How I would solve the problems of college track and field

Normally I would take this space to write weekly updates about our team, and I will down the way a bit, but I’ve had something else on my mind about the sport of college track and field ….. How to fix it.

Problems with our sport

Before I talk about the solutions, let’s get into what’s wrong with our sport and what’s keeping it from progressing.

Track and Field is one of the most popular sports in terms of participation at the high school and collegiate level but it struggles to gain a foothold on television and with the average sports fan nowadays.  It’s the center piece of the Olympic Games every four years but other than that most Americans prefer Football, Baseball or Basketball the rest of the time.

As college coaches we can’t do much about the elite levels of track and field organization, however, we can certainly affect it on the collegiate level.  We need to make meets that people want to either attend or watch on TV so that we are relevant to the public and to the administrators in our own athletic departments.

Major problems for coaches include scheduling and how to determine what a successful track team is for the general public.  I’ll start with the last one first.

What is the definition of a successful track meet?

If you read any college website’s recap of the track and field weekend, it will generally always be very positive on how well it went.  This is because in college track there are multiple definitions of what a successful track meet is.  You can win the meet as a team, you can win multiple events even though you lose as a team, you can set a whole bunch of personal records and get last place and still call it a great meet.  It happens all the time.

Can you imagine a football team getting beat 56-0 but the headline is “Football team excited about successful weekend” and then there is no mention of the score, just highlights of the best plays.  This happens quite often in our sport so the general public has got to be confused as to what it means to have a successful meet.

Think about a basketball player scoring a career high 30 points when his team just lost by 20 points.  In the post-game press conference would you ever hear the player sounding overly enthusiastic and happy about his own performance when his team was thoroughly defeated?  If he did he would not make his teammates or coaches very happy.

Opponents to this would say track and field is an individual sport and that is the most important part.  While I don’t disagree with that statement I would counter with the fact that our current system is set up to be individualistic and it appears to be failing.  So maybe we should try something different.

The scheduling problem

Because track teams and coaches can schedule any kind of meet at any time, what we end up with are all kinds of different meets every weekend.  Some are small scored meets, some are huge non-scored meets that take all day, some are dedicated to one event area, and some are multiple versions of these rolled into one.

Take our team this weekend, for example.  We split up and had a large portion of our team compete in a scored meet at Air Force while all of our best distance runners went to Notre Dame (the altitude at Air Force kills non-altitude distance runners).  On top of that our top multi-event athletes stayed home to recover from a demanding Heptathlon or Pentathlon last week at UNI.  We are trying to give our athletes the best opportunities to compete to their best but have split up the team to do so.  And we are as into TEAM track and field as anyone in the country.  I’m sure we’ll fall several notches in this week’s National Dual Meet Rankings but we did all we could do in the situation we were given.

We have a great distance coach – Kirk Hunter.  He understands and enjoys the team part of track and field but wants the best for his athletes.  Our current situation in NCAA T&F puts coaches like Kirk in an impossible situation to make everyone happy.

Another problem is how we qualify to the NCAA Championships.  It has always been a point of contention amongst coaches in our sport.  I will speak to this below.

Let’s get to some ideas …

The Wise Solution

Generally there are two camps of opinions on how we should structure the season.  One is to set up opportunities for the athletes to compete at the highest level possible with no effort to make the meets enjoyable to watch.  The other side is to make meets smaller with a team score and take a normal amount of time to complete (2-3 hours).  Sometimes those meets aren’t very competitive.

I think I have an idea that will make everyone happy but understand I lean to the side of smaller team meets.  Some of these ideas are mine, some are others, but it’s my blog so feel free to agree or disagree with it (me) as much as you want.

The first thing I would do is mandate the track and field schedule to look like this (using 2016 as an example):

--No competitions in December (except a pre-season Intrasquad Meet)

--Jan 9 – Meet #1 – Quad scored meet (or dual/tri)

--Jan 16 – Meet #2 – Quad scored meet (or dual/tri) – NCAA scheduled meet (see below)

--Jan 23 – Meet #3 – Non-scored open meets only

--Jan 30 – Meet #4 – Quad scored meet (or dual/tri)

--Feb 6 – Meet #5 – Quad scored meet (or dual/tri) – conference opponents only

--Feb 13 – Meet #6 – Non-scored open meets only

--Feb 20 – Mandatory off weekend

--Feb 27 – Conference Championships

--Mar 5 – Mandatory off weekend

--Mar 12 – NCAA Championships

Now let me explain the details of each meet …

Meet #1 – You can schedule anyone you want for this season opening scored meet.

