EKU X-C roster is 65% foreign

Thanks for proving my point.

I'm still laughing myself silly re the post that EKU is 3rd or 4th in the nation in anything, in this case their criminal justice major! Are you kidding me?! Hundreds, thousands of schools have criminal justice majors. I'd love to see the survey claiming thatt EKU of all places is 3rd or 4th best in the country at producing cops and security guards!

OK, I am an EKU cross country Alum and a very proud one at that. Coach Erdmann has been coaching the men's and women's program for 33 years, and in that time they have one 41 confrence cross country titles and 17 conference track titles. This included a stretch from 1981-1999 where the women won every cross country conference title.

People come on this board constantly and complain about foreign athlete taking the scholarships of american athletes. This is absolute crap! Coach Erdmann does recruit local talent here in the US the problem is even a below avaerage runner (say a 9:40 male or 11:15 female) will choose Kentucky or another Big school to walk-on at before going to EKU on a scholarship. So instead of sitting around and whinning about kids he can't get Coach Erdmann open up his search and get the best possible athletes he can find.

Trust me it is not easier to go out and get foreign athletes. They are a pain in the butt to get into school, but the job of a D1 coach is to win and last time I check EKU has done that constantly. Not only that if you go back and really look closely at the foreign athletes he has had most where not great coming out of high school or junior college. Coach Erdmann has taken thenm in and given them a chance and devoloped into good D1 runners.

Good luck to Coach Erdmann and EKU the rest of this season... MAKE NCAA's

Obviously you can't rule racism out as a reason why people don't get upset when Aussies or Irishmen fill out a college roster but get upset when Africans do.

But it's also been obvious for decades now being born in Africa to a family whose ancestors have always lived in Africa conveys some sort of advantage in terms of distance running, whether its genetic, environmental, developmental, psychological, whatever. We don't see that advantage accruing to North Americans, Europeans, Kiwis, Aussies, Latin Americans. So it's not surprising that many people react better to running success of the latter group, they seem more "like us," than they do to successful Africans and I don't think that's necessarily racist, at least not in every case.

jingler wrote:

I'm still laughing myself silly re the post that EKU is 3rd or 4th in the nation in anything, in this case their criminal justice major! Are you kidding me?! Hundreds, thousands of schools have criminal justice majors. I'd love to see the survey claiming thatt EKU of all places is 3rd or 4th best in the country at producing cops and security guards!

Whoever posted originally was close but missed the mark.

"Eastern Kentucky University ranks second nationally in the number of criminal justice textbooks

produced by its faculty, led by Dr. Vic Kappeler, who ranks third nationally in publications. The

rankings are especially significant given the fact that most of the other top]ranked schools have doctoral

programs. In a study published in the Southwest Journal of Criminal Justice, Eastern ranks behind only

John Jay College of Criminal Justice and ahead of such revered criminal justice programs as Sam Houston

State University and Michigan State University. Kappelerfs nine textbooks are commonly used by leading

universities worldwide, and he is recognized as a leading scholar in media and the social construction of

crime, police deviance and police civil liability, among other related fields."

One of the more popular collegiate runners in recent memory was an Aussie, David McNeil. No one made a big deal out of that

not really wrote:

I have been at DI schools with no football and basketball that made no revenue. At those schools, we still funded the entire athletic department without state dollars. Operating budget, salaries, scholarships, etc. When state budgets were cut, we were not affected because our funding was NOT from state dollars. Exactly none of our scholarships came from anybody's tax bill.

Which schools? Anonymous posting of bullshit doesn't make it any less bullshit.

How about nationally ranked Providence? Their roster is filled with at least 65 percent foreigners.

Oh wait, I forgot. They are white.

This nonsense talk about foreigners running in the NCAA needs to stop. Accept it as Americans and adapt to the competition is what I say. We can only get faster from it.

Silly Old Fossil wrote:

Where is the incentive for high school kids (even fairly good ones) to stay with the sport....particularly with no chance of a scholarship.

What is the attrition rate of high school-to-college X-C?

Is this fostering the sport....or killing it?

