HOW long should a college track coach get to keep their job without winning anything?

GB Packers wrote:

Winning is not everything, it's the only thing.

-Vince Lombardi

I like this quote from him more

Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is.

The person who started this thread is def someone who has applied for many jobs only to be denied and now they are disgruntled because they feel they could do a better job! Within each conference there are certain schools who are def at a disadvantage over others. Lets say you are a head coach at an NCAA DII School with an enrollment of around 2k. Your school costs around $33,000 a year to attend and you have 6 scholarships on each side. a kid with a 2.7 and 18 ACT is not getting into your school and if you can get them in they are not getting any academic money. You have no full time assistant coaches but 2 GA's who come and go every two years. You have a decent budget of maybe 65k a year for both XC and Track but you have a roster of around 60-70. You have an outdoor track that is mediocre and not indoor track to train on in the Winter. Yes, the administration wants your program to be successful, but they are happy with you having 60 plus on your roster because you are an enrollment driven institution. You have to keep very below average people on your team and in fact you have to pay some of your athletes much more money then you want to because if they quit your roster size will be small. This school might even have a limited amount of majors to choose from as an incoming freshman.

Ok let's say the above school is competing against 5-6 other programs in the conference that have enrollments over 6-10k. Maybe a State school. They have 1-3 full time assistant coaches that are there year after year and provide stability each year in all of the events. They have budgets of 75-120k a year and they have 9-12 scholarships on each side. They pay their coaches well so they keep them for longer. They have an indoor and an outdoor track to train on. They do not have to maintain a quota for numbers so they can get rid of below average runners and focus all of their money and efforts on recruiting better talent. Ad's here want their coaches to be more successful and for the teams to be very competitive. If they are paying their coaches well and providing a lot of resources they expect a return on investment.

There are a lot of great coaches out there in small programs who could win just like the ones in bigger programs with all the resources and support.

All of this is from experience as a coach and not just from someone who knows nothing about what is involved with being a head coach.

Yalerooney wrote:

But what about teams in major conferences.

The question was asked about the PAC 12. Just about every team in the pac-12 is funded much higher than your average division 1 team. Its relative. What is the excuse for Teams to not win within that context? Big Ten or sec or acc all have teams with very generous budgets, facilities and are fully staffed. It's a very rare exception for them to not have all that. What then is an excuse for a coach to not win within a fair amount of time? And what is that fair amount of time? Maybe not 5 years but certainly not long as ten I'd say.

It is extremely difficult for mid rank Power 5 teams to knock off the reigning conference super power.

In the Big Ten, Wisconsin has won approx 30 of the last 45 XC championships, and from 1999-2012 won 14 in a row. Michigan has picked up 7 or 8. Indiana has three or four. Michigan State has two. Illinois has one from 1984. Illinois did not win in the mid 70s when they had eventual World Champion XC Champ Craig Virgin, Olympian Mike Durkin and current masters stud Dave Walters. Even though Bob Kennedy won 4 straight individual titles at Indiana, none of his teams won the team title.

Why was/is Wisconsin so dominant? Every year they picked up 2 or 3 new sub 8:50/ sub 4:05 guys. When you pick up 2 of the top 10 Footlocker finishers every year, who is going to compete with you? Same with Oregon and Stanford in the Pac 12 , OK State for a long stretch in the Big 12.

This year, the Big Ten did see Wisconsin fall completely off the podium for the first time in decades. Michigan won with a 5 man 8k average of 23:46. Illinois, Minnesota and Indiana also all had sub 24 8k averages. After that , the teams in the 5-11 slots all had 8k averages significantly below 25 mins. Rutgers, who has an admittedly weak distance program, came in DFL for 12th place with a 25:13 average.

Point being, 5 coaches in the Big Ten got their core group of guys to run sub 4:50 pace for 5 miles on grass in November. 6 more got their guys to run sub 5 pace. Are those world class performances? No. But most of their runners came out of HS as 9:2X two milers so I would say they are doing just fine.

Coaches at non powerhouse schools in Power 5 conferences should be expected to produce:

top half team finishes on a consistent basis.

Top 3 conference finishes every 3 to 4 years

National qualifying teams every 4 to 5 years (depending on Region)

an individual All-American every 4 to 5 years

Results in excess of that at schools not named Oregon, Stanford, Wisconsin, Colorado, OK State simply aren't realistic. Can it happen. Of course. Syracuse has been an incredible story over the last several years. But that doesn't mean that the coaches who haven't won a conference or regional title in several years should be fired.

thejeff wrote:

Inquired wrote:

How long do you want to give a coach? Ten years? Twenty? Thirty?

How long do I want to give a coach to do what? Win a conference championship? Championships are a by-product of good programs, not a cause of them. If I have a coach who is consistently competitive, his athletes graduate and keep their noses clean, and he has a good rapport with the alumni, then I would keep him for 50 years if I could.

In the real world, there are more important things than championships. Trophies gather dust.

Grownups aren't allowed to post here. The responsibility of winning falls on the shoulders of the athletes. The coach is responsible to assist them at maximizing their (athletes) own abilities. Very few coaches will ever be able to recruit racehorses. A coach can't make racehorses out of donkeys. His job is to make his donkeys the fastest donkey they can be.

The real job of any college coach is to nurture a healthy environment for his athletes to grow emotionally, academically, and athletically.

Given that Academic Directors in the PAcademic-9 have ultimate authority over whether student-athletes are cleared to attend practices, make the travel team, etc. -- coaches can't be held responsible for wins and losses.