Meet #2 – The NCAA would schedule this meet for you and the point would be for them to make it a regional/rivalry type meet that schools would have no choice in scheduling.  For example for us it would be Wichita State, Kansas, Kansas State and possibly Missouri (KU and Missouri won’t compete against each other anymore in lots of sports for political reasons).  There would be great meets all over the country.  Ohio St/Michigan, Florida/Florida St, Kent St/Akron, the North and South Dakota Quad ….. What a great way to get the country excited about T&F!

Meet #3 – This would be the typical Washington/Notre Dame/Iowa St meets where everyone is trying to run fast.  If smaller colleges have great tracks it would be a chance for them to make a lot of money with hosting a big meet.  This would also be one of two weekends for multi-event competitions.  In fact you could have Pentathlon/Heptathlon only meets – which could be pretty cool.

Meet #4 – Same as the season opener where home teams get 2-4 teams together for a scored meet.

Meet #5 – With three weeks before the conference meet, this would give everyone a preview of things to come.  If your conference had 10 teams you’d have a Quad and two Triangulars.

Meet #6 – same as Meet #3, go run blazing fast and have 30 heats of the 200.

The conference and NCAA meets would be the same BUT …..

….qualifying to the NCAA Championships would be much different – amongst other differences below.

You could only qualify to the NCAA Championships through one of the four scored meets or the conference championship.  You could not qualify at one of the large carnival type meets.  This would ensure that teams would bring all their team members to the smaller scored meets and distance coaches could communicate as the meets approaches to try and make fast races with good competition.  Heck I’m fine with even having rabbits to help the distance guys run as fast as possible.

Also, at every scored meet each team would have to enter every event with at least one competitor.  And if the one competitor didn’t start the competition (or if they dropped out) then the team would be penalized 10 points in the team score.

In the scored meets, teams would be limited to a certain number of athletes, 30 for example, for each gender.  There could be “JV” type meets on the previous night or earlier in the day but athletes couldn’t compete in both meets.  You couldn’t qualify for nationals out of the JV meet.

Also, only college teams could compete in the scored meet.  No unattached or post collegiates – just college kids in their uniforms.  The open meet weekends would be great for the post-collegiates to plan and have great competition together.

I would also make it a limit of 4 athletes per event.  This would ensure only one flight of field events and a reasonably short time schedule.  All the meets would have the exact same events and only vary in time schedule because of the facility.  All the meets would have the same rules.  For example in D1 meets the Men’s High Jump would have an opening height of 6-2 at every meet across the country.  Maybe D2 starts at 6-0, D3 at 5-10.  There would also be minimum marks in the field events so a team couldn’t enter a non-thrower in the throwing event.  Same goes for maximum times for running events.  Don’t make the mark with at least one athlete?  Negative 10 points for your team.

And guess what?  The score is REALLY gonna matter!

From these scored meets you could easily create a RPI type ranking based off the actual team scores and strength of schedule for each team.  The RPI ranking would determine the MAXIMUM number of athletes you can qualify to NCAA’s.  For example:

Top-50 RPI – No limit, as many athletes/events as you can qualify to NCAA’s

50-100 RPI - Up to 8 events can qualify to NCAA’s per team

100-200 RPI – Up to 4 events can qualify to NCAA’s per team

200-250 RPI – Up to 2 events can qualify to NCAA’s per team

250-however many teams there are – only one event can be qualified to NCAA’s

(I’m just throwing out numbers, nothing scientific above)

If you had athletes eligible for NCAA’s but on teams that aren’t ranked high enough then you would fill out the top-16 with the next available athletes from eligible teams.

This would make sure the teams are trying to build reasonably complete track AND field teams and making an effort to do well in the scored meets.  If you don’t think this is fair to the top athletes then think of the All-American point guard who never gets to play in the NCAA Basketball Tournament because his team isn’t good enough.  Life isn’t always fair.

All of the above suggestions would make college track and field far less confusing and create tons of exciting and MEANINGFUL meets all across the country in all collegiate levels of the sport all year long.  I’m sure there are things you can pick apart from this proposal but I feel confident I can speak to most of them.  I imagine many of you already have ways to take this and make it even better.

I think something similar could be done outdoors with being able to keep the Penn Relays, Drake Relays, Mt SAC, etc. on the non-team scored weekends.  We would eliminate the NCAA Preliminary rounds and qualify straight to Oregon.

Now, who did I make angry?  And if it’s you then give us a better solution.

The Lonergan Solution

This is a more radical idea that’s not mine.  I must give credit to Stephen F. Austin’s Sean Lonergan.  Hopefully he doesn’t mind me sharing and tweaking it a bit.

Sean’s idea ….. Get rid of indoor track.  Add a fall track season.

I know, I know, this sounds crazy but just listen.  Replace indoor track with a fall track season that generally falls in line with the cross country schedule.  Distance runners still compete in cross country while the rest of the team competes in events no longer than 800 meters.  This would save distance runners from racing all year round and help them have more successful races later in the summer.

