I’ve
been on a lot of airplanes recently so I’ve had time to write and respond about
our new favorite topic haha!
It
has been a lot of fun seeing the response to my ideas about college track and
field the past few weeks. I have
probably talked to 25 or so current Division I coaches and have generally had
great conversations and have been able to speak to any issue they bring
up. We all have things with how the
sport affects us personally but through this entire project my goal has been to
look at it with a bigger picture in mind – the health of our sport.
My
ideas for outdoor are down below this comment/response section as well as a
note to my distance coaching friends …
Responses to comments
on Letsrun.com about my solution to college track and field problems:
Comment – Awful programs and
distance programs won’t like it.
My response – This is a common
response but one that has a good answer.
First let’s take smaller schools that focus on distance running and
don’t have the adequate budgets and facilities to have complete teams (awful
programs as it was put). My proposal
hardly affects them at all. They can
still have the same team, same budget, same facilities, etc. The only thing that it affects is if they end
up having more than one NCAA level qualifier for indoors. And how many of those teams end up having
that? Hardly any. In our conference Bradley would be in that
situation. They qualified zero athletes
to NCAA’s this year even though they won the MVC in Cross Country and have many
good distance runners. They would still
get to run at Notre Dame a couple times a year but would also run in smaller
scored meets. These type of schools
could even have their own scored meets against each other. Their RPI wouldn’t be very high because of
the strength of schedule but it would be competitive in the distance events and
commonly not in the field events. Part 2
let’s say that we’re talking about BCS distance schools that focus on
distance. I hear Oklahoma State in this
scenario a lot but keep in mind they aren’t just distance runners (they won the
Big 12 and had several athletes in other events). How many events does Oklahoma State generally
qualify to the NCAA’s? I think with very
little recruiting effort Oklahoma State would have a high enough RPI to qualify
as many athletes as they needed. And if
there is a BCS school that has enough resources and facilities to have a
somewhat complete team but simply chooses not to then that is not good for our
sport. And understand I say “somewhat”
complete team because in my proposal you only need one entry in each
event. You could potentially cover that
with around 7 non-distance athletes (LJ/TJ, HJ, PV, SP/WT, 60/200, 200/400,
hurdler). Heck if you had a good multi
they could cover most of them by themselves!
Comment – Sounds great but you
can’t compare T&F to Football and Basketball because those sports have an
equal playing field of scholarships.
My response – Actually no they
don’t. FBS and FCS football scholarships
vary by around 20. T&F actually is
potentially more equal because there is no difference in the amount that is
allowed for T&F (12.6 for men and 18.0 for women) by the NCAA for all D1
schools. Add into that the way it
currently is for T&F is that schools are already different in how they
choose to offer scholarships and that wouldn’t have to change. Having more scholarships would definitely
help you build a better overall team but it isn’t any different than it would
be today and, like I mentioned above, if a school is ok with not having a full
team and focusing on Cross Country then they can still do that.
Comment – No matter how much
WE love T&F we are no more popular than Tennis, Wrestling, Rowing or any
other non-revenue sport to the average fan.
Changing this will not change that fact.
My response – As Ron Burgundy
might say, “agree to disagree”. First I
would say that T&F is indeed more popular on the collegiate level than
rowing and tennis to the average fan.
Just look at attendance at any of those sports compared to a track
meet. Yes we have the advantage of large
participation numbers but those are still butts in the seats and people
watching our sport. For small indoor
track meets at Wichita State we routinely have over 500 paying fans and over
1000 people in the building. Our top-25
ranked tennis team might get 100 people (including players and coaches) if
their lucky on a sunny day. I’ve been to
plenty of non-revenue sports at many different universities. This is the way it is for lots and lots of
them. On top of that whenever T&F is
on TV it generally gets very good ratings.
From what we were told at the convention in December, the NCAA meet last
year on ESPN had very high ratings and that everyone was surprised how well it
did when it was packaged in a way that was easier to understand for the casual
fan (sound familiar here?). Secondly, I
know our sport is great and I’ve seen drama within all the events that,
presented properly, always gets the casual viewer interested. How often are highlight films shown and great
track and field athletes or moments shown right alongside the NBA, NFL and
MLB? All the time. I’m not saying we should have a goal of
getting 20,000 people to a dual meet but it is realistic to grow our sport and
get much larger than current attendance.
Comment – How about making it
like football where there are two divisions where BCS schools are fully funded
and is a team sport and non-BCS are at 75% and is individual?
