midwestern miler wrote:
Actually.,.,. wrote:
In highschool- took time out from practice to cheer me on for home XC meet.
In college- provided all-conference sprinters and jumpers for track on football scholarship so mediocre distance guys could get half rides.
This. Further, sounds like some people on this thread don't have a backbone.
Agreed with these two.
I swear this is true:
We had a multiple State Champion Football Team. Our Cross-Country Team was very competitive at the State level.
The football team also had some sprinters/field eventers on track so they knew the distance runners.
They used to come to our Saturday invitationals after a Friday night game. Our guys didn't go to their Friday night games and the football team understood- we had a race Saturday.
There was respect between the teams- they would actually cheer our runners on during our workouts when they had a break in their practice.
Once- the football team and coaches lined the field as one of our runners was finishing a very fast road course.
Yeah- mutual respect. Weird but true.
I agree with the post from above, that in many cases schools drop “Olympic sports” because football is actually losing so much money. Football is actually eliminating “Olympic” sports, not funding them.
Many of these schools feel some kind of pressure to keep up with the few mega powerhouses in football spending but they don’t have the wallet to do it. Thus, they cut other sports.
@hail to miruts wrote:
"Seriously we need to get our heads out of the sand and come together against the real enemy...men's football and basketball."
Come together and do what? Do you think the administration is going to side with you against football. FAU has seen a 35% increase in out of state applications this year, that the administration attributes to the success of the football team. What would you use to counter that?
We need to look at the whole picture and not one college!
runn wrote:
I swear this is true:
We had a multiple State Champion Football Team. Our Cross-Country Team was very competitive at the State level.
The football team also had some sprinters/field eventers on track so they knew the distance runners.
They used to come to our Saturday invitationals after a Friday night game. Our guys didn't go to their Friday night games and the football team understood- we had a race Saturday.
There was respect between the teams- they would actually cheer our runners on during our workouts when they had a break in their practice.
Once- the football team and coaches lined the field as one of our runners was finishing a very fast road course.
Yeah- mutual respect. Weird but true.
I KNOW OF A FEW HIGH SCHOOLS that have state champions in every boys sport in the fall. So that is an great situation. You have pointed out an IDEAL SCHOOL SYSTEM. Thank you and I'm glad there are a few.
John Utah wrote:
I agree with the post from above, that in many cases schools drop “Olympic sports” because football is actually losing so much money. Football is actually eliminating “Olympic” sports, not funding them.
Many of these schools feel some kind of pressure to keep up with the few mega powerhouses in football spending but they don’t have the wallet to do it. Thus, they cut other sports.
Yes and it's great that you can see the whole picture. I'm guessing you are more mature than the majority of LRCers.
One solution to this problem would be for the coaches of minor sports getting together and protesting the dropping of minor sports for major men's sports programs which in my view are football, basketball, and in a few situations hockey. There are probably a few rules that also could be initiated to discourage extensive spending by all major universities on sports in general. Overall the last sport a college should cut is cross country because it costs the least of any of the other sports.
I admit that I do not know that much about the administration of high school or college sports but it will certainly help to have a coalition of these minor sports to get some verbiage started on what to do about the problems and the cutting of programs in men's athletics.
Hail to Miruts Yifter 4127 wrote:
@hail to miruts wrote:
"Seriously we need to get our heads out of the sand and come together against the real enemy...men's football and basketball."
Come together and do what? Do you think the administration is going to side with you against football. FAU has seen a 35% increase in out of state applications this year, that the administration attributes to the success of the football team. What would you use to counter that?
We need to look at the whole picture and not one college!
What FAU gained from a successful football program is what all schools hope to achieve. Enrollments won' t go up because of a XC team.
But that you need it explained us telling
Hail to Miruts Yifter 4127 wrote:
John Utah wrote:
I agree with the post from above, that in many cases schools drop “Olympic sports” because football is actually losing so much money. Football is actually eliminating “Olympic” sports, not funding them.
Many of these schools feel some kind of pressure to keep up with the few mega powerhouses in football spending but they don’t have the wallet to do it. Thus, they cut other sports.