And we would have many different events in Fall Track & Field.  How about the 300m hurdles?  Maybe the 4x200m relay as a regular event?  How cool would an outdoor 600m be?  Maybe we don’t have the Javelin which would keep their season the same anyways?  How about a sprint medley relay of 100-200-300-400?  How about scoring the meet in relay style where you add the top 2 performances of a team together in each event?  Get rid of the 200, Triple Jump and Hammer for the fall.

The meets would be shorter and a lot of fun.  Heck, lots of places have better weather in the fall than they do in the spring anyways.

But that’s not it.  By eliminating indoor you wouldn’t have the crazy scheduling issues of training all fall then taking a month off official practice then starting the season right away.  You could actually take a break after Fall Track and gradually work your way back into shape for the spring season.  You would save your budget a significant amount of money because your fall travel roster would be smaller than indoor.  And since most teams have an outdoor track facility and not everyone has an indoor track you would be able to utilize your facility more often and host more competitions.

For northern schools, when the weather gets bad in October/November you could head a bit south for a meet.  As hot as it is early in the fall in the south I’m sure the favor would be returned early in the season.

I haven’t touched on the idea of a fall national meet because the entire idea is radical to begin with.  Who knows, maybe it could be a real TEAM national championship in a beautiful southern city?

I like it.  I like it a lot.  Great idea Sean!

The do nothing and keep it the same solution

Keeping everything the same.  Doesn’t sound as exciting as the Wise or Lonergan Solutions does it?  What do you think?

Share your thoughts and I’ll respond on the next blog.

Now onto WSU T&F …

Air Force/Notre Dame recap

I mentioned above how we lost our team scored meet this weekend at the Air Force Academy although we had a great time in beautiful Colorado Springs.

Nestled in the mountains, going to a meet at Air Force is a special experience for our kids.  Most of them aren’t used to the scenic mountain view from the hotel as well as the national pride you get from competing on the campus of one of our armed forces.  Taking a walk around the facilities puts things into perspective about how these brave, young cadets are living a life totally different from us.

As for the meet, here were the team scores:

MEN:  Air Force 149, Wichita St 133, North Dakota St 109, South Dakota 68

WOMEN:  South Dakota 131, North Dakota St 130, Wichita St 126, Air Force 67

You can see how close the women’s meet ended up – and it came down to the 4x400m relay for the top three teams.  Unfortunately we came up a little short.  The Air Force men had a real good meet and was just a little too much for us on their home track.

Colorado Springs is at around 6,000 feet of altitude.  If you don’t normally train at that high of altitude it can affect you greatly, especially for distance runners.  So we decided years ago to not put our kids through that and to send them to Notre Dame and their oversized track.

All together there were lots of great performances at both Air Force and Notre Dame.  We would’ve loved to have won the meet at Air Force but we have bigger fish to fry at the MVC Championships in three weeks.  Many teams around the conference appeared to have a great weekend as well and our battle for a couple of titles will be a difficult one.

Next time

Next weekend is super busy for me so I’ll probably take a week off the blog.  I’ll be interested to see the reaction to this blog so maybe I’ll respond to that in a couple weeks and preview the MVC Championships.

We host the Herm Wilson Invitational Friday and Saturday in the Heskett Center against UT-Arlington, North Texas, Oral Roberts and UMKC.  Hopefully our women can keep our unbeaten streak at home alive and our men can win as well.

Until then, thank you for reading and Go Shocks!

The Shockers beat Kansas and Kansas State --- what does it mean?

This past weekend we had the opportunity to compete against our in-state Division I rivals Kansas State and Kansas in a scored competition (along with the Air Force Academy).  We ended up defeating all three teams on both the men’s and women’s sides and our kids proudly left the facility with their heads held high.

The meet was scored in dual meet fashion and here were the scores:

MEN

Wichita St 104, Kansas St 81

Wichita St 99, Kansas 86

Wichita St 113, Air Force 85

WOMEN

Wichita St 94, Kansas St 92

Wichita St 98.5, Kansas 84.5

Wichita St 117, Air Force 76

I have a few thoughts about the meet …

First of all had a really nice meet with lots of season bests and many victories during the course of the day.  We finally had a meet with warm weather and not much wind so our athletes got some legal (not wind aided) races as well as our long sprinters got to run races without a fierce wind on one side of the track.  It helped our placing in the MVC standings and with less than two weeks to go we are feeling pretty confident about our chances for one or maybe two titles.  All in all we got a lot accomplished as a team!

But what does it really mean?

Last week I lightheartedly referred to this meet as the “Battle of Kansas”.  Does it mean we have the best team in Kansas?  Will it propel us to victories in the MVC Championships in two weeks?  Will we get more recruits because we can brag about beating KU and K-State in head to head competition?  Will we qualify more athletes to the NCAA Championships this year?

