Vin Lananna has mastered one thing in this sport, selling himself with lies. Same script, different school. He was fired from Stanford and Oregon for his disgraceful tactics. Now UVA. Different logos, same storyline. At some point, “give me a few years” turns into a punchline. The podium talk never materializes, championships come and go, and the post-meet excuses pile up. Meanwhile, the sport evolves and he’s still running the same old playbook like it’s a decade ago. If you’re still selling the future in your 70s, it’s fair to ask whether the future ever actually arrive. I agree Vin Lananna is a legend in lying to almost everyone including the USATF!
Vin Lananna is the textbook definition of a narcissist in the track & field sense: everything is about him.
all college coaches have to be a little narcissistic as 70% of your job is trying to convince high schoolers that running for you for 4 years is the best life decision they'll ever make.
but I would say Diljeet Taylor seems to crave the spotlight more than others. but at least she backs it up with results. and she doesn't buy ready made Kenyans, she gets high schoolers and slowly develops them, and considering the quality of runners she gets and the amount of runners who want to run for her when they turn pro maybe its not narcissism but rather confidence.
“Putting your team first” is not narcissism and unless “Western Washington” is in San Antonio, the team you “coach” did not come in ninth at XC nationals. You need to come up with better lies and delusions of grandeur.
The coach I ran for in college is from my perception incredibly narcissistic and I imagine with his current connections and success he’s going to be a prominent coach in the coming years.
He does an incredible job at feigning humility, BUT
- Being on that team felt like a cult, there was a team culture of genuine worship around the coach, and it was apparent to me that we existed on that team to glorify the coach. I ran for two college programs, and there was a clear attitude difference where my other coach was there to help athletes get the most out of the sport, while this coach was there to prove he was the bees knees.
- There were constant and contextually inappropriate passive aggressive remarks to athletes and talking poorly behind their backs. He had a clear “in” group that I was a part of during roughly the first half of my time there. There was criticism of weight, criticism of beliefs, criticism of character etc. that I found wildly inappropriate as coach to athlete conversations.
- When the middle distance crew was underperforming, we were blamed and even shunned by the coach to an extent, he stopped monitoring our mileage, would just tell us what workout to do for the day and often wouldn’t have himself or an assistant coach even bother to come take splits. I came back from Christmas break with a pretty bad cold/fever and was accused of skipping all of the Christmas break workouts in front of the entire team.
- I was recruited to the team based on a lie, I was told by the coach that before he coached at the team I was on, he coached X athlete from unrecruitable at the D1 level to being an olympic trials qualifier, when I did more digging I found out it took him 2 years to coach him to meet his preferred teams walk on standard, and then in his first season with that team he improved more than that coach had been able to do with him over the span of 2 years.
- I respectfully, in private told this coach that I felt like I needed to switch something up in my training because I was regressing in fitness at the program (I had lost about 3 seconds over 400m, 8 seconds over 800m, and 15 seconds over the mile) and I never insulted his training or insinuated that I was considering leaving the team, yet the whole conversation had nothing to do with finding a solution or offering me advice, and had everything to do with asking me not to talk poorly about him or the team if I ended up leaving. He actually asked me to promise not to do so, which I did and is why I will not list any names in this post.
- After this private conversation, my teammates all started acting very weird around me. I made the decision to leave the team at the end of the season after not improving all season, getting injured at the end, generally just not enjoying it anymore, and the weird dynamics that had emerged made it feel like it wasn’t worth sticking around. Within a week of leaving the team, which I was very cordial about, thanking the coach, staff, and my teammates for everything they all coordinatedly blocked me on text/social media, including the team Instagram/facebook account, which leads me to believe there was some kind of smear campaign against me. Again, I got along with everybody on the team very well including the coach until that private conversation with the coach. I had younger friends/teammates from high school that I helped recruit to that team and continued to be supportive of even after leaving that also cut me off after joining the team.
About a year after leaving the team, the teams funding was gutted, and this coach immediately announced that he had signed on with a new program across the country. From what I understand, the narrative is that he had no choice but to do that, and that the surprise gutting to the funding was as much a surprise to him as anyone else. I don’t understand all of the logistics, but the other program opening a spot, hiring this coach, immediately as this program went belly up sounds like this isn’t what really happened. Many of the athletes protested very publicly against the school and there was no effort from this coach to shut it down. The “in group” athletes for the most part also immediately signed to this new program while everybody else was left high and dry.
What’s interesting to me is that all of this behavior to most people has gone entirely unnoticed, because he’s extremely charismatic and he is an extremely successful 5k/10k and XC coach with a few very solid pro level road athletes. He gets mentioned on this website fairly often, he’s even been interviewed on the Letsrun podcast. I believe he will likely have the level of recognition that coaches like Brosnan, Smith, and Eyestone have, which is kind of a bummer to me because he’s self absorbed and treats his athletes like garbage in a way that his athletes don’t even realize they are being treated like garbage.
all college coaches have to be a little narcissistic as 70% of your job is trying to convince high schoolers that running for you for 4 years is the best life decision they'll ever make.
but I would say Diljeet Taylor seems to crave the spotlight more than others. but at least she backs it up with results. and she doesn't buy ready made Kenyans, she gets high schoolers and slowly develops them, and considering the quality of runners she gets and the amount of runners who want to run for her when they turn pro maybe its not narcissism but rather confidence.
I think both things can be true: Diljeet Taylor is narcissistic AND she's a really good, confident coach.
all college coaches have to be a little narcissistic as 70% of your job is trying to convince high schoolers that running for you for 4 years is the best life decision they'll ever make.
but I would say Diljeet Taylor seems to crave the spotlight more than others. but at least she backs it up with results. and she doesn't buy ready made Kenyans, she gets high schoolers and slowly develops them, and considering the quality of runners she gets and the amount of runners who want to run for her when they turn pro maybe its not narcissism but rather confidence.
I think both things can be true: Diljeet Taylor is narcissistic AND she's a really good, confident coach.
Her athletes love her and she gets results. I don't really see narcissism. I see someone different from LetsRun archetype of gruff, stern, father figure...