You're given unlimited resources at a D1 school to build a championship program, which event do you begin with?

Event group to start would be sprints. Why...because more sprint events are contested at the NCAA Championships (7 or the 21 events are sprints). Specifically in sprints, long sprinters..aka 400m runners. They can run on both 4x1 and 4x4, as well as 200m. Next would be hurdles. They can hurdle and sprint and cover Relays.

Next would be miler. They can cover 1500m, 800m and some the SC. Also indoors need them for the DMR.

Stay away from one event folks...especially the Jav or PV unless they for sure can win your conference or score points at nationals.

It's a play off the quote from the movie, ''Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby''...

Quote from intro slide of the movie, '' "America is all about speed, hot nasty bad-ass speed"

Take a breath, and have some fun...

The easiest one: your mother!

Oh man you're about to be blessed with some very mediocre genetics!

I think you mean Eleanor Roosevelt's quote.

You're assuming I'm going to hit it raw. That's weird.

With scholarship limits, you want to maximize points per athlete, which means sprinters for outdoors, because you have the 100/200/400, 4x1, 4x4, plus two hurdles races and possibly even lj and tj as offshoots. Plus, if you target the absolutely top prospects, you are much more likely to generate major NCAA nationals points than by looking for depth. Then more obscure events can yield a lot of points on relatively small budgets. Look at South Dakota and the pole vault, for instance. That can easily fail if you don't have a good coach. But look at how many points you can conceivably get in just one event, 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1, or 39 pts, depending on how many entries per team you can have. To dominate two events is to have a shot at the national team title, shockingly. 74 pts won women's last year and 54 pts won the men's. One outstanding sprinter could have a hand in scoring 30 to 40 pts (100-200+relays). Give out, say, four full scholarships to #1 hs athletes or international athletes who already would rank top 5 in their events, then split up the next 8.6 for men among good depth prospects where each event you represent has multiple people to train with.

Oslo? Don't be ridiculous.
I would do UK. I don't think their university system is as robust.

I would go with a lot of 800-1500 runners bc they could do 4X4 and mile as Donovan Brasier showed. I'd rather have a Washington squad than an XC squad bc I just think XC can get unpredictable (as Stanford's 4th place finish showed) w/attempts to score in jumps (all 4 jumps are in play at the indoor championships which is a considerable advantage over sprinting, throwing or any other discipline and they could also carry over to decathlon/heptathlon if I'm lucky

Yeah but runners want to train with teammates that are their equals, so you can't just pluck one from every event, that's not appealling for recruiting them. That's the appeal of building clusters in certain areas.

It is really tough to win like that.oregon in 2021 would have been close but I don't think they win without the jumper/sprinter. Now they might have screwed by not having some 5k guys.

The real key is to pick a low scoring year when you have a couple of studs. It is one thing to come up with 45 points in 5 events. It is another to get 60.

Sprints M/W 100m and 200m

WE had a kid on my highschool team who'd win the 100, 200, and LJ every meet. HE'd also anchor the 4x100, which was typically a win.

Hard argue with.

Hurdlers are the best athletes on a track team, and the most versatile. A good 110h guy could score in the 100, 200, 400, LJ, 110h, 400h, 4x1, or 4x4.

basically, if you could recruit the next Grant Holloway, why would you not?

Using a condom kind of takes the sting out of the insult tbh.