If you don't know what this thread is about, it's about the fact that Wisconsin's indoor track has been demolished to make way for a $285 million facility mainly focused on football. That facility won't be ready for 2 years so that track athletes have no good place to train when it's cold currently.
Renderings for the new facility "show a third-level mezzanine over the indoor football field, featuring a 305-meter track with a few regulation-sized lanes. The facility will also include a 100-meter straightaway and field event pits, Athletics Director Chris McIntosh said in a July message to track and field alumni. It’s not intended to be a competition venue, a spokesperson said.
This narrative is false and being pushed by Jerry and his cronies….throw Nuttycombe in there too. When UW won an ncaa indoor title, the head coach should have marched into Barry Alvarez’ office and demand a new indoor facility. Problem is, he didnt and now the current staff have been lied to by the administration. All sports at Wisconsin have had scholarships taken from them (except FB, BB, VB). I bet you didnt know that. Is that Mick Byrnes fault also? How about you hold Chris McIntosh to the fire, rather than attacking a staff that has no control over their future. Stop pushing BS narratives and state the actual facts!
You realize marching into Barry’s office demanding a new facility would have at best been met with laughter, but most likely met with unemployment?
"The Shell was always sort of an extension of Camp Randall." What the heck is that supposed to even mean? It's a college sports facility that happens to be next to other college sports facilities. As they often are.
There was a plan at one point to put a new track in the McClain Center (current indoor football practice facility), which is big enough for a regulation indoor track and would have been a nice cheap option. But I guess they changed their minds and decided they wanted to tear that down as well to build football locker and weight rooms. Why they needed a massive block-sized parcel for those instead of fitting them under and around the stadium, don't ask me. Football arms race I guess. That still leaves an empty grass field north of the stadium which I guess we're saving for posterity or something.
And if they can't fit a new track around Camp Randall, there's plenty of space near the outdoor track. I have no idea why you're suggesting tearing that up and moving it out to Verona.
I couldn't even follow your last two paragraphs. You seem to be conflating high school and college sports funding or something.
The Shell was, in fact, officially named the Camp Randall Sports Center.
The issue of the former UW Shell and the WIAA running sports issues are one in the same. This is about MONEY, not about history or what is right versus wrong.
$$$ MONEY $$$
Track & Field and Cross Country expenditures are burdensome both at the high school level and college level. If we consider the opposite scenario, that track & field/cross country was some unrivaled cash cow, you can bet that we would not be having this conversation! Nobody would mess with the flow of money if it were there.
Again, this move at The Shell is about money and revenue. Track & Field is being displaced due to a lack of revenue generating opportunities. A lack of good venues is going to hit the Badger tradition hard.
Back to the HS scene, because of its similarity, we nearly lost UW-La Crosse as the outdoor state championship venue during the pandemic for the same reason: funding. Explore La Crosse, a tourism organization, stepped in to offset costs. Without them we would perhaps have a different layout for our state high school championships.
And how pathetic is that? Our sport(s) are, thus, inadvertently deemed sports tourism. All the blood, sweat and tears of your year round training and commitment is ... sports tourism.
Think about that.
Also, regarding the indoor state championships, the current iteration of the indoor state championships is a remnant of Wisconsin TFA/Monona Grove coach John Klement. TFA manifisted after USTFF and later dissolved. Our TFA title, of course still lives, well beyond TFA's dissolution.
I was not alive to live through USTFF/AAU battles in the 60s and 70s but beforehand, our state indoor championships were a USTFF sponsored event. Using today's WIAA ruleset, participating in what was USTFF (current USATF) may have been counted as an non-scholastic sponsored, in-season competition meaning in the current day our athletic directors would have to apply for participation approval if some other rule didnt forbid it entirely. TFA represents a type of workaround.
Though this has little to do with anything other than to signify that the times have changed drastically, it was also a common trend at that time to run USTFF on a Friday in Madison and then drive up to Wisconsin Rapids for a major indoor invitational there on Saturday.
"The Shell was always sort of an extension of Camp Randall." What the heck is that supposed to even mean? It's a college sports facility that happens to be next to other college sports facilities. As they often are.
