2025 College Track & Field Open Coaching Positions Discussion

Asking for a friend wrote:

Curious to Know wrote:

What's wrong with internationals? Genuinely curious. Spot on with the rest of what you said though.

Here’s the problem. So it actually starts with American athletes. Let’s say you have 100 HS senior boys that run sub 4:10 in the USA for the mile. 90 of them are going to want to go to a power5 school, even if half of them are going to walk on or scrape by for a spot. 10 will go mid major with a sizable scholarship. But theirs a lot more mid majors than power5s so how can the mid major compete? They go International. The kid from UK or Spain who has run 3:55 for 1500 does not care about the school size and what conference they compete in or the football team(this is what has branded these schools creating the American kids bias). And 9 out of 10 that international kid ends up running faster after 4/5 years.

power5s caught wind to this and started cherry picking the top internationals, Kenyans, Moroccans who have not run 3:55 for example but 3:40 and are instantly a help to their success. This angers the teams and Americans who chose to go P5 and are getting their butts kicked, most have improved and are still on minimal or no scholarship(went to Sprints/jumps) and the internationals are on big scholarships. It’s still more prevalent volume wise in mid major programs because the Americans created that issue by majority to go P5. I’ve been a D1 coach for 27 years this is what I’ve noticed

staying relevant wrote:

ruining the sport wrote:

Internationals are killing our sport. Nobody wants to watch the NCAA championships just to watch 28 year old Kenyans sweep the top 8, half of which will fail a drug test in the next 2 years.

Americans have no interest in being fans of those international athletes. So they don't watch. Our viewership is garbage and that is the reason our sport is dying at the NCAA level.

More people would watch if they could see the local star they competed against in high school contend for an NCAA title.

Literally nobody cares how fast Habtom Samuel runs. He could break all the records but viewership would still go down because nobody is rooting for him.

I think this is the PERFECT explanation. Our sport can ONLY remain relevant in the NCAA if we have an audience.

Marathons are getting record number of entries. Track and Field is the high school sport with the highest participation levels. The problem isn't a lack of potential viewers, the problem is that the NCAA puts out a sh*tty product full of international athletes that nobody is interested in.

Doris Lemongole is a very good athlete but nobody is turning the TV on to watch her race. However Tuohy, Valby, and Ostrander were extremely interesting and created MASSIVE fan bases because people followed their trajectories since high school and your average American viewer can relate to them.

Job fairy wrote:

Big boy jobs
Arizona - Director job - likely Green will be promoted
Arizona - XC coach
Portland State - Director - complete dumpster fire - no one reputable will take this job
Manhattan University - Director
Kentucky distance job - just rumors
Idaho University - sprints, jumps
Idaho university - throws job
Nevada - XC/distance
Lamar - XC
Lamar - sprints
Villanova - multis/feild
Tulane - assistant coach/recruiting coordinator

Baby boy jobs
Frostburg State - Head Track
Frostburg State - Head XC
Southern Virginia - feild events
Lewis Univeristy - multis/feild events
McDaniel - Head XC/track
Stevenson - Head XC/Track - repost; new coach quit after 1 day on the job.
Pacific Lutheran - XC
Black Hills State - Throws coach - aren’t they hiring every year?
Emporia State - assistant
Hood College - Head Track/XC
George Fox University - distance
SUNY Plattsburgh - Director

Lots of GA/Junior colleges - but I didn’t list those.Feel free to add to the list!

Happy job hunting! College athletics is hanging on by a thread and you will have 1-2 more years of 60+ hour weeks for $30,000 a year before only power 4 jobs have positions that are low paying.

inwhatworld wrote:

staying relevant wrote:

I think this is the PERFECT explanation. Our sport can ONLY remain relevant in the NCAA if we have an audience.

Marathons are getting record number of entries. Track and Field is the high school sport with the highest participation levels. The problem isn't a lack of potential viewers, the problem is that the NCAA puts out a sh*tty product full of international athletes that nobody is interested in.

Doris Lemongole is a very good athlete but nobody is turning the TV on to watch her race. However Tuohy, Valby, and Ostrander were extremely interesting and created MASSIVE fan bases because people followed their trajectories since high school and your average American viewer can relate to them.

You are delusional if you think any of these athletes move the needle. The massive fan base you are touting does not exist and what does in made up of former track athletes, coaches and parents. The number of people participating does not matter. Track and cross combined has been the most participated sport for women and second most for men behind football in high school for 30+ years. It does not translate to viewers and never will. People will watch it every four years and that is it. Chasing an audience is like beating our head against the wall. You want to save the sport, have our governing bodies lobby congress to get carve outs, protections, and even kick-backs if possible. We survive by knowing the right people not by TV viewership. FYI no one wants to watch a race that is longer than a lap. Unless it is a mile. The four minute mile still makes sense to people. The 1500 does not translate to regular people.

Tamecats wrote:

inwhatworld wrote:

You are delusional if you think any of these athletes move the needle. The massive fan base you are touting does not exist and what does in made up of former track athletes, coaches and parents. The number of people participating does not matter. Track and cross combined has been the most participated sport for women and second most for men behind football in high school for 30+ years. It does not translate to viewers and never will. People will watch it every four years and that is it. Chasing an audience is like beating our head against the wall. You want to save the sport, have our governing bodies lobby congress to get carve outs, protections, and even kick-backs if possible. We survive by knowing the right people not by TV viewership. FYI no one wants to watch a race that is longer than a lap. Unless it is a mile. The four minute mile still makes sense to people. The 1500 does not translate to regular people.

Disagree. You can see the popularity growing at the high school level. Jokes aside, guys like Sean Brosnan are good for the sport because he created something at Newbury Park that resulted in a massive following any time they raced somewhere, and that's carried over to the college level for those guys. We just need more people who know how to create a marketable product, and then people to actually market it.

inwhatworld wrote:

Tamecats wrote:

Disagree. You can see the popularity growing at the high school level. Jokes aside, guys like Sean Brosnan are good for the sport because he created something at Newbury Park that resulted in a massive following any time they raced somewhere, and that's carried over to the college level for those guys. We just need more people who know how to create a marketable product, and then people to actually market it.

Thats fine to disagree and I hope you are right but there is no measurable data to prove your point. Regular people will not part with their hard earned cash to watch track on a consistent basis. Sport popularity at the high school level does not equate to money. The problem with boards like this is that we are all part of the fan base for this sport. We live in a vacuum chamber that skews our reality. DIstance running is the least popular part of the track world and has even less opportunity at making money. It may suck to hear but it is true.

could be anyone wrote:

inwhatworld wrote:

Thats fine to disagree and I hope you are right but there is no measurable data to prove your point. Regular people will not part with their hard earned cash to watch track on a consistent basis. Sport popularity at the high school level does not equate to money. The problem with boards like this is that we are all part of the fan base for this sport. We live in a vacuum chamber that skews our reality. DIstance running is the least popular part of the track world and has even less opportunity at making money. It may suck to hear but it is true.

It's a FACT that it's easier to get people who already know those runners from high school to watch their college meets than it is to get random people to watch random international athletes in the NCAA, no matter how good those international athletes are.

Everyone in New Jersey had a story about how they raced Sydney McLaughlin or they got a picture with her at a meet. Do you think those fans are more likely to watch NCAA's to see Sydney run, or do you think they are more likely to watch NCAA's to see Julien Alfred run (who is from St. Lucia and is a Olympic Gold Medalist) when they have no idea of Julian Alfred is????

It doesn't have to be distance. There's a reason why Quincy Wilson is 100x more popular than Christopher Morales-Williams who literally broke a world record in the NCAA (but is from Canada).