NCAA Disallows Edit: ALLOWS Galen Rupp's 3k Qualifier From Reebok Boston

"2. Where fewer than two four-year institutions with a minimum of 14 athletes per gender

per institution compete, or fewer than five four-year institutions participate;

3. Where fewer than 10 collegiate or open events per gender are contested"

the confusion is coming from their use of "per gender," which doesn't necessarily require that you have both genders competing. it just means that you can add all of your events and athletes to one aggregate total; you have to separate them by gender. in other words, 10 men's events: legal meet. 5 men's and 5 women's events, illegal meet. 9-10 men's events and 8 women's events: the reebok boston mess.

Those bashing the NCAA should realize that the intent of the rule is to protect Track and Field as a team sport. Rupp ran very fast, but he ran as Galen Rupp, not as a member of the Oregon team. The rule also targets last-chance meets, where schools used to throw together "meets" with a few events to try and qualify people at the last minute. It goes against the NCAA's focus on competition-based qualifying. That focus comes from the recommendations of the national Track & Field coaches association. The Boston Indoor Games has been ok for qualifying since '04, when it joined with Northeastern in sponsoring their Friday night invite (traditionally held the night before the BIG). This gave them enough events to count as a qualifier, but this year, the meet was held the week before. Therefore, not enough events.

MA Coach wrote:

Those bashing the NCAA should realize that the intent of the rule is to protect Track and Field as a team sport. Rupp ran very fast, but he ran as Galen Rupp, not as a member of the Oregon team.

i think the frustration is that this battle was lost so long ago that it seems silly now to disqualify clearly legitimate times on technicalities. look at some of these schedules and tell me that division one track is still a "team" sport:

here's syracuse's schedule for the weekend of march 27/28:

3/27-3/28: Stanford Invitational

3/26-3/28: Florida State Relays

3/28: Army Dick Sheay Invitation (West Point)

wisconsin has both the penn and drake relays on their schedule (same weekend). the following weekend, they host a meet, but also travel to stanford and arkansas.

the first weekend in march, oklahoma state is scheduled to go to last chance meets at iowa state, fayetteville, and south bend.

these are literally the first three schools whose websites i looked at. they are definitely not exceptional. whatever the intent of the ncaa has been with regard to the team ethos of track and field, it has failed.

What you say is true. I feel strongly that in so many ways, we in our sport can be our own worst enemy. Having coached hs for 15 years, and collegiately the last 10, I've seen the sport change, and many of these changes have not really been positive. We want our sport to be treated as a major sport, yet we do things which run counter to every other sport in an athletic department. We split up our teams, meets rarely keep score, we go to meets that take 6 or 7 Hours, and we see some schools focus on only one event group. The examples that you gave were good ones of people sending athletes all over the place. People host meets, yet send their top athletes somewhere else. Therefore, rather than have the AD (and potentially many others on campus)walk over and see the program's top kids, they see the 2nd tier athletes running races to get qualifying times for their conference meet. This is certainly important, but why can't it be done in the context of a team meet.

We're constantly asked "how did you do last weekend", and it's confusing for non-trackies to understand that we got 8 kids to qualify for the conf. meet, and 2 provisionals for Nationals. The beauty of Cross Country is that at the end of the day, there is always a team score (sometimes good, and sometimes not as good because you might hold people out, but at least it's something concrete for the administration to see). In track, we go to a meet for several hours (which adds to the expense) that did not keep score, we send our top 4 kids to another meet, and then we get mad when the administration doesn't "support us" in our eyes. Rupp running in Boston is good publicity for Oregon, and for the meet (which is good for track), but it is understable when the NCAA doesn't immediately accept the mark.

cracks me up wrote:

Great News.

Nike can't manipulate this system.

You were saying?

Not to mention great universities with GREAT outdoor facilities that maybe run 2 home meets a year.