Jeff Demps gets out of a tutoring session and starts to walk down Stadium Road to his dorm in Springs.
The usual group of teammates was sitting outside, just "chilling," as Demps put it. Then as he's about to walk in the door, Chris Rainey asks a simple question.
"Want to race?"
"I never back down so I went up and got my running shoes," Demps said. "We started running behind the dorm."
This is what happens when Joe Haden, who runs about a 4.3 second 40-yard dash is the seventh-fastest player on the team.
All the fastest players want to see the universal contest of who's the fastest. Demps was fresh off competing in the Olympic trials and ran a 10.1 100-meter dash earlier in the spring, making him the fastest high school athlete in the country. Rainey has also been known to race at any time as West Virginia's Noel Devine challenged him to a race in a Wal-Mart parking lot during his senior year of high school.
This time it was outside of a UF dorm with teammates looking on.
The first race went to Demps. Then the second one stalled because Rainey said "he slipped." Then the third time Rainey won.
"You can't survive in the real world unless you know how to compete," running backs coach Kenny Carter said of the race. "Anytime someone feels confident enough in their abilities that they want to challenge somebody else to see if they're the best - Amen."
The competitors aren't finished with each other, either. Rainey said the next race will be on a track, where the running backs will feel more at home with track shoes on.
"I feel like Rainey is going to beat anybody in the first 40 to 50 yards," center Maurkice Pouncey said. "In the 100, Demps will get him."
Just don't think their real passion is on the track. They'd trade a stinky, grass-stained football jersey over a track singlet.
"They don't consider themselves track guys playing football," Carter said. "They consider themselves football guys running track, which is a big difference. You don't see a gazelle trying to warm up and stretch before the lion attacks him in the jungle. That's the mindset they have. They just go."
Then if it doesn't turn out the way they want, the duo are more than willing to line it up and do it again.
"Anytime, any place I'm always ready to run," Demps said. "I'm sure (Rainey) is the same way, he's so competitive. Every time I step on the track or on the field, I'm going to come out here and do what I've got to do and win the race. If I don't win, I'm going to keep running until I do win."
