Enhanced Intelligence wrote:
Is this really what we want our amateur US running scene to devolve into, i.e., a joke where professional level foreign runners, of indeterminate age, recruited by unethical US coaches, compete with our American kids who have worked their way up through the American amateur system only to be blindsided by these hacks from overseas, who are essentially pros? This is nothing less than a national disgrace and a slap in the face of all of the real American runners and coaches who do it the ethical way. And it is getting worse, and will deteriorate further unless the NCAA steps in and, correctly, imposes a prohibition on non-US runners in NCAA events, as well as an upper limit on the age of competitors, say 25 years old. This is the destruction of the entire American concept of amateur running. And for anyone to look at Lalang as a "sophomore", who is eligible to compete against real sophomore records, I invite you to produce a credible birth certificate that puts him anywhere near the normal age of a sophomore, i.e., 19 years old.
Do you realize that foreign athletes compete throughout the NCAA in every sport? College ski teams have nordic athletes from Norway and Sweden. Hockey teams have Canadians. Even in basketball, Steve Nash and Akeem Alajuwon played for U.S. colleges. Probably half of the Olympic athletes from Caribbean countries competed in the NCAA at one point.
The NCAA can't make a rule explicitly banning Kenyan athletes without banning all foreign athletes.