Sean Carlson Cuts HALF of the Colorado Roster

Although D1 guy decades ago, I never showed in interest in a career focused on coaching or athletics.

And I certainly don’t understand the current D1 landscape as regards non revenue sports.

So the question I have is whether this kind of broad scale action works? In my experience there are dividends to be recognized with loyalty being delivered in both directions. Note that this doesn’t mean a coach cannot reduce roster size. Rather what is the long term impact to doing something like this all at once? Will in state recruiting be affected? Colorado is no slouchy state. The answer may be this an entirely new age and things have to be done differently, and cutting this many all at once may be unavoidable.

What impact will this have on a 9 minute high school two miler? Many an All American has come from this background.

My friend a retired mid major and then Big 10 coach thinks this action is highly risky. But we are from another generation.

Not coming to any conclusions- especially since the coach is from North Central where Al Carious was beyond fantastic in his leadership of runners. But a good question to ask, especially since some of the athletes chose Colorado for the school and athletics, in an area where there are not a lot of very good schools to choose from.

You don't need a bunch of sorry ass slow distance runners in the program just taking up space. Cut em'. 90% of them were never going to be your top 5 or ever score points at conference indoor or outdoor meet, let alone make it to Nationals. Bye

These are great questions. As both a parent of a kid going through the recruiting process and as a former D1 athlete, I can tell you this will absolutely impact recruiting. Top HS recruits will steer clear of a coach like this for multiple reasons. 1. Nobody wants to live in fear that if they get injured or sick one season that their coach would flippantly cut them from the team. 2. Team culture will suffer in an environment with continuous turnover. 3. The timing of cutting these 9 kids shows a total lack of empathy from the admin and coach. It’s unbelievable they’d put these kids in this position weeks before school starts. Kids who want to be great need to feel fully supported as a human. These actions will affect the morale of the remaining team members and will absolutely deter top recruits who have many options.

There might be a short term bump in performance, but long term, this will absolutely destroy Colorado’s program.

The Olympian " dead beat" has been running all the CU home meets for years. Would be amazed if Wetmore gave the Malone family more than one scholarship each to recruit with.

With the impending 17 person limit, this will be the situation at all top programs. Cut guys to make room for the next 9:00 guys. Give them a year and cut the slowest 33%.

Uh....yes they did. Just look at their times and results. Cut. Goodbye.

It’s not a given that it actually exists

There is a more tactful way to handle cutting athletes.

No one cares about your religious takes in the thread, take it elsewhere

It is all business. It is not personal. Sucks for the guys he had to cut, but he needed the scholarships for his Tennessee transfers. Timing was unfortunately tight because it took so long to hire him.

Jake Derouin (the sub 14:00 guy) has reportedly given up on XC/Track as a whole as a result of this cut. Seems he will be switching to USA Triathalon…

All of this was such bull and Carlson can rot in hell. I can’t believe Colorado fired Wetmore and let alone hired this douche. Best of luck to Derouin and the kids still on the team. CU definitely lost some talent in this.

I feel sorry for the guy. Seems like the kind of guy Wetmore would like. He improved quite a bit, but probably wouldn’t be top five once Carlson‘s recruits and transfers arrive. I wish him luck with his triathlon career and his masters degree. At least he gets to keep the scholarship. Hopefully he can use it for the masters. I wonder what Carlson is thinking now that all of this negative publicity has come out. he would probably do it all again because he needs to have money free to improve his roster, but certainly this is not the way he wanted his buffalo’s career to start. It remains to be seen if he can overcome this early gaff and win over coaches to gain the recruits. He needs to establish a dynasty once more at Colorado.

People forget everything once you win. The second you do bad or are unproven you are wide open to criticism though.

Wetmore was seen as the greatest coach ever and all it took were a few years not at the top for people to want him gone. Guess it happened and now you got this guy that needs to prove himself at Colorado.

What's mind-boggling is that this guy ran at North Central College. He sounds like the anti-Al Carius. Al Carius was honored as the NCAA III Coach of the Century. Amazing man who could probably coach any sport without knowing anything about it and still make a team better simply because he brought out the best in people, knew how to motivate and never waivered on developing people first, then athletes. Some of their teams in the 90's were unstoppable against any division.

Quite frankly, I would much rather see Sean C. get fired than Sean B.

We won't forget.

Joe Newton was a family friend. My grandfather, a CEO of Chicago's largest company, supported Joe at York as he lived two blocks away from York when he started in the 50's. Joe was a friend and had generated lots of respect from us, even though my brother and I led two teams that beat him soundly.

He told me once that he thought Al Carius was the best coach there ever was at the university level. Great person too. I am not a great follower of the sport, especially since I know little about coaching, but it strikes me that is about as good of role model as you can have.

I talked to a couple of the Notre Dame kids at the UVA ACC XC two years ago - most recruited by Carlson and not surprisingly they were great kids, articulate, polite and all about education too. Again the human aspect would seem to matter here. Dont get me wrong - XC teams have a lot of great citizens - but that is the point - they deserve a presumption of being treated well, at least historically.

So I too am perplexed by this action. Again, times may have changed where this action at CU was a necessity or a de facto one. It just raises questions as to its long term efficacy.

This!!! How can you recruit when Wetmore pulled your athletic aid money for throws to fund one of the distance women?

I am hoping the new regime screws around some more and the Malones' get picked up by CSU, and we can watch the Rams send even more athletes to Nats, You know, like they did last year; more than CU did.

Speaking as an current D1 athlete who has had teammates get cut, it is not as simple is just "hop in the transfer portal" especially in late July, almost August.

Many athletes have leases signed, credits that won't transfer, degree programs that don't exist at other colleges, over 60 credits meaning they will have to retake classes, academic scholarships, and not to mention having to leave their friends and entire support system on short notice. Cutting athletes like this is just plain cruel, no way around it. Get out of here with this "it's a business" crap. I'm almost no college XC team has ever turned a profit, and 99 percent of these guys will not make a long term living in the sport after college.

This is AMATEUR SPORTS, I think some of you have lost sight of that. The primary thing for 90 percent of teams who will not sniff nationals is having fun and being competitive. Cutting 6 hard working American kids so you can finish 5th instead of 10th at NCAAs is not better for the sport and you just seriously uprooted lots of lives in the process. I could rant about this for ten more paragraphs but for my own good just gonna end it here.