There was a plan at one point to put a new track in the McClain Center (current indoor football practice facility), which is big enough for a regulation indoor track and would have been a nice cheap option. But I guess they changed their minds and decided they wanted to tear that down as well to build football locker and weight rooms. Why they needed a massive block-sized parcel for those instead of fitting them under and around the stadium, don't ask me. Football arms race I guess. That still leaves an empty grass field north of the stadium which I guess we're saving for posterity or something.
And if they can't fit a new track around Camp Randall, there's plenty of space near the outdoor track. I have no idea why you're suggesting tearing that up and moving it out to Verona.
I couldn't even follow your last two paragraphs. You seem to be conflating high school and college sports funding or something.
Also, I believe you are referring to the Bay Fields along lakeshore and adjacent to the hospital. Can you imagine a national championshp being held in that condensed corner of Madison? Traffic would be insane in that tight corner. We need a bigger, more accessible space. They did a good job with the Zimmer course.
It sounds like the burden of proof is on you, kid. I provided some set of evidence and you didn't provide any. Hell, the OP didn't even bother with a link, and we're basing the story off others validating that the subject's been discussed here elsewhere. I am currently the only participant in this thread that has bothered to post any link to any evidence!
You're being transparent that you're an angry college runner at Wisconsin who wishes your school built an indoor track. Reality is far more complex than your current understanding of the situation.
Yes, it would be nice if Wisco spent the money to build an indoor track. There's a complex variety of reasons they do not, and most D1 schools without one share that set of issues.
I doubt there's any comprehensive list of indoor tracks out there, and if there is one it doesn't show up on a Google search. Just here in the Boston area there are at least ten regulation 200m tracks (the four banked ones in Boston plus Brandeis, Tufts, MIT, Wellesley, Wheaton, and Philips Academy). The crappy list you presented us only lists one of those, and doesn't even have BU. There are also four banked tracks just in the Big Ten that don't show up on your list (Penn State, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana). All of the other cold weather Big Ten schools have at least a good flat 200m track except Northwestern, which still has access to the new Gately Center banked track.
TFRRS has a comprehnsive list. If someone wants to brush up on their python, you can crawl the last ten years of results and pick up a distinct list of recently active venues (save for closures like The Shell).
Mick has been there for 16 years. Do you realize how much the ncaa has changed in 16 years? You weren’t allowed to give kids a bagel with peanut butter in 08.
The cost to attend college has doubled. Also every event has gotten much much stronger.
It was easier to have a full team 20-25 years ago. Spread the money around and have some low scholarship guys score points. You need borderline pros to score at NCAAs now.
Every school has found their niche, Wisconsin has a lot of big 10 titles since mick took over
The time period in which tuition increases out distanced inflationary measures tenfold was ~1992 to ~2006. At the same time, we as a nation thought it was a good idea to send everyone to college. The college systems became an enterprise. Now, the post-pandemic is a giant mess of inflation and price gouging everywhere, not just on campus.
Just so we're clear, the issue isn't that they are permanently losing their track, it's that the athletic department is building a new multi-sport indoor facility (which includes track) to replace the current one that is 70 years old, but won't be ready for two years and the current one needs to be demolished in the mean time.
Sucks, but this sounds more like a problem for the privileged. They are getting upgraded facilities, but they'll just have to make do in the meantime. Many programs have never had this luxury in the first place.
I’m not a Wisconsin graduate and, frankly, don’t care much for them after racing them in college and getting my butt kicked (kidding about not liking them. They were great guys).
It’s clear to me, at least, that the current lack of facilities for Track & Field athletes was an intentional move by the athletic director and university administration. I think they knew this was going to happen. All they have to do is sit back and play dumb and eventually their athletes will transfer and they’ll shut down the program.
It’s a similar play to Trump moving all the federal government workers to Kansas City and St. Louis in 2016. He didn’t have to fire them if 75% quit or retired because they weren’t going to pick up their life and move across the country (look for a repeat of that move, by the way).
Be on the lookout for this to happen elsewhere. The quiet atrophying of Track and Field rosters due to “interim coaches” after a solid coach is let go, poor facilities, and zero admin support. It’s a feature, not a bug at Wisconsin right now. Sad and shameful.
