Ed Eyestone started the war, Dave just finished it.

brave new worldd wrote:

I made this point in the other thread and my post was taken down.

Eyestone is one of my favorite coaches and people in distance running, yet it makes no sense for BYU to attack others recruiting practices.

Nothing to do with age issues, but just in recruiting, BYU is the easiest job in the country to recruit both in state and nationally.

Eyestone and Taylor have so many good Mormon runners from Utah and around the country begging to go to BYU before they even must consider going out to recruit.

With new roster limits, they are now actually denying good kids, rather than trying to convince runners to come.

There just happens to be a huge number of great Mormon hs runners, and BYU is their dream college. BYU is run by the Mormon church and has a 97% Mormon student body.

This is a great problem to have! It also means Eyestone and Taylor have little experience being turned down, or having a small roster and needing to seek out an International or transfer student.

So go BYU, good luck tomorrow! It's just very important to keep the reality of BYU recruiting in perspective when discussing Internationals.

rogermortimer wrote:

BYU’s lifestyle is also an advantage. Certainly the culture is not for everyone but it does enhance prospects in a sport like distance running. When I relate this to my Mormon friend she becomes uneasy- to her credit she is not comfortable with any notion that Mormons lead perfect lives - but I remind her it is just a sport thing - lead a life conducive to training and performance is better.

In my experience long ago I found the foreign recruits (in general) to be appreciative of the education they were receiving, and that international students were part of the college scene.

The dilemma is that track and xc is a marginal sport in the US, and having foreign athletes dominate doesn’t help the sport’s development. To what extent the Oklahoma State’s of the university scene should be responsible for the development of the sport is a legitimate question. There are not contentious discussions in general over foreign athletes in college basketball. It is a high profile high revenue enterprise.

Schools like OSU have plenty to sell. One of the best professors I have ever met is an oil and gas accounting professor at OSU. A great motivator and really drives the message that a dollar of revenue in Stillwater should be the same as a dollar in New York, giving a true sense of public purpose to education. The challenge is to recruit numbers who truly are interested in what a school has to offer, and sell that value proposition.

Sub-9:00 guy wrote:

brave new worldd wrote:

I made this point in the other thread and my post was taken down.

Eyestone is one of my favorite coaches and people in distance running, yet it makes no sense for BYU to attack others recruiting practices.

Nothing to do with age issues, but just in recruiting, BYU is the easiest job in the country to recruit both in state and nationally.

Eyestone and Taylor have so many good Mormon runners from Utah and around the country begging to go to BYU before they even must consider going out to recruit.

With new roster limits, they are now actually denying good kids, rather than trying to convince runners to come.

There just happens to be a huge number of great Mormon hs runners, and BYU is their dream college. BYU is run by the Mormon church and has a 97% Mormon student body.

This is a great problem to have! It also means Eyestone and Taylor have little experience being turned down, or having a small roster and needing to seek out an International or transfer student.

So go BYU, good luck tomorrow! It's just very important to keep the reality of BYU recruiting in perspective when discussing Internationals.

You have a point, but BYU is no different in this regard than Notre Dame having the advantage when recruiting Catholics, if they can get in. A much bigger pool to draw from.

Ultimately, it has zero to do with race and everything to do with trying to develop native born talent and getting them an education with a running opportunity attached. It is very disingenuous to compare a 24-year old Mormon senior who is merely a year older than a normal redshirt senior at any school and who took two years almost completely off to go do a mission overseas somewhere (I realize they’re not all international) to a 24+ year old African runner who has been training at a high level the entire time, whose family paid zero taxes into the US system, and who might be two to four years older than stated age.

Eyestone is correct. However, I do think the NCAA should preclude anyone 25 years or older from competing. 24 should be the cutoff.