Bama Track/XC coach: "It’s hard to get American kids on the phone and be a good dad"

C’s get degrees wrote:

Why in the hell should our Universities fund athletics? What do sports have to do with LEARNING?????????

This is actually a question I ask myself sometimes... Why do we have college athletics?

Is it for the athletes? Is it for marketing? Is it for the alumni? Is it for the jobs?

What was the historical reason for it? Why did it start?

He sounds like a lazy coach.

Scholar Expert wrote:

Those are the very guys that people are talking about. Somebody running 4:13 in HS like Murphy gets little interest but if you freed up all of the scholarships going to foreigners, 4:13 guys would get some money. 4:08 guys may turn into 3:38 guys in college but currently get only small scholarships but they would get nice scholarships if they freed up another 100 scholarships to go around. Symonds was a D3 guy, Murphy went mid major, Sowinski was a walk-on. More elite guys than you think were not elite coming out of HS.

This is incorrect. There’s no P5 coach out there stupid enough to give big money to a 4:13 guy even if they had it to give/it became against the rules to offer scholarships to foreigners...even the school’s who don’t recruit foreigners don’t dream of offering to those caliber guys. Why? It’ll take 2-3 years before a motivated guy with a lot of upside with a good coach will develop to the level where they’ll score at the conference championship. That’s 2-3 years that the money is being pissed down the drain. Period.

Huh?? wrote:

I think he was talking about developing foreigners instead of Americans. I think football players from the other 49 states are Americans.

I think this is mostly right, but we shouldn't be too sure about Illinois. Tricky bastards.

@lonestar wrote:

LoneStarXC wrote:

Here’s a genius idea: talk to American recruits before 6pm.

Should be talk to them while they're in school, or should be interrupt their practice and his?

It’s called “before school”. Or he could talk to them after 8pm, when his kids are asleep. ?

Walters is so full of crap. His three best kenyans last year were all Transfers from other schools. Chelanga was from D2 shorter, Kiprop was from D2 Missouri Southern State, and Gilbert Kiegan is from Central Arizona juco. If he’s calling that early he’s not getting them, he’s stealing D2 guys.

Dirty recruiter and shady as hell.

Why are we talking about if a guy is 4:08-4:13 he should get a full in order to develop into an Olympian? You realize how stupid that sounds. You don’t need a full in order to become what you’re gonna become. None of the guys in this time range are gonna quit becuase they don’t get a full out of HS. They will run in college for whatever they can get or not get and if it’s meant to be they will improve.

Who cares what country the athletes are from. No one made a full about ches because he went to Hs in the US... he still wasn’t American! Get over it. Running is running you train hard enough you’ll beat the Kenyans don’t be mad becuase they’re getting it done.

Fuss* not full

Not full rides, but something. Yes there are many guys in that range who do a year at a power 5 as a walkon but decide the time commitment is not worth it because they also have studies and may have to do a part time job. If they were getting a partial scholarship, they would be way more likely to continue.

What he should have said it that he likes being paid like a coach, but his job duty is to drive the van.

There is a ton of money out there for 4:13 American athletes. But you are right, just not at the the Power 5 level.

If you can score at the conference level your freshmen year, especially in the distance events, you will be offered very good aid. If you are an Alabama high school athlete that means look to the Sun Belt, Big South, So Con, and Atlantic Sun for scholarship support. But a 4:13 athlete is not scoring in the SEC, and may never score without a lot of development.

Most guys running at the P5 level choose to go there and get beat by foreigners. For the most part, any P5 books or walk on recruit has better offers at mid majors that they turned down.

This topic comes up every year. I think the best solution is that you can only have 3 foreigners score in the big meets. Then the team (if they want to be good) must develop domestic talent.

The unfairness is mostly with the potential age difference. We know the American freshmen are 18-19. But we don't know what age the Kenyans are. Furthermore, I WOULD have an issue if there were 5 Aussies/Europeans on the team too, age notwithstanding.

THREE foreigners max to score for a XC team. Plain and simple.

MichXCMan wrote:

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2018/09/alabamas-gamble-can-crimson-tide-win-ncaa-cross-country-title-five-kenyans-not-much-else/

When I ask Waters why he recruits so many Kenyans, he says that it’s about spending time with his family. “My international recruiting happens from 4:30 in the morning to 6:30 in the morning,” Waters says. “I’m finishing up my recruiting before I even start practice. I have a four-year-old and a two-year-old and I come home at 6 p.m. at night and they want to play with Daddy. And it’s hard to get American kids on the phone and be a good dad, to be honest with you.”

I'll have to admit, that's the most unique reason/excuse for recruiting foreigners that I've seen by a collegiate coach.

Because he's a piss awful coach, has he ever developed an american kid to be even somewhat decent? The answer is no, all he does is get already fit Kenyans, uses the little knowledge of running he has, sprinkles some extra cash in there, and make bullshit excuses like this. If you want to be a good dad instead of a great coach maybe this position isn't for you. Lazy bum of an answer

Recruiting horse wrote:

You realize he is working 14 hours a day in order too spend 3-4 hours with his children?

14 hours a day? sounds like he's working 4:30-6:30am and 2:30-5:30pm

I'm surprised at all the bellyaching on this thread. As a father of 3 who finds it incredibly hard to find time to recruit for 4 programs (m/w xc/tf) without pissing off my wife, I can take what he's saying at face value. If I had every evening free to do as I please...

What a Joke!

And can somebody give me the name of one successful runner that Dan Waters has coached? or a successful team?

He's not only a lazy coach but not very good one either. If he can't put together a dominate X-C program built on Kenyans he's HORSESHIT.

A disgrace to the coaching community.

This guy is a genius! He's running a game plan straight out of the American corporate playbook:

1. Land C-suite job at large organization on the promise of lower cost/high return results in the near term.

2. Hire more motivated, and better trained labor from overseas using lax immigration system rather than taking on the risks/costs of training and retaining domestic talent.

3. Reduce costs by operating with a smaller and more efficient workforce.

4. Achieve better and quicker than promised results for all interested stakeholders

5. Win praise, bonuses, and more lucrative opportunities while expending minimal effort and enjoying work/life balance.

Go ahead and hate if you like but, this guy is operating like a true capitalist. Why do some of you hate The American Way?

Again, why should a state supported school give a scholarship to a foreign athlete? Quit with the “they are better garbage”. If all US universities recruited from the same pie (the US) then we would have no issue.

Everytime a foreign athlete gets athletic money, that is money that one less American athlete could’ve gotten. All of these foreign athletes are taking opportunities away from athletes from here.

Our national collegiate system should not help foreign athletes develop their skills to compete against our athletes.