My response – So basically all
non-BCS schools keep it the same as now but have less scholarships? Sounds great (sarcasm). I don’t entirely disagree with the notion of
having separate championships for BCS and non-BCS but currently in track
several of the top-25 schools at the NCAA Championships are non-BCS schools.
Comment – Does anybody
seriously think this would increase track and field’s popularity?
My response – In the USA sports
are generally popular if they are TEAM sports.
Exceptions to this are sports like Golf, NASCAR and Tennis. At the collegiate level Golf and Tennis are
very much team sports and the top athletes go on to professional sports. NASCAR is actually more of a team sport than
most people realize. I’m not proposing
any changes to elite track and field (although Vin Lannana is trying to have a
team concept with pro meets this year).
I think my ideas would help college track and field become more popular
in a grass roots style on campus and in the community. It would also have a MUCH higher chance of
being on television or at the least online streaming. The more eyeballs watching it means, yes, the
more popular it would get. And many of
the meets we have now don’t inspire anyone to watch.
Comment – The system we have now allows a coach
to develop an athlete to perform. Ask any coach of any scoring team at NCAA if
they would compromise that to make their team more appealing in the January
post-meet press release.
My response – Let’s be honest, there are only a
handful of teams each year that placing high at the NCAA Championships is
something they can realistically focus on.
Oregon, Texas A&M, Florida, Texas are some of those schools (who
almost all have early season scored meets now anyways). There are some teams like Missouri that are
focused on a top-25 NCAA type performance.
The rest of the teams that end up finishing high at NCAA’s do so with a
couple of upper level athletes (example Kansas State with Akela Jones), almost
all of the rest of their team is not at the NCAA Championships so what are they
compromising? Akela Jones competes in a
lot of events early in the season for her team (she kicks our butt a LOT) and
there are plenty of press releases about her.
And my proposal would eliminate the NCAA Prelims for outdoor so the
early season meets would be two weeks closer to the NCAA’s than it is now.
Comment – I think another problem is that
"the system is broke" rhetoric is simply an opinion. There are people
who feel strongly that it is broken. There are people that feel strongly that
it is not. These are opinions. We are not a
popular sport. We are a boring sport. I love it. I always have. But it is not
an attractive sport to average sports fans because it is simply too boring. Not
length of meets. Just boring to the average sports fan because there is nothing
that connects the athletes to each other. No contact. No plays. No connection
with a ball for defense and offense. Changing the NCAA system is a waste of
time.
My response – I feel bad for this
person because, obviously, they have not experienced track and field like many
of us have in terms of intense and entertaining scored meets (namely conference
championships but also very good dual/tri/quads with rivalries). He is right that these are all opinions – and
his opinion is that we are boring!
Believe it or not it doesn’t have to be that way!
Comment – I have no idea how threatened the sport
is because we don’t have a lot of scored meets. Most have a scored conference
championship and that is fine. Non scored meets offer more flexibility in
athlete development. I would rather we train people to be their best rather
than compromise that because someone who doesn’t even care about the sport
wants a team score on a given weekend.
My response – At our annual
coaches convention two years ago a speaker said to us, “Look to your left, look
to your right, in 10 years one of the three of you will not have a track
program anymore”. Does that give you any
reason to be concerned? Do you now think
we should just keep it the same? Our
sport is under threat and we must be proactive before it’s too late. If AD’s and administrators want our programs
to have more fans and be easier to understand then we better listen to them
before we’re looking for jobs in another line of work.
Comment – Would your training change if there was
a schedule change as you suggest? Do you feel that a change that values the "regular season" meets
more than a single qualifying race would be a detriment to those All-Americans
and qualifiers to are trying to peak for the end of the season? Where would you cut off
potential to be a late-season performer, as opposed to training athletes to
perform for the now important early season races?
My response – Being a sprint coach it wouldn't affect
us at all. We want to run fast from the first meet on (as do most sprint
coaches). In fact in my proposal we would eliminate any meets in December so we
would actually be starting later than usual. This "non-effect" would
be the same for virtually all events except the distance runners. Although I've
talked to a lot of distance coaches and many (not all) don't think it's a major
change either – heck they run in distance carnivals all outdoor season long to
try and qualify now! You wouldn't HAVE to run all your distance kids every
week, it depends on how good your team is. You would need to at least cover the
events with one decent athlete in each event, however, which only seems fair.
Comment – Conferences should retain the right to
customize meetings between member schools. But remember situations like ECAC
and Hawaii. You can’t just fire away changes and alter the whole system. There
are winners and losers to every administrative wide decision put forth.
