LSU Sports Interactive
By Natalie Grantham
Special to www.LSUsports.net
Many have called the 2003-04 season the best in the history of LSU athletics. If that’s true, Tiger football player and track and field All-American Bennie Brazell had every reason to be completely satisfied.
But he wasn’t. The only dual-sport athlete at LSU didn’t stop to savor his teams’ national championship seasons in football and indoor track. Instead, he began to prepare to take on the world at the 2004 Olympics.
Brazell made sure his phenomenal year didn’t end in July by placing third in the 400-meter hurdles at the Olympic trials in Sacramento to qualify for the team. In the most important competition of the year, Brazell smashed his own personal best by almost a half a second with a time of 48.05.
The 22-year-old speedster from Houston has not had time to catch his breath from all the action of the past weeks and months.
“Everything hasn’t hit me yet,” Brazell said. “I don’t know when it will.”
Brazell, a junior at LSU who already owns four national relay titles and was part of the 2002 NCAA Outdoor national championship team, is the first Tiger since 1964 to participate in the 400-meter hurdles at the Olympics.
The best performance of Brazell’s career followed what he called a big disappointment. He finished second in the 400-meter hurdles in the NCAA Outdoor Championships in June.
“I got second, but I wanted to win,” Brazell said of the 10th All-American performance of his collegiate career.
Earning the spot on the Olympic team has helped ease his disappointment in his NCAA performance.
“I feel a little bit redeemed,” Brazell said. “A lot of people probably didn’t think I would make the team, but I knew I would make it.”
Former LSU head coach Pat Henry said Brazell’s high expectations for himself sparked him in Sacramento.
“He sees himself as the best whenever he lines up, and that’s what you have to do,” Henry said. “Every once in a while you’re going to get beat. Everybody in the world gets beat. But Bennie has a very good vision for himself.”
Brazell couldn’t pick a favorite moment from the past year, perhaps because he has one more goal in mind. But he’s mum on the vision he has for himself in Athens.
“I don’t like to predict the future,” he said. “I like to let it all just come. But I’m confident it will all work out.
Brazell stayed in Baton Rouge to train for the trials, where the LSU training staff helped prepare him for his biggest race yet.
Director of Athletic Training Jack Marucci said he and his staff used new methods developed at LSU to heal the hamstring injury that nagged Brazell throughout the outdoor season.
Brazell will be one just a handful of sprinters with college eligibility left to represent the United States in the 2004 games. And he has big plans for that year.
“I’m still hungry,” he said. “I still want to accomplish a few more goals in both sports.”
Brazell should make it back from Athens just in time for the Tigers’ football home opener against Oregon State on Sept. 4. The wide receiver was an asset on special teams for the Tigers in 2003 with eight tackles.
Brazell had successful stints in basketball and baseball early in his prep career. He later turned to track and football but still can’t pick a favorite.
“I love both of them. Football is a talent I have, and track is a gift,” he said.
Marucci said it takes a special athlete to participate in more than one sport.
“It’s really time management,” said Marucci, who worked with multi-sport stars like Deion Sanders and Brad Johnson at Florida State. “You have to deal with the monotony of working all year round. It’s a mental challenge. Those people just have it built in themselves that they can do it.”
Though he must balance time carefully during spring training and will miss preseason training this year for football, he said his two endeavors complement each other.
“At the beginning of football season I’m just doing football,” he said. “At the end of the season I start to get my endurance up for track, and at the end of track season I start with football, just catching balls and everything. It gives me a really strong base.”
Brazell has had the help two of the most prolific coaches in LSU history in both of his sports. Henry and Nick Saban rank among the best in the nation their sports, and their guidance is evident in Brazell’s achievements.
“Coach Saban has been a big influence,” Brazell said. “He’s very hard on me. He won’t ever let me give less than 100 percent in football or track.
“Coach Henry is the same way. He always kept my head on straight. He bought his ticket to Athens last year. I asked him why and he said,