At my alma mater (a non power conference D1 school that is perpetually near the bottom of the conference standings), football and basketball coaches get fired every 4-5 years for not winning. The non-revenue coaches seem to be able to stay employed indefinitely, so long as they stay within budget and out of trouble. The alumni, donors, and administrators don't care if track, golf, soccer, ect. win or lose.

agsjdksj wrote:

At my alma mater (a non power conference D1 school that is perpetually near the bottom of the conference standings), football and basketball coaches get fired every 4-5 years for not winning. The non-revenue coaches seem to be able to stay employed indefinitely, so long as they stay within budget and out of trouble. The alumni, donors, and administrators don't care if track, golf, soccer, ect. win or lose.

This is what I was wondering... do athletic directors even care if track wins or loses? Don't they view track (and all the other "minor" sports) as a necessary evil, needed only to satisfy NCAA and Title IX requirements?

Bob Sacamano wrote:

agsjdksj wrote:

At my alma mater (a non power conference D1 school that is perpetually near the bottom of the conference standings), football and basketball coaches get fired every 4-5 years for not winning. The non-revenue coaches seem to be able to stay employed indefinitely, so long as they stay within budget and out of trouble. The alumni, donors, and administrators don't care if track, golf, soccer, ect. win or lose.

This is what I was wondering... do athletic directors even care if track wins or loses? Don't they view track (and all the other "minor" sports) as a necessary evil, needed only to satisfy NCAA and Title IX requirements?

Track coaches at the non-power schools basically have two jobs duties:

1. Field a team.

2. Stay within budget.

If you happen to win a trophy every now and then, well isn't that cute, good for you.

Let's start with providing every college coach in the country a full allotment of scholarships in track.

Teams shouldn't be allowed to compete without at least 1 athlete in every event.

Bob Sacamano wrote:

This is what I was wondering... do athletic directors even care if track wins or loses? Don't they view track (and all the other "minor" sports) as a necessary evil, needed only to satisfy NCAA and Title IX requirements?

And that's dumb. They should care. That's the whole point of the topic.

This thread is filled with elaborate whining and crazy alibis to excuse failures of coaches.

When you have a limited number of spots for coaches to work, and no coaches are held accountable sans a few programs, it's a problem of creating a barrier to entry for those aspiring to do the sport justice, and build better squads. These perpetually losing coaches OWE it to the coaching profession to step down, or if not, they should be handed a pink slip and shown the door. They're arrogant. Who are they to occupy a position that someone else should have a chance to try to win in? If you want to keep making excuses for why they can't win perhaps those that feel they CAN win should have a fair chance to attempt to win. But we never get to discover whether or not that happens because losers are allowed to keep losing, taking paychecks, and continuing mediocrity.

If coaches want jobs where winning and success is moot, then get a job with the DMV or something. Or be a shoe salesman. Anything other than competitive sports.

But FOR THE LOVE OF MANKIND PLEASE STEP ASIDE! Someone else should be given a shot to see what they can do with all these "unfair resource levels/support/ etc etc"

PAcademic-9 School Policy wrote:

Given that Academic Directors in the PAcademic-9 have ultimate authority over whether student-athletes are cleared to attend practices, make the travel team, etc. -- coaches can't be held responsible for wins and losses.

I got a D on a quiz, the prof finked to the coach, and was told not to get off the van at SFO.

So essentially you want well over half of the college coaches in the country to quit or be fired every five years or so because of circumstances over which they have no control. And when the next coach doesn't "win anything" you want him fired too, and then the one after that and so on ad infinitum which is all that will happen because as malmo says, no coach is going to make a racehorse of a donkey and few schools are serious enough about cross country and track to make a commitment to attracting racehorses..

You're not going to take a program that gives no scholarships and doesn't even have an admissions office which bends a little on admission standards winning their conference if they're in a conference where there are schools that do one or the other or both and they certainly will never have a team which qualifies for Nationals. Perpetually losing coaches who keep their jobs for years and years are doing so because why? Because their AD, who maybe has dumped innumerable losing basketball and football coaches, doesn't care if the cross country and track teams lose perpetually. In other words, the employers of perpetually losing coaches are satisfied with the jobs those coaches are doing and why would anyone in their right mind voluntarily leave a job they like when they don't need to.

It's an administrative concern. If the ADs are dissatisfied the coach will be replaced What you see as making excuses for perpetually losing coaches is simply describing reality. What you're asking is akin to demanding that an oncologist gets fired because a higher percent of his patients die than those of a dermatologist do.

HRE wrote:

So essentially you want well over half of the college coaches in the country to quit or be fired every five years or so because of circumstances over which they have no control.

1. Youre setting up excuses again that aren't legit, and

2. Yes

Wanna make a bet it lights a fire under their ass real fast if they're told they have to win? Some will rise to the standard, others won't. They should go

I think I'm about done here because essentially you aren't dealing with anything more than firing coaches who don't win with NO indication that you understand anything at all about the role of the school in the process. You want to call that role an excuse which is your prerogative but failing to recognize that coaching cross country at Syracuse or Providence are very different situations from doing it at St. Bonaventure or U Mass kind of disqualifies your opinions.

p5 Coach wrote:

When you have a limited number of spots for coaches to work, and no coaches are held accountable sans a few programs, it's a problem of creating a barrier to entry for those aspiring to do the sport justice, and build better squads.

Way to miss the point. Most programs are "field a team and stay in budget." A coach charged with winning is another kind of program entirely. Why a university would want that probably goes back to fund raising alumni and that's about it.

Athletic directors don't care if track wins because the big donors don't care if track wins. The 6 and 7 figure donors (who are essentially the athletic director's boss) want winning football and basketball teams. Thus, athletic directors are invented to minimize expenses on the other sports to help ensure success in the money sports.

Exactly. Coaches are always held accountable. Some are held accountable for winning. Most are held accountable for staying within budget, Title IX constraints and similar things.