Christian Noble's NCAA career ends with 0 outdoor titles, 3:36/13:24 goes pro early and signs with New Balance

I honestly don't disagree with a lot of this but T&F isn't exactly the NBA. If he ran nationals & had a bad result, his stock would go down. It might go up with a good performance but not necessarily. I hope NB didn't pressure him but you have to look out for yourself & take the guaranteed $$$ when it's there. Most "pros" in T&F are making less than $50k/year. A lot are in that 20k-40k/yr + shoes + maybe some race fees/travel. You're living on not a lot to chase the dream. If he got an offer for better than that, he had to strongly consider it. No NCAA titles but 3:36 & 13:24. D2 NCAA titles would be nice but so would low-3:30s & low-13's & making some USA teams. Idk his training background. Maybe he's a little underdeveloped, maybe he isn't. Maybe he thought this was his shot. Not gonna fault him for going for it & finding some training stability for the next few years when that doesn't really exist in our sport except for the very best runners. My understanding is that he's a 5th year? So he was either in a redshirt year or COVID year. He already did 4 years in college -- this isn't NB plucking an underclassman. If it's a COVID year, he wouldn't have been competing this year.

Also the NBA is a bad comparison. So many college basketball fans get mad when a guy leaves who might be a 2nd round pick. It's incredibly hard to stick in the NBA. But chances are another year in college wouldn't improve their draft stock much. The next wave of Freshmen would come in & you'd likely still be looking at 2nd round or going undrafted. Only difference is that fans would be happy if the team is a little better. But if you make that choice you delay a year of real income. Even if you don't make an NBA team, someone like I'm describing is going to make more than almost every professional runner playing in Europe. There isn't a similar setup in T&F. You have whatever Centro gets (top tier), whatever Noble will get (probably middle tier), & then a big bottom tier with some very good runners getting nothing but gear. You gotta be selfish.

What I'm getting from Rojo's post is that there's a problem with sponsorship in T&F & opportunities for good college runners. That would be better to focus on then overanalyzing this one decision. T&F is plagued by 1) contracts not being public + no collective bargaining & 2) monopolies -- athletes not being able to put lots of smaller sponsors on their jerseys, having to wear just Nike at championships, sizing limitations, etc. Those are the things we should all be mad at & should be working on -- not scrutinizing a rational decision made by a rational college runner to secure his bag.

No. He's a 3:36 guy. They can get a sub-elite guy to pace them.

Yea, Piazza was a 1:45 guy until he got there too. Time will tell.