D1 conference meets are now meaningless

The only teams that don't care about their conference meets are the ones that know they're going to be last or close-to-last. Every other team, in every conference, cares. The students, if property coached, care. You always see big-name athletes, who still have a month left in their season, selling out big time for points at their conference meet. That's just the way it's done.

The most impressive performance I have seen in person was at the Big Sky Conference meet in Ogden 10+ years ago.

Brett Hales, hometown hero, winning the steeple, scoring in the 10k, 1500, and somehow picking up a point or two in the 5k, to help Weber upset NAU and Sac St. for the team title.

Make the big time where your at.

Ohio astronauts meme:

Always has been.

Conferences are only meaningful in football and mens basketball. But football and men’s basketball are the only reason the ncaa is rich. So they’re not going away because track heads deem them worthless for their sport.

I second this, both from the athlete perspective and as a spectator/alumni perspective.

Flotrack used to have an awesome video taken from the 2014 Indoor Heps where they miked up the coaches so you could hear them talk/coach/cheer their athletes over the course of the meet. In that meet, the seeded 3k heat went out too slow so the winner of the seeded heat (Penn's Thomas Awad) finished third overall behind the top 2 finishers of the unseeded heat (winner was Columbia's Tait Rutherford, who was more of a XC/10k guy but never won another individual conference title). Flotrack got the moments on camera where Coach Dolan had to break it to Awad that Awad didn't win the overall event even though he won the seeded heat over sub-4 milers (he had yet to run sub-4 mile yet, which he first did later that spring).

Conferences is basically the only non-NCAA Championship meet that is scored these days. All the other big meets are just set up as dozens and dozens of time trials for each event.

loved that video, was so hype

No, It was Florida, Arkansas, Stanford. 5 of top 8 were SEC teams

https://flashresults.ncaa.com/Outdoor/2023/012-2_compiled.htm

Wishful thinking on my part, but I would like to see 4 - 16 team conferences for football only. The 4 conference champions and the next best 4 teams overall in a 8 team playoff. For all other sports, go back to traditional 8 - 12 team rivalry based regional conferences. As a consumer, I would like to be able to pick the conference networks that I pay for.

Conferences should be 8-12 teams, not 16, not 2.

The conference meet is the pinnacle for the 99% of collegiate athletes who aren’t qualifying for regionals and nationals.

Shannon Butler did the 10k 5k 1500 triple at big sky in 90 or 91. They didn’t win but impressive non the less! He also won the 5k one year and the 10k the next at ncaa with a runner up at xc . Rare talent for sure

I had a discussion with a well known P5 Coach who said the same thing.

Found the video, but it's behind the paywall now. (damn)

flotrack.org

Mic'd Up: Ivy League Heps

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Open link

It used to be that way. I'm worried with these super conferences it will lose meaning. If you are in the 17 team ACC conference, it's almost like a national meet. Same thing with Big 10s and SECs (14 teams). I think teams may just stop trying.

ADs may soon want their track team to have 3-4 individuals that are SUPER good, make and score at NCAAs and maybe make the Olympics so they have something to write about in the alumni magazine. Give 3-4 kids a full ride and 100k in NIL money and you'll be saving A LOT of money versus fully funding an 18 person women's team that is only going to finish 12th in their conference meet.

I agree. Big 10 will have 18 and Big 12 will have 16.

Rojo. Why would mega conferences do that? If anything it makes it a bigger meet for the athletes and the ADs stressing it even more.

Because the bigger more diverse a meet is the less depth means.