this is not ok wrote:
This is F***ing ridiculous, 25 of the top 30 finishers in the Men's XC NCAA Championship were international. Most from Kenya. We need to save the NCAA and limit internationals, limit the ages - and drug test them.
Top Americans:
2nd - Rocky Hansen
7th - Gary Martin
16th - Colin Sahlman
25th - Aiden Smith
28th - Ethan Coleman
I agree with the drug testing and age limits—equally applied to US and non-US citizens. But, I don’t really think the prominence of non-US athletes is why cross country/ distance running isn’t popular or marketable. Distance running in regards to TV viewership in the US has always been much, much less popular than many sports including boring a$$ sports like golf FFS. It’s always been this way and has nothing to with foreign athletes dominating the NCAA. That’s a non-sensical correlation, not the cause of the lack of popularity of cross country in regards to viewership.
Someone pointed to the popularity of the NYC marathon citing the fact that there were over 200000 applications to run it. Who has dominated the NYC marathon (i.e. who has overwhelming won the men’s and women’s races—Americans?)? People like to run, they don’t necessarily like to watch running on TV.
As a former collegiate runner who had several Africans on his team and competed with foreign athletes on other teams in the 1990s—I have no issue with foreign participation in collegiate sports. If those foreign athletes happen to win fairly (are not significantly older or using PEDs) then good for them. It’s a competition FFS, stop whining and compete. If you fall short, train harder and/or smarter. Yes, there should be drug testing and rigorous age verification (no exceptions for BYU athletes) but many of the posts in here sound like sour grapes from whinny loosers.