THe sport lives & dies with the grassroots runners; not with the Rupps.

I would suggest that a runner who runs just to try and get a scholarship is misguided. The number of scholarships available are small and the amount of each scholarship is small. In Track/XC kids will not be getting full rides, rather a 25-50% scholarship is the norm. Most major D1 school do not give anyone a full track scholarship regardless how good they are.

Additionally if a kid isn't motivated to stay in running by anything other than a scholarship I suggest they do not have the necessary motivation (especially intrinsic motivation) to become a top level runner anyways.

Lastly can you explain to us why you believe it is any better to give a kid from Lexington a scholarship than it is a kid from Dublin? Both are probably good kids with good academic performances and both are good track runners. If the kid from Dublin outperforms the kid from Lexington, why should the Lexington kid get preferential treatment? Is EKU mission just to provide opportunities to the kids from Kentucky? I doubt their charter or the charter for their sports programs read that way.

malmo wrote:

not really wrote:

I have been at DI schools with no football and basketball that made no revenue. At those schools, we still funded the entire athletic department without state dollars. Operating budget, salaries, scholarships, etc. When state budgets were cut, we were not affected because our funding was NOT from state dollars. Exactly none of our scholarships came from anybody's tax bill.

Which schools? Anonymous posting of bullshit doesn't make it any less bullshit.

Well, I'm note sure exactly of their finances, but the University of Maryland Athletic Department is funded without and state money, and has been for about 15 years.

The only money they receive from the school directly is from the student fees, about $15 of their budget. I guess you can argue that is "state" money, but it's not like someone's general state taxes are paying for it.

I'd have to look into whether the combination of football and basketball actually took in more money than it spent, but it's not like Maryland is the University of Texas raking in $50 mill a year.

OK-EKU wrote,[OK, I am an EKU cross country Alum and a very proud one at that. Coach Erdmann has been coaching the men's and women's program for 33 years, and in that time they have one 41 confrence cross country titles and 17 conference track titles. This included a stretch from 1981-1999 where the women won every cross country conference title.

People come on this board constantly and complain about foreign athlete taking the scholarships of american athletes. This is absolute crap! Coach Erdmann does recruit local talent here in the US the problem is even a below avaerage runner (say a 9:40 male or 11:15 female) will choose Kentucky or another Big school to walk-on at before going to EKU on a scholarship. So instead of sitting around and whinning about kids he can't get Coach Erdmann open up his search and get the best possible athletes he can find.

Trust me it is not easier to go out and get foreign athletes. They are a pain in the butt to get into school, but the job of a D1 coach is to win and last time I check EKU has done that constantly. Not only that if you go back and really look closely at the foreign athletes he has had most where not great coming out of high school or junior college. Coach Erdmann has taken thenm in and given them a chance and devoloped into good D1 runners.

Good luck to Coach Erdmann and EKU the rest of this season... MAKE NCAA's]

First off the girls teams in the OVC have never been good so taking good talent out of KY, IN, and OH to win the OVC is easy ...actually a joke. Secondly, if Coach Erdmann spent a scholarship on a foreigner that sucked it was because they lied about their times and that HAS happened alot ove the last 2 decades at EKU. No NCAA coach has ever said, "lets get some foreigners that aren't any good at running but will broaden the horizons of their American teammates". That's BS! The intent is to buy talent that can impact their top 5 immediately and win races. Plain and simple ...it's the lazy coaches method of keeping their job. I did have the opportunity to be a teammate of some foreign athletes and it was rewarding. But they were there for a reason and that reason wasn't to improve their English. Yes, it can motivate some top American college and HS runners to work harder. We have seen great things from American distance runners the past few years, but what else could we have seen if we used that money to develop less fortunate Americans who can not completely afford schhol?

Yuri Sagarin is back! wrote:

malmo wrote:

Which schools? Anonymous posting of bullshit doesn't make it any less bullshit.

Well, I'm note sure exactly of their finances, but the University of Maryland Athletic Department is funded without and state money, and has been for about 15 years.

http://www.greatexpectations.umd.edu/pdfs/Athletics.pdf

The only money they receive from the school directly is from the student fees, about $15 of their budget. I guess you can argue that is "state" money, but it's not like someone's general state taxes are paying for it.