That's not how this works. If you're going to make an assertion, it's on you make sure it's right.
It sounds like the burden of proof is on you, kid. I provided some set of evidence and you didn't provide any. Hell, the OP didn't even bother with a link, and we're basing the story off others validating that the subject's been discussed here elsewhere. I am currently the only participant in this thread that has bothered to post any link to any evidence!
You're being transparent that you're an angry college runner at Wisconsin who wishes your school built an indoor track. Reality is far more complex than your current understanding of the situation.
Yes, it would be nice if Wisco spent the money to build an indoor track. There's a complex variety of reasons they do not, and most D1 schools without one share that set of issues.
You're being totally transparent in that you're a moran
The Shell was, in fact, officially named the Camp Randall Sports Center.
The issue of the former UW Shell and the WIAA running sports issues are one in the same. This is about MONEY, not about history or what is right versus wrong.
And do you know where the name Camp Randall comes from? It's the civil war training ground that both the indoor track and football stadium are built on. That's why they share a name, not because the track was built as some extension to the stadium.
No crap money is an issue. When is money not an issue? But if you start eliminating everything on a university campus that isn't directly revenue-positive, well, you're not going to be left with a university.
Apparently, 70 years ago when the university was much smaller and they had a far, far smaller budget they felt that an indoor track was a worthy investment. That track has probably been paid off for 50 years now, and the track team was happy with it. If the football team wanted to tear down a perfectly good track to build their own mega-facility, they should have budgeted for building a new indoor track somewhere else. The track team, half of them women, are effectively funding a new football facility for men by ceding their space.
Just so we're clear, the issue isn't that they are permanently losing their track, it's that the athletic department is building a new multi-sport indoor facility (which includes track) to replace the current one that is 70 years old, but won't be ready for two years and the current one needs to be demolished in the mean time.
Sucks, but this sounds more like a problem for the privileged. They are getting upgraded facilities, but they'll just have to make do in the meantime. Many programs have never had this luxury in the first place.
That's not at all what's going on. They had a perfectly good indoor track, the building itself was fine and had tons of space, and if they wanted a better one they could have put a banked track in the existing Shell for a reasonable cost.
What is happening is that the indoor football field is only 80 yards and the ceiling isn't high enough for punting, which I guess isn't good enough these days. So they're tearing down the track and building a new football facility (they'll call it multi-use or something just to keep the Title IX lawsuits at bay). The new "track" will be a fitness center grade jogging track with sharp corners that's hung from the rafters. Useless for anything but jogging, which track athletes do outside in winter anyway. It's basically there for football players to jog their penalty laps on, and so they can claim it's a "multi-use" facility that doesn't just benefit men.
And do you know where the name Camp Randall comes from? It's the civil war training ground that both the indoor track and football stadium are built on. That's why they share a name, not because the track was built as some extension to the stadium.
No crap money is an issue. When is money not an issue? But if you start eliminating everything on a university campus that isn't directly revenue-positive, well, you're not going to be left with a university.
Apparently, 70 years ago when the university was much smaller and they had a far, far smaller budget they felt that an indoor track was a worthy investment. That track has probably been paid off for 50 years now, and the track team was happy with it. If the football team wanted to tear down a perfectly good track to build their own mega-facility, they should have budgeted for building a new indoor track somewhere else. The track team, half of them women, are effectively funding a new football facility for men by ceding their space.
And do you know where the name Camp Randall comes from? It's the civil war training ground that both the indoor track and football stadium are built on. That's why they share a name, not because the track was built as some extension to the stadium.
No crap money is an issue. When is money not an issue? But if you start eliminating everything on a university campus that isn't directly revenue-positive, well, you're not going to be left with a university.
Apparently, 70 years ago when the university was much smaller and they had a far, far smaller budget they felt that an indoor track was a worthy investment. That track has probably been paid off for 50 years now, and the track team was happy with it. If the football team wanted to tear down a perfectly good track to build their own mega-facility, they should have budgeted for building a new indoor track somewhere else. The track team, half of them women, are effectively funding a new football facility for men by ceding their space.
