ED EYESTONE THROWS SERIOUS SHADE AT SUDBURY, GAUSON, AND SMITH FOR INTERNATIONAL RECRUITING

Great post.

Jonathan and I went to the coaches party last night. We were talking about this stuff. I said, “Look , can we just get an age cap? That’s not controversial.” Two different coaches said “no chance - lawsuit.” I was stunned.

It's really sleazy of you to accuse people of racism with no evidence. The article is mostly about Scholarbook, who makes most of their money off of Kenyan recruits. Habtom Samuel, the Eritrean, was not recruited via Scholarbook and that's why they say Kenyan and not African.

American coaches have no obligation to recruit international athletes, and to accuse them of being "xenophobic" for recruiting people from in-state is disgusting. That statement speaks more to your piss poor character than to the character of Ed Eyestone who is one of the most well respected NCAA coaches in history.

Ed even said he's recruiting an Kenyan born American so you should apologize for slandering him as a racist.

We’ll, I’m a Mormon, my family and friends are all Mormon, most of my neighbors are Mormon, everyone I go to church with is Mormon, etc., so I guess I can say I know a whole lot of Mormons. Probably a few thousand more than you do. Save your little lecture for the other uninformed. A mission is in no way an advantage for those who do it (like I did). It took me two years after I got home to get to the point where I could train again like I did in high school (let alone do college training). Does that sound like an advantage to you?

They aren’t embarrassed. Chris Bucknam gave a great interview where he talked a bout how the great John McDonnell thrived with foreigners and how many of them are making an impact in Arkansas. I talked to Bucknam last night. His medical doctor in Fayetteville is from Eastern Europe.

I talked to another coach who has a team of foreigners in the SEC and he said, ”It’s either this or get fired. Do people think I want to be unemployed?”

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It ABSOLUTELY is an advantage because it allows BYU athletes to race in college at 25-26. It does not take the best distance runners in the nation more than 4 YEARS to recover from an active but not formal training lifestyle at the age of 20. That’s abject nonsense. You just don’t like admitting you got an advantage.

If it is a disadvantage then why does it work so well for the men’s team?

Worked for Eyestone, worked for Rohatinsky, worked for Ward, Miles Batty, Mantz, Young, Adams.

I’ll give them that Canadian Kid, I don’t think he took a mission.

Ironic that the kid who won at a normal age was international

Ask them why they can't have success with Americans! Do they not have the skills to recruit and develop Americans? Clearly their schools have tons of resources if they are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per Kenyan. If they are good coaches they would be able to get American kids interested and develop them over time. Furman does it, Virginia does it, Harvard does it and Bucknam can't?

No cross country coach is going to get fired for placing 20th in the NCAA instead of 10th. These people are full of sh*t. They want to win the easy way, that's it, and they will lie and cheat and deceive to do it.

I served a mission in a 3rd world country and lost 30 lbs (came back weighing 115 lbs) because of parasites. My brother served amongst Polynesians and gained a lot of weight. We both lost any fitness we had going into the mission. This is representative of the hundreds of missionaries/returned missionaries I've known .

How many Mormons do you know?

I know lots of Mormons.

one left the church after his mission. He returned in fantastic shape. Was sent to Lesotho. Biking all day at altitude in the hills.

He returned pretty disillusioned with the church. What broke him was people there needing real help. HIV, rape, malnutrition all very high rates. The people needed help for sure. But convincing them that Joseph Smith talked to god in a hat and that if they followed this book and worn long underwear all their problems would be solved, he stopped believing

I know around a dozen who served missions and an understanding of countless more from their networks based on conversations. It’s not a sedentary lifestyle of being chained to a desk. That myth is long dead. You got to compete in college at 25-26. That is advantageous.

Which no one has ever heard of.

Kenneth Rooks won a silver medal. I guess second in the world is “getting crushed like a mosquito”. Connor Mantz and Clayton Young took top 10 in the Olympic Marathon. Somehow Eyestone keeps age cheating his way into coaching some of the the best American athletes, but who cares because they went on that secret two year mission trip that made them so fast.

Agreed - Lesotho isn't a mission. When missionaries talk about where they served, they refer to it by the mission name, not one of the many cities/areas they served in within the mission. Good try.

… does he coach the mens basketball team? How is this relevant?

also, not a Mormon, but a google search told me they don’t believe that …

cope harder

… so many East African recruits except it’s more than 2 years, they don’t have to be out of shape when they come back and you don’t have to convince an American kid to do it. Also you don’t have to train them that whole time.

Do you seriously think that Casey Clinger, a two-time NXN champ and the highest placing freshman at NCs his first year did better in college by going on a mission than he would have had he stayed home and trained continuously? If I had told you after his freshman year that Clinger would never compete for a XC individual title and only finish top 10 once, you would have said his career was a failure. Where’s the advantage? Do you really think Connor Mantz, the American record holder in the HM and Marathon, and a top-10 finisher at the Olympics, only won XC champs because he went on a mission? That’s absurd!

You guys aren’t even scratching the surface of any sort of robust analysis when you make these claims.

Part of the problem is that schools don't have, or allow local athletes to be on the team, which is a bad message. Iowa State men's cross country has three of their team from Iowa, and then about 4-5 others from surrounding states. All the rest are international. Oklahoma State has three athletes from Oklahoma, six others from surrounding states, and then the rest are international. New Mexico has 0 athletes on their team from New Mexico, 0 from surrounding states, and all of the team is international (almost all African). Hard to sell a program to people when there is no local talent for the state to get behind.

Man if only the LDS church wasnt so dang organized. Active in the country since 1989