I don’t know the answers to any of those questions.  But what it does do is make me think about our sport on a larger scale.  This is one of the few meets that we got mentioned on local television and in the Wichita Eagle newspaper.  The reason is, obviously, because we beat our in-state rivals.  But there are problems with this.

I don’t think Kansas and Kansas State were too thrilled that we beat them in the meet but I also don’t think they care too much because at the end of the day winning a meet like this doesn’t mean anything except for bragging rights.  That’s a major problem with our sport.  Kansas State hosted a very nice meet and can talk about several victories and outstanding performances they had.  Kansas can do the same, and in fact they didn’t even mention the team scores in their press release.  Is that good?  Is it ok that every team can spin their press release to make it look like they were successful?

Kansas might have been able to win the meet if they entered their athletes in more events (as could’ve K-State), but they didn’t because the bigger goal is to get ready for the Big-12 Championships.  I don’t blame them at all, we did the same thing by not doubling our best athletes as well, but shouldn’t winning this meet mean something more than bragging rights?  What if winning this meet meant Wichita State (or KU/KSU) would earn more national qualifiers?  Would they “try” to win a lot more then?

None of this should diminish the accomplishments of our men and women this weekend, in fact we have very strong outdoor track and field teams.  We expected to win the men's meet and thought our women had a chance although winning that meet was probably a slight upset.  Our men's team will probably be favored to beat Indiana State at the MVC Championships in two weeks - and Indiana State is REALLY good.

Our coaches association is trying to change the culture of the sport but most of the things I’ve heard doesn’t really address questions like the ones I’m talking about.  I’ve heard rumors that there are changes coming in the near future but will it make our regular season more important than just preparation for the conference and NCAA Championships?  Our basketball team had to win many regular season games to earn a better seed for the NCAA Tournament.  Everyone knows each game means something and that creates lots of interest.

I love our sport, in fact I think it’s the most pure and beautiful sport there is.  I just wish that beating KU and K-State meant more than just having bragging rights.

The Kansas track rivalry heats up this week, a look at the MVC race, and it's windy in Wichita!

Track

We just had an odd weekend in the world of outdoor track and field – an off weekend.  Well sort of.

As we put our schedule together this year we knew the week following the Oregon Relays (which were right after the KT Woodman) would probably be a time our athletes would be tired so we decided to have an off weekend to give our kids a chance to rest and recover as we prepare for the final regular season meets of the year.

We did have a meet, however, as we took some of the athletes who didn’t go to Oregon up to Emporia State on Wednesday night for the ESU Midweek Open.  We got some nice, warm weather and those who competed did a great job putting up several personal records.  Not making the trip to Oregon was tough to take for many of those athletes but they responded beautifully with terrific results at Emporia.

I decided to give the group Thursday off from practice and we had a spirited final day of the week for Friday’s practice.  Now that the weekend is behind us, the team looks refreshed and ready for our meet at Kansas State Saturday.  We have a great meet planned this weekend as we’ll compete against Kansas State, Kansas, and the Air Force Academy in a scored competition.  The weather forecast looks good and we should be ready to put up some big results.

 

We’ve always wanted to have scored meets against our in-state Division I rivals but haven’t been able to do so until this year.  I am happy to announce that beginning next year we will start our indoor season with a scored triangular meet with Kansas-Kansas State-Wichita State.  The meet will rotate between the three schools for 2015, 2016, and 2017.  It will be a great way to showcase track and field in Kansas and another chance for us to compete against these Big 12 schools, including the defending national champion Jayhawks.

I haven’t mentioned much about the MVC race in the previous weeks but it is starting to become a little clearer now.  Just like always, the MVC Outdoor Championships should be a close battle between several teams.  I always score the meet straight off the performance lists every week to see how we stack up and at the moment the lists say we have a slight lead on the men’s side and are in second place on the women’s.  With the exception of the 10k, most athletes have competed in their main events so this gives us a pretty good look at where we stand.  Here is what the “off the list” scores are:

Men: Wichita St 149, Indiana St 135, Loyola 127, Northern Iowa 112, Southern Illinois 109, Illinois St 91, Drake 73, Bradley 19.

Women:  Indiana St 159, Wichita State 128, Missouri St 105, Southern Illinois 104, Loyola 90, Northern Iowa 87, Illinois St 67, Bradley 41, Drake 37.

As you can see we have a very balanced league and I would say any of the top five men’s teams should be considered for the title as well as the top four women’s teams.  If you remember the indoor championship our women significantly outperformed our projection and came from about 60 points down to lose by 13.  We’re gonna need another performance like that to defeat Indiana State while our men look to be on more equal footing with the Sycamores.  They are the defending champions and we know they will be ready to go.  We’ve been working hard though and our teams are hungry for a title!  It should be a great weekend of track and field in Carbondale, Illinois, in three weeks!

