The book review of wannabe distance god on the homepage and its mention of "The Crow Flight Marathon" got me thinking.
In "Pain" by Dan Middleman, the coach takes the runners out in a van and drops them off 20 miles from campus in the middle of a Sunday afternoon and makes them run back. Bear in mind this takes place in northern florida in a climate like Gainesville.
There was Cassidy's 60x 400 in OAR.
My hs team had a 10 mile run towards the end of every season. It didn't matter if you were a frosh running 30 mpw or a senior doing 100, you were running 10 miles with the team that day. The point was to get us to not be psyched out by double digits I think.
I don't remember anything crazy in college, just sensible, hard training. The closest thing we had to a right of passage was that every season the seniors and juniors would take the new froshies on a run up a mountain, where there was a cool overlook, but the mountain really only was like a mile (the trail, not the elevation) up.
What right of passage did your team have?