Lex and Leo Young’s careers are on the chopping block

He might be better off going elsewhere. And not Duke or UCLA. Class of 2027 has another year to decide

trained like pros in HS and easier to get away with gray area things in HS (just a theory...)

Education should not take full priority for runners on scholarships. If the twins haven’t been doing their best, they’ve been ripping Stanford off. That they’ve run 3:35 and 27:48 which indicates that have been all in. If they have been just going through the motions, they could have lost their scholarships. Accepting a scholarship worth $400K and then focusing on a YouTube channel, is morally wrong.

Leo Young major: “undeclared”

Lex Young major: “undeclared”

It’s not like these guys are whiz kid engineers or computer scientists who’ve been networking and doing internships during their college time. They’re basically majoring in running and banking on a career in that. We’ve seen plenty of other Stanford grads who didn’t do jack with their Stanford degree after a pro running career didn’t work out.

$800k family scholarship is probably the largest family bust ever.

Let's Run.com: Where making less than $20K/year as a domestic "pro" is more honorable than going to grad school or having a successful working career

Let's Run.com: Congrats on your Nobel Prize for curing childhood cancer, I guess. You're still a joke for never breaking 3:30 for 1500 meters!

Let's Run.com: No Olympic medals? How dare you spit on Brosnan like that!

Let's Run.com: If you all have the same parents, why aren't you all equally fast and equally motived? Help me to understand this!

Let's Run.com: Anyone that doesn't win an NCAA title is a big loser...except for me because I won a Turkey Trot in 2004.

I'm too old to be a big L&L fan, but I have seen some of their videos. I went back and looked at their Youtube channel over the past year. They've posted 12 videos since the start of Stanford's 25-26 school year. For guys with years of experience making videos, 12 videos of ~12 minutes each over the span of 9 months doesn't exactly scream "focusing on Youtube." I watched a couple of the ones from Leo's indoor season, and he mentions that being busy with school has kept them from filming as much as they'd like.

I know people on this board love to complain about the social media/marketing side of the sport, but saying that L&L prioritize social media over either running or school just doesn't seem like a fair statement from the available evidence.

Also, Leo has said for a while now that he's majoring in Management Science & Engineering (same major as Ky Robinson), while Lex is majoring in Sustainable Architecture & Engineering. You don't have to view them as brainiacs or be eager to watch their stuff, but I feel like there are a lot of middle aged adults on here wit an outsized disdain for the guys.

gostanford.com

Three are Academic All-Americans

Garrett Brown, Leo Young, and Lex Young were named to the CSC Men's T&F/XC Academic All-America team.

Open link

post college they will join OAC, be good, no Nico, but good enough.

Stanford has always had this kind of split though. It’s not like NAU the last decade where that’s the school you go to if you want to be a future pro. A lot of kids who go to Stanford have more passion/interests than just running, and most of them progress pretty well as runners and leave after four years with a great education and are setup for success later in life. Some guys who go there choose Stanford because they want to be the best and they think that program will help them get there. And both sides are right! Life is too short to focus solely on running but it’s also too short to not try and be the best you can be while you’re young. I think most of the people who go through Stanford leave happy with their experience and are well prepared for the next phase of life- and that’s what’s most important

I think many of you Leo/Lex fan boys/girls are missing the OP's point. I believe this is a "Running" website, not a academic/career website. Of course Leo/Lex are going to have Stanford degrees, and most likely be very successful people. They also have been successful runners in both high school and college. That doesn't hide the fact that they failed to advance to an NCAA outdoor track final. Speaking from a purely running standpoint, given what they accomplished in high school and in college, they've not lived up to the hype and expectations many thought they should have. When you enter college with a resume those two came with, not only failing to make an NCAA outdoor track final, not winning an individual conference title (X-C or Track), let alone WIN an NCAA title, it's not unfair to say they were somewhat of a disappointment. Again, this is not an assassination on their character or them as people, they just didn't "Answer the bell" in X-C or Track. Also, they have one more year of eligibility, so the jury is still out as to their NCAA careers. All in all, they've done pretty well, just not what many expected (including themselves).

Why did this get downvoted? It’s absolutely unacceptable to give someone a $400K scholarship and not have them do their best in return. If you were Santos, you would be cool with the twins not holding their end of the bargain?

I see posts like this all the time. As a fan of the sport, all I care about is how fast they run. Whatever they do after college, will take care of itself.

You come off as actually being jealous of them while trying to hide behind spurious claims of them not doing their best.

Please name all of the top pros who ran for NAU over the past 10 years.

Nico young, George beamish, drew bosley

Why would I be jealous of athletes? I root for everyone to run well and my days of competing in distancing running are long gone. At that time I was jealous of elite runners, but not now. I played baseball before that and I’m not jealous of Mike Trout.

There have been many posts about the twins, between YouTube and academic demands, not doing their best. In my original post on this topic I said that I believed they were doing their best and anything else would not be acceptable. You’ve switched it around to me believing they’re slackers and everyone else believing they’re all in.

Please read this out loud and then think again about those times you just listed. Also as many have said, they are getting engineering degrees from Stanford. They made the right decision, and I'd go as far as to say they made the best decision to attend Stanford

By the logic of some letsrun.com posters, Sean Brosnan must be an awful coach if Lex and Leo have not been exceptional at the university level. In other words, Coach Brosan burned them out is the reasoning. However, experienced people would view the situation through a different lens, and they might say the Brosnan was a better coach than the Stanford coaches, at least for individualizing training and instructing them on how to compete. Or, the answer may be that Lex and Leo are challenged so heavily in academics at Stanford they are jot improving due to fatigue outside of running.

Note, I think Brosnan is a very good coach.

Be careful using that screen name. I'm pretty sure there's a training group that has it trademarked.