would be the perfect fit. If the two events do fall on the same weekend, fans could find it hard to get around Austin. Formula One races typically draw 300,000 people, while football games usually bring in 100,000 fans.
But the 2011 football schedule is also undergoing last-minute changes now that the Big 12 is down to 10 teams.
On Friday, Texas agreed to move its game with Baylor this upcoming season to Dec. 3, the first regular-season December game for the Longhorns since a 1995 win over Texas A&M.
The matchup in Waco, originally scheduled for Oct. 22, now falls on college football’s so-called “Championship Saturday,” a weekend typically reserved for conference title games. Without a Big 12 championship game because of the departures of Colorado and Nebraska, the conference will also showcase the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State showdown that day.
<strong>Lockout affecting Longhorns</strong>
It’s Day 33 of the NFL lockout, and it doesn’t look like the players will be allowed to use their teams’ facilities any time soon.
“I hope everybody works it out. It can’t be good for anybody to be talking about lockouts,” Brown said.
Since the lockout, NFL players have been forced to adjust to a new off-season schedule. That includes practicing and working out in new locations, including the Forty Acres.
Brown counts between 15 and 20 former Longhorns who are working out in Austin because NFL teams have locked their doors. Texas’ athletic facilities are first-class, which eases the transition for the newly minted professional players.
The lockout is affecting more than just the 48 former Longhorns on NFL rosters. Pre-draft workouts have also changed for those Longhorns looking to make the jump to the pro ranks and prospects have been asked by the NFL Players Association not to attend the NFL Draft in New York City.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime dream, and now their opportunities are being changed, and it’s very uncertain for the future,” Brown said. “Hopefully this thing will get settled soon.”