My response – I definitely understand those situations but what do
they do in a sport like softball? They
have to figure it out. I think there are
exceptions to the schedule I proposed for schools in certain situations but one
like Hawaii isn’t very common and shouldn’t dictate what 300 other schools
might do that is overall a positive. I
address this further below in talking about setting up an independent committee
to deal with specific issues.
Comment – If a basketball player scores 30 points
that has an overwhelming effect on how the team is directly competing with the
other team. However in track if a runner wins by a huge margin and breaks a
world record in the process, their points do not mean anymore than someone who
barely wins in a very slow time. That is why a press release will talk about
individual results in track even when the team loses. If he is proposing a
point system based on time or distance as opposed to place (like in the
decathlon) then maybe we are on to something. 5k 1st place 13:30, 2nd place 14:20... shouldn’t have the same scoring
as 1st place 14:19, 2nd place 14:20.
My response – While I would agree a Decathlon type scoring system
would be more accurate it seems almost impossible to implement unless you want
team scores that number in the hundreds of thousands! And while I love the Decathlon it’s a very
hard event for most fans to follow and keep track of. I don’t think we want team scores going in
that direction – it would cause more confusion.
In my proposal you could have up to 4 entries in each event that would
need to meet a minimum mark so in a dual meet I would simply score 8 places
with 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 and if there were only 4 entries in the event they would
get the 10-8-6-5 points. In a quad meet
score it 16 places 20-18-16-14-13- on down to 1 if there are 16 people who get
the minimum mark. There would even be a
lot of excitement for someone getting 12th place and making the
minimum mark because it could result in an important 4 points for the
team! A battle for 12th and
13th place in a meet SHOULD have some level of significance.
Comment – If your team scored meets don’t do
anything except show you beat someone and nothing more (such as conference,
NCAA qualifying) then how does this work. A win in November in basketball
contributes to a w/l record and possible post season. A win in a scored track
meet in early February has no bearing on post season.
My response – Actually in my proposal those meets in early February
ARE important because it can determine how many athletes a school can qualify
to the NCAA Championships. This is an
important part of the equation or teams won’t try their best to do well at the
meets (like they do now). Every team
would have a ranking every week. How
great would it be to have #1 Arkansas, #8 LSU, #25 Louisville and #46 (insert
your team name here) to promote to your fans and administrators. Believe it or not meets like this (and
victories against those highly ranked teams) mean more to the fans, alumni and
administrators than you think. It’s not
something we as track coaches think is that important because we are so focused
on the current system of getting our athletes ready for conference and NCAA’s.
Comment – Cross Country is a team sport and for 95% of the teams - track is an
individual sport.
My response – I agree (although not the 95%
part). And for a lot of distance coaches
they understand and want that for track too.
Cross Country is setup to be team oriented and the distance kids love
it! Every race is scored and the
athletes run hard all season long AND there is meaning to wins and losses for
qualifying teams to the NCAA Championships.
Why can’t track be similar? Why
do some distance coaches change their perspective when it comes to track?
Comment – The state of Texas, the largest state
in the continental United States, has 3 competitive indoor tracks. One was
destroyed this year in a snow storm. 2 tracks... You want the 15-17 NCAA DI universities to all do quad meets at A&M and
Houston every week.. Seems realistic....
My response – I definitely think the number of indoor tracks to host
is something to look at (not an issue outdoors) but your comment is a little
short sighted. First, not every Texas
school would compete in the state of Texas every week (we’ve hosted many Texas
schools at Wichita State) and there are other indoor tracks in the surrounding
states. But how about A&M or Houston
hosting two meets on the same weekend (Friday/Saturday) with other teams – with
the shortened schedule you could even have two on the same day in the same
facility. Many of them already host
multiple day meets anyways. Those host
institutions could make extra money while also attracting even more of a fan
base for the sport from the people in those areas. If you’re a diehard track fan you’d go to
both meets, especially if they were only 3 hours long a piece.
Comment – I think the problem
is- people on this message board are too young to remember that track and field
was once popular in the USA. Look back
to the 60's and 70's- it was on TV- people knew Ryan, Liquari, Prefontaine,
etc. Why is not as popular now? It was an individual sport back then. Is it the media? I don't know.