The one thing that has been a big disadvantage for us is that most of our meets have been so windy.  The NCAA and our conference doesn’t allow times when the wind is over 4.0 meters per second and in some cases we have athletes who haven’t had a single race under that standard.  I think we have some very good kids that should factor significantly when we’re all on the same track together and hopefully this will give us the boost we need.  The wind also significantly hinders the races around the track.  The weather this Saturday looks good so hopefully we get some legal times to put on the board.

With having an off weekend from competition I got busy in recruiting by getting out to a couple local high school meets.  There are always meets going on in the Wichita area and most Tuesday and Friday nights can be spent scouting out the local talent.  Most of our recruiting for the class of 2014 has been completed so much of the work is in seeing the class of 2015 kids for the first time.  And while “most” of the 2014 class of recruiting is done, it’s not totally done so being at a meet when a new senior pops up is always a good thing.

For the time being, I’m only going to be writing about track and field because, well, that’s about all that I have going on at this time of the year.  I’ll try to add in some new movie stuff when I actually start watching them again!  Go Shocks!

The MVC race is heating up, "Her" kind of freaked me out, and I hate commericals

Track

It was a crazy week of track and field for the Shockers.

It started out innocently enough with practice on Monday but that evening Wichita was hit with several inches of snow and school was cancelled for Tuesday and Wednesday.  Although it wasn’t a blizzard, the city of Wichita is not very well equipped to deal with any amount of snow since it doesn’t occur very often.  So when we get even a small amount it can turn most of the city into Armageddon!  For someone who grew up in Ohio and went to college in the Snow Belt, it

always makes me chuckle about how little snow we can have for school to get cancelled.  Even though school was cancelled it didn’t necessarily mean practice would be also.   Unfortunately, our indoor track, the Heskett Center, is operated by the university and not the athletic department so we were not able to practice either day at our track.  After completely taking Tuesday off we were able to practice Wednesday at our indoor baseball facility.  It was better than nothing, and we were thankful to practice, but it wasn’t the same working out in a smaller turf field as compared to our 200m Mondo track.  We had to completely alter our training plan but we made the best of it and focused on our trip to Colorado Springs.

We left for the Air Force Academy the next morning and were welcomed by -7 degree weather and 7000 feet altitude.  Now obviously we are running indoor track so the temperature wasn’t difficult to deal with but the altitude is something that can affect even the best athletes.  We didn’t even take many of our distance runners because of how difficult it is for them to compete at that altitude.

As for the meet itself, we came away feeling just so-so about our performance.  We finished a close 3^rd (out of 4) on both sides.  Our conference rival Indiana State won both meets.  We were hoping to win but knew it would be tough to pull off.  There were a lot of good marks put up but we know we still have a ways to go to be where we want in three weeks at the MVC Indoor Championships.

Colorado Springs is about 7 hours from Wichita and after the meet we drove through the night to get home.  We arrived back in Wichita at 7:30am so the rest of the weekend has been about resting and trying to get back on schedule.  Big time college athletics is not always glamour and glitz, especially when you watch the sunrise on the way home.  Yes it was a strange week indeed.

We are only 20 days away from the start of the MVC Championships and it should be very interesting indeed.  Every Sunday I closely analyze how the rest of the conference is doing and this year has been very different from years past.  The MVC has always been a very good track and field conference yielding individual national champions and numerous top-20 team finishes over my 8 years in the league.  And while that national success is impressive, the strength of the conference is the abilities of each school to build an overall team to compete at the conference level.  This makes winning championships very tough yet very rewarding.

Some schools talk a lot about the conference championships and some try to ignore it, hoping not to put a lot of pressure on the athletes.  We talk about it in our first team meeting in the fall and feel like it helps in building a team focus and chemistry.  There are two ways to look at a conference meet, objectively and subjectively.  Objectively, you can just look at the performance lists on Tfrrs.com and score the meet out.  I do this every week, even though there are athletes that haven’t competed in all their events yet it still stands as a pretty accurate look at how it might turn out.  When you start making predictions or subjectively looking at it you generally have a bias towards your own team.  We try to be very honest about where we are when we talk to our team so we can set realistic goals each meet.

For the last several years, the men’s indoor championship has been a 4-team battle between Wichita State, Indiana State, Northern Iowa and Southern Illinois with all four of those teams winning championships in the past 5 years.  This year looks to be different with the addition of Loyola and the significant improvement of Illinois State.  If I had to predict right now this would be the men’s standings:  1) Indiana State 2) Wichita State 3) Loyola 4) Southern Illinois 5) Illinois State 6) Northern Iowa 7) Drake.

While Indiana State beat us this weekend and they look like the favorites on paper, they don’t give out the trophies for what you do during the regular season and our men are still optimistic they will give a championship effort in three weeks.  We have traditionally competed well at the MVC Indoor Championships and I expect we’ll do so again this year.

