My Question: Why isn't Cornell better than they are in cross country and in the distance events on the track?
While I don't necessarily agree with all the opinions espoused by the Brojos on this site, I generally agree with their training philosophy. So I've been wondering why Cornell isn't better:
Why don't they dominate or at least win the Heps conference?
Why aren't they consistently top 5 in the region?
I'm not saying that they aren't good, but I do wonder why they aren't better. They have a number of things I expected would make them a top team in the northeast.
1. RoJos philosophy of high mileage, easy recovery runs, and tempo runs.
2. Although Ivy league schools can't offer athletic scholarships, they are very appealing for academic reasons (and you can get academic scholarships and financial aid).
3. Cornell is potentially the easiest Ivy to get into, particularly because you could go to SUNY-Cornell freshman year, red-shirt and then transfer into Cornell. That is an easier way than going directly from high school.
4. Now the big one: letsrun.com gives cornell a massive recruiting tool. Whether they use it directly or not, everyone in the running community knows about letsrun and generally know that RoJo is the coach at Cornell.
Based on the statements above, Cornell would have been my first choice if I were coming out of high school in the past four years. So the question remains, why aren't they doing better? Robert Johnson has been coaching their for long enough now that the team is his from the recruited athletes to their training.
Is RoJo overly dogmatic in his high mileage philosophy? If that were the case he might not get the guys who are injury prone to be decent because they are always striving to be mileage monsters and superstars rather than settling for being decent. It could be that he isn't able to convince the athletes to do the work once they are there. It could be that they can't handle the academics and the athletics at that level (but this wouldn't explain why they don't beat the other school at Heps). It could be a lack of cross country tradition (but see what Chris Fox has done with Syracuse in 4 years). It could be bad luck thus far. It could be that he emphasizes a long term approach so much that they don't run that well in college but they have the potential to be wildly successful after college. It could be that RoJo's (and therefore my own) training philosophy is wrong, although I don't think that is the case based on other evidence. Maybe he isn't getting the raw talent (but again why not)? It could be that he can't put the different pieces of the training together quite perfectly. I don't know and that is why I'm asking. Does anyone have any insight?
And please don't take this as a condemnation of Cornell or RoJo. I'm not saying he's doing a bad job, I'm just asking why Cornell isn't even better.