My response – This is a thought
provoking post. T&F isn’t as popular
because there is just more competition for things to do but I have also asked
this question to alums who ran in the 1960s and 1970s and they said for regular
meets the crowds were also sparse. So
maybe we romanticize it to a point except for some obvious meets (USC/UCLA)
back in the day. As for the media this
is true for traditional media like newspaper and television but I would argue
that there is more attention on track nowadays because of the internet. Every weekend you can watch meets online and
read press releases that summarize meets.
I get frustrated when our local newspaper doesn’t mention how well one
of our kids did but we should realize traditional media is not as important and
fading with every month that goes by. We
need to think outside the box and continue to grow our sport online and in the
grass roots. I’m not going to get all
political here but just look at today’s presidential races and see how important
the anti-establishment and grass roots campaigns are now. “Times they are a changing” and we need to
change with it.
Comment – I hate to say this but how about the
rest of us who are now not going to be able to get into your Quad meets because
you limit the number of teams competing?? You need to live in the real world
and not just your team think about everyone. Or is it only you and your school that count?? My program would die under this type of schedule
because we could not compete in your meets. I have a full team a very full team
55 men 30 women we hit all events but we are a small school with no track!!
My response – This one makes me
chuckle because if you knew about me or the school I coach at you would realize
how inaccurate your comment is. We
hosted two indoor meets this year where we invited ONLY non-Division I
teams. One we competed in and another we
hosted for local junior colleges. Two of
the four weekends I proposed for scored meets would be determined by the NCAA
or the conference you’re in so this would probably help the problem you are
talking about. I did not write this in
the perspective of Wichita State University.
We currently have a very healthy situation with the way things are
now. We win a lot of championships, we
qualify kids to the NCAA’s and we always have post-collegiates competing and
going pro after college. What I am
proposing would actually help other schools more than us. I do live in the real world, feel free to
come visit anytime!
Comment – Let’s have less
events (for example 1 distance race, 1 sprint, 1 relay, etc) and make it a
shorter and more exciting time schedule.
My response – While I don’t
totally disagree with this, I don’t think we want to start cutting out
events. I think this would only lead to
cutting those events all together down the road. With my proposal meets would rarely need to
go beyond 3 hours, indoor or outdoor.
And as long as it remains in that window then it would generally be much
more exciting track and field to watch for the general fans as well as hardcore
track and field followers.
Comment – I don't see how this won't hurt XC.
Fully funded teams will be fine, but teams with less funding often choose one
sport over the other (i.e. Oklahoma State, Villanova). Many schools also have roster limits and XC athletes
count against that roster. Forcing teams to field a full team in this situation
is wrong. The NCAA should not push their philosophy on a program in this way.
My response – I like how the
comment is schools with less funding like Oklahoma State. Less funding than who? Certainly not the school I coach at! My plan would actually help teams that have
smaller rosters because you could only compete 30 people in a given scored
meet. A team like mine (with 65 on the
roster) would have to figure out how to deal with this. I fully understand roster limitations and my
proposal helps even the playing field for schools like that.
Comment – It's constant political battle in
NCAATF with the Mid-Majors vs Power Five vs the Olys Four. In the end Oly
Medals is all that matters.
My response – College track should
not have all of the responsibility for gold medals at the Olympics. And by the way I disagree that Olympic medals
are all that matters. It’s certainly
important but not everything. We have a
problem in this country with USATF and what happens with athletes after college
– and that I can give an opinion but I don’t have any solutions. Our governing body (USA T&F) needs to
make changes to help athletes continue to do T&F after college. Colleges shoulder WAY more than their share
of that load.
Comment – How do we build a
team to do well in these scored meets but also do well in our tough conference
and NCAA meets? We have to focus on
certain event areas to just be competitive.
My response – I realize there are
DI conferences that are crazy good out there and you have to recruit national
level kids to just score in some events.
One of our problems as a sport that I’ve mentioned before is that the
public and administration don’t understand our sport, and that includes how to
structure a track and field team. This
idea would force teams to have to at least cover the events (which is only fair
to the sport) and make everyone be in a somewhat similar situation which would,
in turn, help schools in the above situation.
My idea would be to standardize how meets are run and how teams are
built (with much more freedom than most sports). Think of it like this: A football team can
have a focus on being a high-scoring, pass heavy team and not put a ton of
resources into running backs and defensive players – BUT they still have to
have a defense of some kind. You can
have a distance heavy operation in track and field BUT you should still need to
“have a defense”.
