It's amazing to me how bad bad D3 track is

Good to know that my bosses will all be former bottom of the barrel D3 runners

I run times that get ragged on. I was legitimately surprised to find college runners even slower than me.

They’d pay less than the state school price to be able to attend / compete at schools better than the average Ivy

Where can you pay less than a state school to attend a school better than an Ivy? Several of the Ivies are the top ranked schools.

Can you read? If you’re an athlete on scholarship at Stanford or Duke it’s better than average and you’re paying less

Don't be rude. That violates the site rules.

Most distance runners at Stanford are walk-ons or on small scholarships. Many pay $70K or $80K or $90K per year so the fact remains that they are paying much more than a state school at a school that is not better than am Ivy. You are incorrect on both points.

As a D3 runner, I'm a little bit insulted by this. Yes, I wasn't like a low 15s guy in high school, but I was a mid 16 runner. At the bottom end, yes, some of those teams are really bad because their cross-country and track teams are like intramural teams. However, at the top end, they're comparable to D1 runners. I ran at D3 Prenationals down at Terre Haute last weekend, and got my butt kicked by Gunnar Schlender and Christian Patzka. For context, I go to a good WIAC school and run sub 25. Or look at the Matthai twins. Sub 24 is impressive, and they're not 24 year olds from Kenya like OKST has.

dissing WIAC schools for TF is a tell you don't know D3 very well. you were on firmer ground dissing some random southern conference no one has ever heard of, or skyline, or one of the other eastern seaboard conferences with a bunch of no-name schools few want to attend which as a result means the track meets stink.

but WIAC and specifically LaCrosse has had a dude at nationals/trials in the sprints (blaskowski), wins team and individual titles, and has a stout conference meet like NESCAC more akin to low end D1.

fwiw WIAC's 8th place times in the events we've been talking about are 14:56 and 31:03. those times would win you SWAC D1 both distances.

last, i think when D1 and D3 show up same place a lot of us D3 folks beat back end D1 folks. my D3 ran a ton of D1 meets and i wasn't finishing last. now, some of my teammates might have been, but the front end of our division overlaps a big chunk of D1 -- i could have competed same meets for the other side as a walkon, but made a choice -- and the back end reflects a mix of small school size, serious academics, and at some schools, a different approach to inclusivity.

the blunter version goes something like, if kids are paying $80k to go to some swanky small school, that has enough bodies and funding for a track team but actually plenty of event holes to fill, and some kid shows up, have at it. that's what most HS would do. you wanna hurdle? we only have 2 hurdlers. congratulations. they are only taking out a mortgage to go there!

now, if you shift that over to the soccer team, they might not ever see the field unless we're up 8-0 and there are 5 seconds left. but if the TF team has 20-something people and Mr. 21 shows up, plenty of budget left, expensive place to attend, give them their money's worth. one year we cut precisely 1 kid for soccer. i liked the guy and thought he was better than the explicit no. 25 we were asked to compare him to. he had some issues but was serviceable. but to me that was absurd. and as often happened with our 25 man approach, people got hurt. and we're under 25 by the end. heck, one year we couldn't dress a full 18 road roster healthy 2/3 into the season. why are we cutting people?

i think the issue here is at least some merit snobbery meeting some ignorance of what the back end of D1 actually looks like meeting ignorance of how current era NCAA practices are shaped by title IX and things like that. that D1 coaches might be happy to take 10-20 more kids, the schools have massive sports budgets and can afford it, but we tell people no to play a government-compliance numbers game. and now there may be roster caps in.

but there is a counter-argument where maybe D1 State U should be allowed runners and throwers and jumpers until they can actually fill all the slots at all the events like even a decent size HS does. and if you did that then D1 looks different.

but things are swinging the opposite way now.

No they aren't comparable. The top guy in D3 5k isn't even top 50 in D1. You are making no sense. He would get lapped indoor by multiple D1 guys.

last, i think part of what you're neglecting is 60-65% of HS kids can't be bothered with college at all, much less college track. that would be almost 6 of 9 kids lined up on a 9 line track. you want to further improve lower divisions, get those 6 kids back in school.

because, to me, some of what you're seeing in D3 is the value of persistence. they stuck with school. they stuck with track. and so they are bona fide D3 jocks. they went after what they wanted and found a way to get it.

you don't have to be top 50 nationally to be recruited D1. i said we overlap. a lot of us could be average to back end D1. the best could be top 50 or at least better than average. at which point he's confusing our backmarkers with everyone.

this parse you are trying to make doesn't work for other events, where, say, traore if he switches wins the 200.

also, you're confusing leaderboards with college sports in practice. until nationals is picked your weekly meet schedule is not ever about how you'd match up with the best 50 in your event. you only occasionally see 1-2 of them. you have to make nationals to see most of them. no, your average meet it's a full roster mix of studs and walkons. my experience as a D3 at those meets, i'd beat a lot of D1 walkons. ok, i am not making D1 nationals but i could have competed as a replacement D1 walkon in their uniforms.

you're kind of pretending college track is just those 50 guys on that performance list. there are hundreds of D1s. by definition most D1s won't have anyone on that list. so your little list doesn't speak to workaday track reality. it's the top of the top end.

i mean, to me, i saw track generally in terms of conference. i wasn't making nationals. the vast majority of us aren't. so we are recruited to score conference points if we can help it. that or some northeastern regional championship (ECAC, D3 Indoor/Outdoor New Englands, etc.) are the pinnacle for most of us.

at which point, i repeat myself, some D3 conferences are harder to get points in than to win some low end D1. and that defines the limits of reality for like 95% of college runners.

I think we need to cut D3 runners a little slack on their times. There should be some sort of lifestyle handicap in place, maybe a running calculator that factors in things like the number of beers consumed. A day in D3 land: you wake up for your Sunday long run with a bad headache and a girl in your bed who you got to know real well the night before, but you're only about 70 percent sure of her first name. The run is rough, and while you might regret the last shot you did, the thought “if only I ran D1” does not cross your mind. You just grind out the miles and hope the girl you left in your bed doesn’t steal your things.

We use this site to discuss running. We talk about top runners. We talk about top teams. Nobody cares about other than the top 10% of college runners. D3 sucks more than I realized before doing some research as a result of this thread.

Sounds about right.

There are very bad D3 teams, but here are the slowest times to qualify for the men’s national championship. There is quality at the higher levels.

400 - 47.65

800 - 1:50.38

1500 - 3:48.62

5000 - 14:11

10000 - 29:52

I'm not trying to say you the average D3 runner is slow. You would lap me multiple times. I'm just surprised what the bottom end is like.

Alex Phillip was competitive in D1 after leaving D3. I don’t think he got lapped. There are other examples..

LetsRun is full of former D3 legends coping about it. The fact is that it's a considerably lower competition level, the programs have significantly fewer resources, and in a vacuum any athlete that can cut the mustard in D1 (so 4:15ish or better) will perform better athletically at a D1 school. Faster teammates, more resources, higher competition level across the board. The only reason for a runner good enough to run D1 to consider D3 is because there are specific institutions (MIT, Wash U, UChicago, CMU, etc.) that have top-tier academics and they may not want to attend an academically comparable D1 school (Ivies, Cal Berkeley, UCLA, Duke, etc.).