erikcharter wrote:
Here's my theory with Sudbury & Rudolph: Martin Smith was at the point in his career where he was content to hand women's distance off to a reasonable caretaker so he could have it out of his hair. Sudbury is young & aggressive & sincerely wants to build a top 10 women's program that is as good as the men's. The obstacles to that are the quality of the Big 12 - Oklahoma State, BYU, Colorado & Utah are all formidable and have better recruiting footprints or situations than ISU, while the rest of the conference has become good at cherry picking 1-2 Africans who can score at 3, 5, & 10k. The one advantage ISU has is that, other than Oklahome State, the Midwest region is not great so they have a reasonable path to NCAA Cross Country every year. Rudolph was a very solid coach at ISU but was an average recruiter. The group that are juniors & seniors right now are not great. Rudolph needed to become a better (and more global) recruiter to take the team where Sudbury wanted to go and I think she just saw an easier path at Tennessee where she inheits a far better team than she leaves behind. It's probably a win/win if Sudbury, Wallace, & a new 3rd coach can better recruit a team that fits the vision.
It's going to be hard for any strong yogging program to dominate in the new Big 12, unless a team really invests and goes all in using the new 45 scholarship allowance. There are too many all jogging teams