I'd have to look into whether the combination of football and basketball actually took in more money than it spent, but it's not like Maryland is the University of Texas raking in $50 mill a year.

And the University of Maryland isn't exactly University of Maryland-Eastern Shore. Why do guys like you use MAJOR universities as an example (and U. Maryland is a major)....rather than mid-Majors or smaller conferences.

Maryland is raking in 47 million per year.

47% Basketbal/Football revenue

19% Licensing

19% Donations and Endowment Income

15% Student Fees

Disrespect wrote:

How about nationally ranked Providence? Their roster is filled with at least 65 percent foreigners.

Oh wait, I forgot. They are white.

This nonsense talk about foreigners running in the NCAA needs to stop. Accept it as Americans and adapt to the competition is what I say. We can only get faster from it.

Providence is 44.45% foreign (8/18 on the mens X-C roster).

HRE wrote:

Obviously you can't rule racism out as a reason why people don't get upset when Aussies or Irishmen fill out a college roster but get upset when Africans do.

I think it's much more simple than that. Unless you hear one of these guys talk you wouldn't know he was a foreign runner. Their names don't scream FOREIGN runner. Craig Motram doesn't stick out Aesop Kipchong (I made this up) does.

People like to use racism because it's like some kinda trump card for everything these days, but honestly I think if an American born black person were to be our next top distance runner I think they would get a huge amount of support. i.e a new version of Steve Holman.

They call it the NCAA because it is the national COLLEGIATE athletic association. No where in there does it say American. I got news bro colleges are filled with foreign students from all countries on earth. Its one of the last things that makes America the best in the world, our higher education. And those kids have just as much right to go out for the team as anyone else. Kids should learn that they have to compete against the whole world because guess what when they get out they will have to do the same thing in the business world. We as a country need to take this fact to heart and stop listening to silly old fossils who long for the days that never existed.

E Africans = ringers

Don't kid yourselves, it's not just because they're "black" but that if you can't get a kid locally and make him good you just go purchase a poor kid from Africa. This is true of Brits/Kiwis/Aussies/etc but it's like shooting fish in a barrel when it comes to Kenya. Anyone look at Lawi Lalang and think "great, there goes the next 4 yrs of ncaa's down the drain." It's boring.

The final answer is this: taxes and who is paying them

seen it up close wrote: "We have seen great things from American distance runners the past few years, but what else could we have seen if we used that money to develop less fortunate Americans who can not completely afford school?"

There is a lot to be said for this line of thinking. Putting aside the omnipotent "racist" train of thoughts spewed here, the interest of American kids at American schools should be considered when coaches make recruiting decisions. I'm sure they do too, but they also are under pressure to win now. The old geezers in the ivory towers that write checks at universities seem to be driven to win their conference titles all the time, occassionally send a team to Nationals, and every once in a while, say they were top 10 there. The coach gets regular reminders of this line of thinking, so he has to think "quick fix" "short term" instead of squeezing the toothpaste tube from the bottom up. Anyways, I was that American kid on a foreign dominated team and I did improve each of the 4 years I ran in college. My main beef was that many of the foreign athletes were arriving at 20 - 22 year old and beginning their 4 year stint. I was keeping up fairly well by the time I was getting out of college, but was getting ass-whoopins when I started college at 18. It was good for me, as some other posters have said, and I was on a full scholarship (and was glad of it), but I know there are many kids with great potential now who are losing this opportunity to foreign athletes.

/quote]

Because it is not a two-way street. How many Americans are on athletic scholarship at Loughborough University...and they do offer athletic scholarships there (see Seb Coe).

The average Kentucky kid doesn't just have to compete against fellow Kentuckians, or even fellow Americans....but the entire world.

Why call it the NCAA; should be the ICAA.

How say u?[/quote]

Why not just get faster? Simple but crazy answer. Why not go compete for a scholarship in some other school or country if you're not fast enough for that team?