“Coaching both NAU and the pros felt like a tempo run started way too hot—you can fake it for a while, but everyone knows how that ends.”
-Mike Smith-
His point, you don’t double dip at the highest level you dilute. College is a full-time grind. Pros are a full time grind. Trying to run both is just ego pacing… and the wheels always come off.
This is an old quote and there have been at least three or four threads about it over the last six months.
It is obviously reposted once again just to stir up the misogynistic incels after Diljeet had the top two US athletes at XC Nats.
“Coaching both NAU and the pros felt like a tempo run started way too hot—you can fake it for a while, but everyone knows how that ends.”
-Mike Smith-
His point, you don’t double dip at the highest level you dilute. College is a full-time grind. Pros are a full time grind. Trying to run both is just ego pacing… and the wheels always come off.
Do you understand what “shade” is? His point sounds like it’s about him, not about the two you mentioned.
I think it all depends on your athletic department situation.
Jerry and the byu crew have a ton of athletic department support. All those little things that add up. Heck Oregon has TrackTown run their meets for them. At a place like NAU, you have to wear more hats. You and your GA might be putting the curb down at 11:00pm for the indoor track meet!
“Coaching both NAU and the pros felt like a tempo run started way too hot—you can fake it for a while, but everyone knows how that ends.”
-Mike Smith-
His point, you don’t double dip at the highest level you dilute. College is a full-time grind. Pros are a full time grind. Trying to run both is just ego pacing… and the wheels always come off.
Mike Smith is 100% right and anyone pretending otherwise is lying to themselves. You don’t run an elite NCAA program and an elite pro group at the same time without gutting one of them. College is 24/7: recruiting, compliance, travel, roster management, daily workouts. Pro coaching is 24/7: individualized planning, race scheduling, physios, sponsors, constant travel. Trying to stack both is pure ego pacing. It always looks fine until it doesn’t then the wheels come off fast. Which is exactly why it makes no sense for Diljeet and Jerry to be running Nike pro groups while holding full time director NCAA jobs. You can’t serve two masters at this level. One side is getting shortchanged, and it’s usually the athletes. You either commit to college or commit to the pros. Acting like you can dominate both is how you dilute both and burn trust in the process
“Coaching both NAU and the pros felt like a tempo run started way too hot—you can fake it for a while, but everyone knows how that ends.”
-Mike Smith-
His point, you don’t double dip at the highest level you dilute. College is a full-time grind. Pros are a full time grind. Trying to run both is just ego pacing… and the wheels always come off.
Mike Smith is 100% right and anyone pretending otherwise is lying to themselves. You don’t run an elite NCAA program and an elite pro group at the same time without gutting one of them.
Not really what people are debating. Most of us agree with him.
The disagreement is in whether his comment is shade towards the 2 other coaches listed. It is not.
Let’s be honest there’s a reason Swoosh TC Eugene and Provo haven’t exactly become magnets for top tier talent. From the outside, they don’t project stability, long-term vision, or true athlete-first development. Between constant uncertainty, split priorities, and the perception that the system serves branding and ego before athletes, most serious pros see the risk before they ever see the upside. At the elite level, athletes want clarity, consistency, and total commitment not a situation where they feel like an accessory to someone else’s platform. That’s why, the pull just isn’t there. It’s almost like this experiment with Diljeet and Jerry will be gone next year.
Smith could easily coach pros alongside his job as a bus driver for the OK State Kenyans.
Love he still lives in your head on a post not even about Dave!!! He has less Kenyans on his team than the other schools. And he took 8th last year with almost the same team minus one Kenyan! And this year he takes 1st and added an American. in Dave we trust!! Find yourself some Jesus.
“Coaching both NAU and the pros felt like a tempo run started way too hot—you can fake it for a while, but everyone knows how that ends.”
-Mike Smith-
His point, you don’t double dip at the highest level you dilute. College is a full-time grind. Pros are a full time grind. Trying to run both is just ego pacing… and the wheels always come off.
There have already been multiple threads about the identity crisis and outright failure of Swoosh TC. The lack of cohesion is obvious Mike Smith’s top runners are Adidas and HOKA athletes, while Diljeet’s group is split between Adidas and ON, yet both are supposedly running Nike pro teams. The branding is broken from the start. Mike is the only one who even resembles a true professional coach, and even then, both setups are fundamentally flawed. And after the recent blow up in Eugene, no serious professional wants to base themselves there under that situation. Even when Eugene was the place to be back in 2005–2010, the top pros like Nick Symmonds were not being coached like college kids, they had fully dedicated, non-college pro coaches focused entirely on their careers.
1. Good for him, and I'm happy he realized that it would be difficult to double-dip?
or
2. It is easy to double-dip, but Smith specifically wasn't up to the task? This was solely his shortcoming and any decent coach would have had no problems?
I'm hoping for #1 but I suspect you are trying to be witty in the #2 camp.