Yes and it's great that you can see the whole picture. I'm guessing you are more mature than the majority of LRCers.
One solution to this problem would be for the coaches of minor sports getting together and protesting the dropping of minor sports for major men's sports programs which in my view are football, basketball, and in a few situations hockey. There are probably a few rules that also could be initiated to discourage extensive spending by all major universities on sports in general. Overall the last sport a college should cut is cross country because it costs the least of any of the other sports.
I admit that I do not know that much about the administration of high school or college sports but it will certainly help to have a coalition of these minor sports to get some verbiage started on what to do about the problems and the cutting of programs in men's athletics.
All the minor sports combined in protest would not stop a penny being spent on football or basketball.
Yes boys and girls, please tell a story of the worst thing the football program did to your team.
(Heck if you want to turn it around and tell a story about the worst thing a cross country program did to your football team...knock yourself out!)
Hail to Miruts Yifter 4127 wrote:
I won't tell my own because it might give away my identity. But I can tell a friend's story.
This friend of mine was the head boys track & field coach and had a season in the early 1980s where
he developed five 800 meter runners who ran under 2 minutes. All were to return to the team the next season. This friend who was also the cross country coach wound up being transferred to becoming the head girls track & field coach that next spring.
Guess who was the new boys track & field coach? You guessed it the head football coach who also enlisted all former assistants be members of the football staff even though none of them had any expertise in the sport of athletics!
What's your story?
Stories please.
Our fb coach wanted the players to lift weights and run routes in spring practice rather than run track. We had a terrible fb team too. They were 1-10 my sr year but would still brag about how they had multiple guys run 4.3 40's. I had so many arguments with fb guys about how ridiculous that was since our team sucked and nobody was even sniffing juco ball. They would talk crap to our sprinters who weren't great but ran low 11.0s and had a 44.5 4x1 but wouldn't do track to show us their world class 40 speed. The qb once told me he would rather go d1 in basket weaving than in the high jump like me. I said ok have fun serving water in juco which almost led to a fight in english class. He dropped out of juco after a year and had a kid by age 20. Most the lineman and non "skill position" guys were cool though. The fb players I knew in college were real cool and many did track as walk-on sprinters/jumpers. Maybe it is the wannabe guys who were a holes.
The worst is a toss up between two instances.
Nominee 1 is how they stole a significant amount of money from us. Football agreed to let XC work and sell concessions at their games and then split the profits 50/50. Football ends up taking half the money, leaving us with our half plus overhead costs. They ended up with about 80% of the profits.
Nominee 2: we were doing a track workout while the team was practicing. Well towards the end, one of them thinks it would be funny to knock down one of our runners. Whether it was intentional or not, he knocked this scrawny special needs (as in mentally handicapped) kid on the team. So you have a 180+ corner-end in full pads knocking down a 100 lb runner as if it were a game. Jerk.
The best part about the second story is how the coach responded. He decided the whole team would suffer by running one of our workouts for conditioning before they ran drills and plays that day.
The workout that was done? 10x300m hill repeats, followed by a mile rest and 4x800m repeats (there was a short but steep hill in the middle) followed by a 2 mile cooldown. Needless to say, no drills or plays were ran that day.
After that incident, the football team realized that we work just as hard as them and that we do it because we have a passion for sport. We mutually respected each other after that.
they told me 'good job' mid-workout while going around the football field...they will rue the day...
The solution to any problem never involves protesting. One should never protest. Take some kind of real action or STFU. Protesting is the ultimate loser activity. Seriously.
John:
I never said the word "protest." I think it would be a mistake to do so. But to get together and work out a plan to make things better for the minor sports is absolutely a good idea. Actually a peaceful protest is not a bad idea either now that you mention it. But I certainly would leave it to the higher ups to decide what to do. I do not think that a peaceful protest is necessary at this juncture.
Why is there an NFLPA? Why is there an NCAA? Why are there any organizations for that matter? It's a good idea to get together and discuss common concerns.
