What are all the cut NCAA runners going to do?

Yes. 300 programs. Some will cut 15 distance runners. Some will cut 10. Some will cut 5. If they average 5, that is 1500.

TDLR?

They'll do like runners in the rest of the world do. Get a job or stay in school.

Sport is a small period of your life. Join a club and run. Distance running is one of the few things you can do with such little resource. Put your shoes and shorts on and run out the door.

Stay and improve your grades, graduate and get a job.

Buy your own gear and run outside with your friends.

Easy peasy

Lol dude- these people “athletes” are so damn entitled. heads will explode if they aren’t getting HJs from their school to pretend to be athletes. They will try to transfer (D2/3 i guess) and expect the same level of courtship and affection as they currently get as D1 roster fodder. It’s already happening with schools that cut sports teams- they nearly all go to portal to seek out that warm and grateful HJ. After all- how else will they ever break 4???

Not sure exactly what you mean here, but the only HJ I got from my school was when they flew me out for my Official Visit. Heads did explode???

I naively thought every day would end like that...maybe I will try out this portal to seek out another.

Football is interesting because they are reducing "roster spots" down to 100... but increasing scholarships from 85 to 100. So while about 40 walk ons will get cut... Ostensibly 15 walk ons could techinically go on scholarship.

The obvious solution was that football (and probably basketball) should have become completely independent from the NCAA like ten years ago. That’s probably still going to happen. But now it’s destroyed every other sport in the process.

Overheard some of the other freshmen disrespecting the seniors at practice on Monday- this needs to end now.

I’ve been watching Noah Fisher’s birth video all week as motivation for this weekend

A couple of pretty good football players, Bo Jackson and Herschel Walker, might disagree. I saw Bo place second at Eastman in 1984 in the 60 yard race. Walker had the manually timed record at that time, 5.9.

This is absurd, of course. Bo and Herschel are easy examples, but Deion Sanders excelled at both, and a San Francisco 49ers WR back in the day went to the Olympics in hurdles (Nehemiah).

And, eh, what about Devon Allen?

I was responding to the poster who said distance runners competing in football would be comedy. I guess I should have typed “D1 XC/Distance Track”.

Yikes. Astounding self own. lol

I'm a D1 coach at a mid major school. We are seeing kids we lost to bigger schools in our state come back to us asking if we would still take them. They're usually like a 9:20/4:20 type who walked on to a large school and are now being cut. It's sad to see that the school who convinced them to turn down our offer to go there for free is now sending them packing. One thing that helps us is these same kids we offered something to we can now tell them they're walking on.

Some of these kids also now have a 1-2 year "sample size" of their collegiate success so they have less to negotiate with when they sell their "upside."

We told the athletes we were cutting this year back in the fall so they'd have time to look at other options. We didn't want to lie to them. We told most of them at the end of the year there's a small chance they can stay but they may be looking at the same situation next year as well. If they aren't willing to deal with that they could go on the portal and we would help them find a good situation.

Now, what I find pathetic.... I've heard through the grapevine that some athletes from school have no idea what their situation is. The schools won't give them any hint of their status and are pushing decisions down the road to April and May so they can see who pans out and who doesn't. There are going to be many kids who bet on themselves and end up with no spot since May will be so late in the game at that point. We plan to have our recruiting wrapped up by April 1st at the latest. We're already done with women basically.

Why are you cutting guys and then picking up more slow guys to replace them? That is not a nice thing to do to your athletes.

I wonder what it'll mean for higher academic schools (maybe with great teams, maybe with weaker ones) that don't have full leeway to take whatever track / xc athlete they want. Stars excluded of course - a 3.0 gpa sub 3:50 / sub 13 athlete could probably go almost anywhere.

Obviously UNC is a good academic school but a very strong program so they (likely) won't take the 14:15-30 guys who might be cut from other rosters. But I don't think a stronger academic / weaker distance school (e.g. Duke) would take a 14:15 runner with a 3.0 gpa from a place like NAU even if he'd help the team a lot - their best times from 2024 were:

7:58 / 14:12 (indoor)

13:58 / 29:34 (outdoor)

Our men's and women's teams have more than 17 athletes on the xc team so there are about 4-5 athletes from each team that need to be cut right off the top.

Maybe ask the NCAA why they would do something like this to the athletes?

You sound very confused. Has your school opted in? It is clear that it is a low level mid major. Most of thise are opting out. You said that you will take some transfers. Why cut a guy only to be replaced with a crappy transfer?