The women’s meet is very, very different from the past few years.  Wichita State has won or finished 2^nd in 18 of the past 20 MVC Championships (10 years each for indoor and outdoor) so generally we have had one team as our main competitor through the years.  SIU has been a tough rival as well as Indiana State.  Missouri State won a championship a couple years ago and Northern Iowa and Illinois State have all been in the hunt.  This year it seems that everyone is much more balanced and the championship will be as wide open as ever.  If I had to predict it today, this is what I would say:  1) Southern Illinois 2) Indiana State 3) Wichita State 4) Northern Iowa 5) Loyola 6) Illinois State 7) Missouri State 8) Bradley 9) Drake.

Putting our team in third doesn’t make me feel very good but remember I’m trying to look at it objectively at the moment.  I do think our ladies can win a championship but we’ll have to improve over the next 3 weeks to do it.  The difference between first-sixth is probably 35-40 points, so we will have our hands full with several teams.  This kind of close competition makes for a very stressful yet exhilarating championship week!

This week our team will split up to try and focus on some individual competitions.  We will take a group of sprinters to Iowa State, a group of distance runners to Grand Valley, Michigan, and a few field event athletes to the University of Oklahoma.  The following week will be a tune-up meet for a few athletes so this weekend is really our last big weekend of competition before the MVC Championships.  Hopefully we’ll have more of a normal week of practice and be ready to go!

Movies

When school and practice got cancelled on Tuesday, I took the opportunity to see the movie “Her”.  This movie stars Joaquin Phoenix (Johnny Cash in Walk the Line) and is set “a few years into the future.”  The basic story is how this guy,

who is in the process of getting a divorce, buys a new operating system for his computer/phone/etc that has a level of artificial intelligence that gives it a personality.  Phoenix then starts to develop feelings and a special connection to “Her” and eventually falls in love with his operating system.  While I was watching the movie my main thoughts were about how I’ve never seen a movie like this before and I hope that our society never gets to this point.  All in all I thought it was a very good movie and I’m glad I saw it.  Not all movies should make you feel happy throughout and I think the people who made this movie did a good job of making us think about how technology is affecting our lives.  Hopefully “in the future” we will look back at this movie as a joke, but right now I imagine it could happen – and sooner than we might think!  I give Her 8/10.

I rode the bus with the team this week and we ended up watching a couple movies on the trip.  The first was “Bad Grandpa” from the guys who made the Jackass movies.  It’s a very crude comedy with Johnny Knoxville dressed up like a dirty old man playing pranks on unsuspecting bystanders.  Turns out it was a pretty good movie if you have an open mind about adult humor.  Watching it with a bus full of college kids made for an interesting experience.  On the way back we watched “Hunger Games 2” but I was falling asleep every 10 minutes and didn’t really get to see the whole thing.  What I saw was pretty good but these kinds of movies aren’t in my wheelhouse.

DVD choice of the week (from my collection): I was watching a program about John Belushi on the Biography Channel this week so I thought I’d put “Animal House” (1978) in this section this week.  The original “crazy college movie” is still held up as one of the best comedies of all time and stands up very well to this day.  Most all of my friends have seen this movie so if you haven’t, crawl out of your cave and take a look.  A cool fact about this movie is that it was filmed on the campus of the University of Oregon and in one scene you can easily see Hayward Field (Oregon’s iconic track facility) in the background.  Made for only $3 million dollars, it made $141 million in the states and probably twice that much in video sales.  I know they have at least five of my dollars.  Toga! Toga!

Everything Else

The Winter Olympics got started this week and I have watched bits and pieces of the first few days.  I get frustrated watching the Olympics because of how it is tape delayed and edited with NBC focusing on mostly Americans or people that have unique stories.  My frustration probably stems from the Summer Olympics coverage of track and field and how they try to play to the masses and thus don’t really show the real competition.  I tell people all the time that track and field on TV needs to be shown like golf.  In golf coverage they show all the shots, good and bad, and it builds drama throughout the competition and the focus is on winning, not the score.  In track we get too concerned with how fast

someone is running or how far someone is jumping when we should focus on the competition.  This builds drama and then people would start watching more.  Seeing one pole vault attempt isn’t very interesting and doesn’t represent what really happens.  This is what I see when I watch the Winter Olympics.  Just show the events instead of dumbing it down to the masses.  Let’s build a more intelligent audience that doesn’t think the USA is the only country competing.  The reason March Madness is so exciting and highly watched is because no one knows what is going to happen next.