Indeed, Camp Randall was once a famous civil war rallying ground. It is more than just a field and is a sacred space in our statehood. When you walk through the entryway to the stadium now there is a sculpture of an eagle above that became the living mascot of the Eau Claire Badgers civil war infantry. They themselves were nicknamed badgers because of precursor gogebic range miners that slept in hillside dugouts, not because of the state animal. And the EC Badgers apparently changed their nickname to Eagles after a certain pre-civil war rally. Or so legend has it anyway (the photos look fudged)...
Seventy-five or seventy-six years ago, in the very beginning of the postwar (WWII) period, the nation uniformly turned to leisure and therefore sport, going away from a war avenging pursuit in real life. There is what ought to be a famous book, Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper, written immediately in the aftermath of WWII, that captures the philosophical essence of that transition. It finds a certain conclusion in Aristotelian Philosophy (Aristotle's Politics treatise 1337b) as "the answer" to life. Of course, not everyone read it but the postwar culture in America & Europe certainly went in that direction. We came out of the devout periods officially (it had been happening since the end of WWI). Ike was iconic during that transition and can be seen river fishing on Sunday's, what was once a dormant sabbath dayof sacrifice. Overall, the christian religions shifted into the acceptance of leisure on a Sunday.
You hit the nail on the head though. Track was a benefactor of that sports and leisure transition after WWII and we had been living on the laurels of that postwar transition ever since.
We are due for another transition. We have undergone a spanish flu-like pandemic and inflation spike. We have a new set of anti-amateurism policies in NIL to work around (or uphill battle to replicate success rates). Lets not wait another 25 years though.
People need to innovate and not waste their time scrolling on their phones. We need collective action to get the results we want, not a whine fest. Not with our hands out but rather our hands up and ready to fight for position in this world.
Under the new rules starting next fall, if you are on the roster, you are on scholarship. The school can have up to 17 people on the roster and most schools probably won’t carry a max of 17 but they must be on scholarship. The traditional walk ons will need to run on the universities club team if they have one.
Just so we're clear, the issue isn't that they are permanently losing their track, it's that the athletic department is building a new multi-sport indoor facility (which includes track) to replace the current one that is 70 years old, but won't be ready for two years and the current one needs to be demolished in the mean time.
Sucks, but this sounds more like a problem for the privileged. They are getting upgraded facilities, but they'll just have to make do in the meantime. Many programs have never had this luxury in the first place.
They're proposing to build a subpar training facility...especially for an elite track and field team...the "track" they're building in the rafters will probably be used to video football practices...football uber alles
‘Wisconsin will further scale back track and field rosters to 30 men's athletes and 40 women.’ This is from first linked article. Surprised this has not been mentioned.
Even putting aside the college team's need for an indoor track, Madison is a pretty big metro area to not have a single track available for high schools and the general community. Do they even have high school indoor track in Wisconsin? Seems like you could have a good league with all the indoor tracks spread around the state at the DIII UW system schools. Except that you now have this big gap in the center around Madison.
When I was in high school in Connecticut in the 90s we had a number of tracks within easy driving distance - Yale, Central, Southern, Wesleyan, UConn, Smith, Coast Guard, plus several shorter tracks at high schools. Since then they've added a dedicated high school-focused track in New Haven. As a consequence there was a robust competitive indoor track scene, and you didn't have kids getting out of shape or quitting the sport altogether over the winter.
Yes, there's indoor high school track in Wisconsin, but indoor track season is much shorter and much later than most. (Starts March, ends April.) There are some high schools with indoor tracks and nearby colleges (mostly UW system schools, from what I remember) also often allow access to their fairly legit facilities.
I remember a few of the high school 'tracks' I competed on were awful, effectively basketball courts with lines on them, but some high schools actually do have real rubberized indoor tracks. (Yes, public schools.)
It's getting lost in all this talk about the Badgers, justifiably so because it's honestly not a problem on the scale of the Badger track team's problem, but as a student that *didn't* run for the track team it was great to have the Shell available to run in. Aside from brief closures for basketball games, track meets, and the like. If I remember right, even when the Badgers were practicing you could typically run in lane 6 or something.