VIT wrote:
a lousy college track coach can put their energy into a handful of people and then put on his resume how he had 4 conference champions in his program last year. and in reality put up like 60 team points. it takes an attentive AD to notice, oh, they finished 5th in conference 150 points behind the rival school down the street drawing off the same recruiting area.
football coaches are simply more accountable, and the team nature of the games and you either W or L implements that. lane kiffins get exposed. he can't fall back on, well, but my TE won conference. or i had two guys first team all conference. you either win games or not. in track we might sense a coach is overrated, but it's an opinion based on HS times and other esoterics. and not competing well at meets can be excused. oh, but the distance program is good. he trains that sub 4 kid. except sub 4 kid was running sub 4 in HS.
i had a college prof who said that it bothered him if the curve going out was the same people as the curve coming in.
Unlike football there's so much variance to track programs that it makes a big difference.
School a) might have a better scholarship allotment, better academic scholarships and an admin that actually cares about winning while school b) might have like 3.1 scholarships hard to get academic money and an admin that gives a garbage budget because track is an annoyance for them
But yes there are trash coaches at every level because success is more murky in track it's easier to get promoted up due to external factors like what school you went to who you're connected to etc. Instead of coaching acumine