The other thing with watching the Olympics is how many dang commercials there are.  I am a guy that changes the channel as soon as a commercial comes on so needless to say the Olympics and their multitude of frequent advertising lost me several times.  I know the powerful TV executives aren’t listening to me but if they were, just know that if they put a sponsor logo in the corner of the screen during the competitions it would be far more effective than any commercial (which I wouldn’t see anyways).

Shocker basketball continues to roll on.  This week they took care of Indiana State and Northern Iowa in two tough road games to improve to 25-0.  They are up to #2 in the USA Today Coaches Poll and #4 in the AP.  What an awesome thing we are seeing here in Wichita this year.  And for those who are knocking the Shockers' weak schedule, just keep in mind that Creighton, who finished 2nd to WSU in the Valley last year, is currently the best team in the Big East.  Keep it going guys, what a remarkable accomplishment!

Website of the Week

http://cincinnati.com/blogs/daugherty/

If you are a Cincinnati sports fan then you probably know who Paul Daugherty is.  He’s the long time columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer and a terrific writer who blogs most mornings on Cincinnati.com.  It is usually one of the things I read during my lunch break at work and, even if I don’t agree with what he says, I am always entertained.  I met him and his wife in an airport one time and he was very gracious.  When he found out I grew up in Brown County he was immediately interested because he bought some land in Adams County a few years ago.  Nice guy, terrific writer.

Interesting articles and videos to waste some time with

Crazy ending to the Weber St/Sacramento St basketball game - video (2:30)

How much snow does it take to cancel school in your area?

2014 IQ Test - I got 120 so I doubt it's very legit

Staying in Sochi for the Olympics is a hilarious adventure

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis, Samuel Jackson and Toby Maguire - video (5:18)

The 50 most perfectly timed pictures on the Internet 

NBA statistics are starting to get a little crazy - for stat geeks like me

The story of why one of the best track athletes in the nation won't be at NCAA's

This has got to be the biggest quarterback in professional football history - video (1:31) 

Comedians in Cars with Seinfeld interviewing Howard Stern - video (14:48)

Two victories, I might be Dazed and Confused, and Kent State beats Akron

The indoor track season is like a roll of toilet paper.  The closer to the end you get, the faster it goes.

Track

Things are happening fast and furious for our track program!  Besides being in the middle of the indoor season, we have our signing period starting this Wednesday.  That means that there aren’t many days off (an occasional Sunday evening) and as we get closer to our conference meet everything rises in the level of intensity and focus.

Starting off with recruiting, we are sending out several national letters of intent this week for our recruits who want to sign right away at the beginning of the signing period.  Once the signing period begins on Wednesday, we can sign athletes at anytime the rest of the year.  Lots of kids these days have public signings where they invite some press, family, and friends to make a nice event out of it.  It always makes me think back to my own recruitment in high school and how I arrived at deciding for Kent State.  Even though I was the first athlete from my high school to earn a Division I scholarship, my signing wasn’t a major event.  We did it at my family’s dining room table with zero fanfare.  There was a picture in our local newspaper but it was just me acting like I was signing something for the sake of an article.

We probably won’t have an official announcement of our recruits for a couple weeks but you can follow us on twitter @WichitaSt_TFXC as we will be able to let people know who we sign on there when we get their papers.  This is a special time for these young athletes, I know it was a decision that changed my life forever, and it was definitely for the best.

As for our current team, we had our second and final home indoor meet of the season – the Varsity Apartments Invitational.  This has become a terrific meet with great competition from several other quality Division I programs.  Fortunately we were able to win both the men’s and women’s meet and took some strong steps forward in our development as a team.

Our men’s team, which we have known is very strong, easily won the meet.  In fact we outscored second place UT-Arlington 177-103, with Stephen F. Austin in third at 88.  Those are both good track programs so this is further evidence of our strong men’s team.

On the women’s side, we thought it would be a very close meet with SFA.  Our ladies really stepped up this weekend and we won 169-123 over the Lumberjacks with no one else within 100 points.  Our women’s team has been working hard as the “underdogs” this year and the team chemistry is starting to come together.  Even though it wasn’t a perfect weekend, it was a very positive one for us and a lot of fun for the fans that came out to the meet!

Last year when I walked out of this meet I was very frustrated with how my group was performing.  We were struggling with health as well as team chemistry.  They knew it and I knew it.  One year later I couldn’t be happier as we have truly started to become one as a group and focus on the success of the team.  We ended the meet with great efforts in the 4x400m relay and I can’t wait to see how we perform next week.

This weekend we will face an even tougher opponent – Indiana State.  We will see the Sycamores at the Air Force Academy along with host Air Force and Sacramento State in what should be a fantastic quadrangular scored meet.  Indiana State’s men will be our toughest competitor at the upcoming MVC Championships and their women will be one of several teams we will have to defeat.  This meet at Air Force will hopefully give us some confidence that we can accomplish those goals.