Other things that I
wish our sport would do (this should be a whole other blog) …
--We
need to have some kind of display with the score on it at all times. At Wichita State we bought a projector and a
projection screen to display the team scores because we don’t have any type of
large scoreboards. This is an inexpensive
and easy to manage solution. The score
needs to ALWAYS be visible so places that have a large scoreboard for
displaying times would need to have something else to go along with it. Imagine a basketball game that only showed
the stats of each player but never showed the score. This is what is accepted in college track and
field these days.
--All
meets need to be structured in the same way and have the same basic entering
and seeding procedures (including conference championships). These things are already being talked about
on some levels but would help organization for home meet directors. Entries are due the same time each week,
there is no “home track advantage” to seeding races or events, basically it
would take out decision making from the home team’s hands. TFRRS is already the official results
reporting service so let’s go ahead and make Directathletics the only way to
enter meets (as long as they agree to not monopolize and charge higher fees
than normal). Sorry to those other
companies that do entries but it needs to all be in one place for the above
mentioned reasons (and many more).
--Setup
a committee to deal with specific issues and needs from week to week. Without going into detail of all the things
that could be issues (facilities shortcomings, special seeding issues, etc), it
would be important to have an organization that doesn’t have a dog in the fight
to deal with questions and create reasonable solutions to hosting needs that
are fair to all schools competing. How
frustrating is it when the home team gets all the good lanes in the 200?
--Score
the NCAA meet at least 16 deep. It seems
odd to me that you can have a whole group of athletes that are top-10 in the
nation and not have a team score at the end.
The top teams in the NCAA meet would still be the top teams but it would
be a much more accurate way of ranking teams on a national level. Getting 8th at a conference meet
and 8th at the NCAA meet shouldn’t have the same value.
A final thought to
distance coaches out there
I
love good distance races and think it’s a very important part of the overall
track and field experience. I even
created a distance carnival at Wichita State in April every year to make it as
cool of an experience for those athletes and coaches as possible so I get it
when you say this isn’t geared to help distance kids develop. Although I think learning how to race is
something many college coaches neglect and I see it every year when kids run
time trials all year then fall on their face at conference and NCAA’s where
it’s most important. There are distance
kids that NEVER get to experience the thrill of being part of a track team even
though it’s entirely possible they could because the teams splits up every
weekend. We are not doing a service to
them to have a great collegiate experience by having them segregated from the rest
of the teammates. Distance races make up
about 25% of a track meet so we need to be careful to think what’s best for the
ENTIRE sport. Tiger Woods is one of the
best athletes in the history of the world and many of his best memories of golf
is playing at the collegiate level with a bunch of his buddies. Track and field can work in a team
environment and if you disagree then you’ve simply never been in a situation to
experience it yet. You do it in cross
country every week and love it – let’s do it in track too.
Outdoor plan
March
19 or before – any type meet but non-NCAA qualifying (call it the preseason)
Meet
#1 – March 26 – Scored Dual/Tri/Quad
Meet
#2 – April 2 – Non-scored open meet (Stanford, Texas Relays, etc) – 10k, Multi
qualifying
Meet
#3 – April 9 – Scored Dual/Tri/Quad – Conference opponents only
Meet
#4 – April 16 – Scored Dual/Tri/Quad
Meet
#5 – April 23 – Non-scored open meet (Penn, Drake, Mt SAC, etc) – 10k, Multi
qualifying
Meet
#6 – April 30 – Scored Dual/Tri/Quad – NCAA scheduled meet
May
7 – Mandatory off weekend
Meet
#7 – May 14 – Conference meets
May
21 – Mandatory off weekend
Meet
#8 – May 28 – NCAA Championships
Once
again, details are similar to my indoor plan, you would only be able to qualify
for NCAA’s (except 10k and multi) on scored meet weekends (Weeks 1,3,4,6,7).
One
issue that will come up is having the big traditional relay meets on the
non-scored weekends. I understand
scheduling certain weekends is a major issue but realize the SEC just voted to
not go to Penn/Drake and have their OWN meet starting in 2017 so they are one
step ahead of me already. While the
colleges are important to those meets, the main draw is the high schools and
professionals. I would be open to moving
the non-scored meet weekends around from year to year depending on how much
those meets could align with each other.
The other thing to realize is that if we only qualify to NCAA’s on
scored meet weekends the need to go to Stanford, Penn, etc. is different
although I do think an exception for the 10k and multi is needed. You can’t fit those events into a short
scored meet time frame window.
Thanks
again to everyone who has read and given input.
I think this is a great discussion and I welcome any constructive
criticism you have!