Bettingfool wrote:
Our fb coach wanted the players to lift weights and run routes in spring practice rather than run track. We had a terrible fb team too. They were 1-10 my sr year but would still brag about how they had multiple guys run 4.3 40's. I had so many arguments with fb guys about how ridiculous that was since our team sucked and nobody was even sniffing juco ball. They would talk crap to our sprinters who weren't great but ran low 11.0s and had a 44.5 4x1 but wouldn't do track to show us their world class 40 speed. The qb once told me he would rather go d1 in basket weaving than in the high jump like me. I said ok have fun serving water in juco which almost led to a fight in english class. He dropped out of juco after a year and had a kid by age 20. Most the lineman and non "skill position" guys were cool though. The fb players I knew in college were real cool and many did track as walk-on sprinters/jumpers. Maybe it is the wannabe guys who were a holes.
Good story. I also think this is more typical than people think. I thought I was unique but I am not.
Yes there are places where football and track & field can co-exist especially at the high school level.
It gets worse at the college level though.
That brings the question for many---why does it matter to you what others do in their lives as long as it does not effect you? The answer is that everything someone does effects at least one other person and often many people!
John Utah wrote:
The solution to any problem never involves protesting. One should never protest. Take some kind of real action or STFU. Protesting is the ultimate loser activity. Seriously.
Please make a specific suggestion as to what "real action" they should take Johnny. All of your posts are just opinionated criticism with no facts or specifics.
Oh, and by the way, protests often do work. I know you don't like the way things turned out, but the civil rights protests did lead to equal rights for black people, even though it sucks for you to have a share a water fountain or restroom with the "coloreds"
On the high school level it’s usually crappy or mediocre football teams that have issues with track and field. A good football coach understand the obvious benefits of his top players doing track. 1. Speed/power 2. Supervision 3. Eligibility
The belly aching about football teams losing money doesn’t account for free publicity. Growing up in rural Iowa during the 80s and early 90s, the only way I knew colleges outside of my state was by watching FOOTBALL games and the ticker. When my brother crushed the PSAT in 1988 we started receiving tons of college recruiting mail. I would tell him “Hey, got another letter from an Ivy today.” He would ask, “How do you know?” My retort was, “From watching college football.”
Cal Tech, Columbia, Macalester all received extra PR for their losing streaks in football or basketball. No media is going to cover how Pudunk U or Liberal C has an awful XC or TF program that’s finished at the bottom of conference/league forever. Only people on letsrun actually talk about it.
Iowa800 wrote:
On the high school level it’s usually crappy or mediocre football teams that have issues with track and field. A good football coach understand the obvious benefits of his top players doing track. 1. Speed/power 2. Supervision 3. Eligibility
The belly aching about football teams losing money doesn’t account for free publicity. Growing up in rural Iowa during the 80s and early 90s, the only way I knew colleges outside of my state was by watching FOOTBALL games and the ticker. When my brother crushed the PSAT in 1988 we started receiving tons of college recruiting mail. I would tell him “Hey, got another letter from an Ivy today.” He would ask, “How do you know?” My retort was, “From watching college football.”
Cal Tech, Columbia, Macalester all received extra PR for their losing streaks in football or basketball. No media is going to cover how Pudunk U or Liberal C has an awful XC or TF program that’s finished at the bottom of conference/league forever. Only people on letsrun actually talk about it.
John Utah: I apologize I did say "protest" in my earlier post. Then afterwards I denied it.
But you see what I wrote about protests.
Iowa 800: The times have changed a lot since the 80s and 90s but even before then Football ruled over the track & field programs. Like I said about 5 times before there are isolated situations where things are fine. What I said is it is not uncommon for football to take all the track & field positions away from a track & field coach...even if that man is very successful. Maybe they only fire the distance coach (even though he won the state cc title that same year!) But baby it happens in some form!
To an athletic director the money sports rule. That is their bottom line. Trust me I've been there and so have some of my close friends. They also tell me they know of other situations.
Which is more common football dominating track and field or the other way around? Does football take advantage of this? Yes my fine-feathered-friends they do.
I said to tell a story about the worst thing the football program did to your team. I did not ask
for the good things they did.