As I walked out of the Heskett Center after two consecutive 14 hour work days of hosting the meet, I turned to one of our coaches and said, “I really enjoy having home meets but I really love when they are over.”  Now we get to be on the road until the second week in April when we host the KT Woodman Classic at Cessna Stadium.  The next four weeks will see us travel to Colorado Springs, CO, Ames, IA, Lincoln, NE, Manhattan, KS, and Cedar Falls, IA.  As Willie Nelson sings … On the road again, just can’t wait to get on the road again …

Movies

I was planning to see the movie “Her” this weekend but it fell through at the last minute.  With the craziness of hosting a home competition I was only able to watch a few late night classics on cable as I was replying to emails or falling asleep in bed.  The movies I caught bits and pieces of were “Higher Learning”, “Dazed and Confused” and “The Comebacks”.  Higher Learning is one of the few movies where the main character is a college track athlete and, like lots of movies that try to show track and field, it was unintentionally funny.  Dazed and Confused is great classic movie about high school kids in the 1970’s.  It had early appearances from actors like Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck amongst several others.  Great, great movie.  If you haven’t seen it I recommend catching it the next time it’s on Comedy Central.  The Comebacks is a really bad movie that spoofs many other sports movies.  I always enjoyed movies like Airplane and Naked Gun back in the day, and while The Comebacks had some parts that made me laugh I wouldn’t say that many people would like it.  RIP Leslie Nielson!

ESPN does a great job with the 30 for 30 documentary series.  I watched the one about Mary Decker in their Nine for IX series, very good stuff.  I also watched a couple of their short films, "Juding Jewell" about the Atlanta Olympics bombing incident and "The Great Imposter" about Barry Bremen, the guy who would sneak into professional sporting events as a player, coach, umpire, etc.  I have linked them at the end of this blog, both are worth watching if you have 30 minutes.

On a sad note one of the most talented actors of our time, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, died of suspected drug use.  I really liked him in movies like The Big Lebowski, Almost Famous, Capote, and Moneyball.  He always had a great presence on the screen and at age 46 died far too early.

DVD Choice of the Week (from my collection):  I’ve always been a big fan of the horror movie genre so my first choice in that category in this blog will be Audition (1999).  This is a Japanese horror movie made by a director named Takashi Miike.  I heard about this movie while watching a Bravo show about the scariest movie moments so I found it at Best Buy and tried it out.  It starts off very slowly then builds to an incredibly scary and horrifying conclusion that is the worst version of a bad date you can imagine.  Movies like this hardly ever work in the United States because the typical audience member couldn’t sit still long enough through the slow beginning to reach the intense and crazy finish.  It’s all in subtitles but don’t let that scare you away!  The crazy girl in the movie is scary enough!

Everything Else

I need to continue to mention Shocker basketball as they are now one of only two undefeated teams in the nation (Syracuse being the other).  They are now 23-0 and have their toughest road stretch of the season coming up this week at Indiana State and Northern Iowa.  All I can say is they are doing incredible and I hope they keep this undefeated streak going as long as they can.  I was able to attend the game on Tuesday against Loyola when our track team got honored at halftime for their academic excellence.  Koch Arena is one of the special college basketball venues – always a great time!  Congrats to Gregg Marshall and the entire basketball operation for an unbelievable run!

I finished up my taxes this week which is always a good thing.  I know a lot of people that put it off as long as possible but I never understood that because all they are putting off is getting back some of their own money.  I say give me back the money as soon as possible since it’s mine anyways!

One thing you realize when you are consumed for most of the weekend at a track meet is there is so much that happens during weekend that you never even realized.  This weekend my alma mater Kent State defeated rival Akron in basketball on a last second hail mary shot.  I only happened to see it because one of my college teammates posted the video online.  HERE IT IS.  “Fight on for KSU, Fight for the Blue and Gold! We’re out to beat the foe; Fight on brave and bold!  Fight on for victory, Don’t stop until we’re through.  We’re all together, Let’s go forward, K-S-U!”  Always great to beat Akron!

The Super Bowl turned out to be a dud of a game.  We have an annual party at Coach Rainbolt’s house with our coaching staff and families.  I was hoping Peyton Manning would make Richard Sherman look bad but it wasn’t to be.  Congrats to the Seahawks, they definitely deserved to win!

Website of the Week

http://www.ustfccca.org/

This is the website for college track and field provided by the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.  Tom Lewis does much of the work on this site and he does an incredible job of organizing everything there is about all levels of college track.  The weekly results section is where I spend most of my time but it has just about everything a college track fan would need.

Interesting articles and videos to waste your time with

An early version of film critics Siskel & Ebert show where they talk about "Cult Films" 

Can't stop laughing after watching this contemporary dance video

19 hard things you need to do to be successful

30 for 30 short film "Judging Jewell"

30 for 30 short film "The Great Imposter"