NCAA Cross Country is RUINED - Teams like Florida Women, OSU and New Mexico ruin NCAA Cross Country

Isaac actually did go on mission to the Dominic Republic. He returned home early due to mental health concerns after witnessing a terrible motorcycle crash.

I Was Thinking The Title of This Thread NCAA Cross Country is Ruined was Going to be about Jane Hedengren Being So much Superior To any Woman who competes in NCAA Cross Country, That It is Ruined for The Next 4 Seasons because Jane Hedengren Winning The Next 4 NCAA Cross Country Titles is a Given. And Only Phil Knight Can Save the Sport by giving her a Contract That Dwarfs Usain Bolt's Contract with PUMA, Maybe even more Than michael jordan's Contract Calls for.

I think NCAA Cross Country will be fine It will be Interesting to see who gets 2nd, 3rd, 4th Etc. The Men's Individual has no guaranteed winner and then the Team Titles. NCAA Cross country will be fine, And Hedengren is a Once in 50-100 Year Talent For Americans in distance Running, There are a few Ethiopians and Kenyans Who can probably Beat Her Examples F. Kipyegon, B. Chebet But Hedengren will likely be better than they ever were by 2030 or Sooner.

Underrated post but people see it more as let’s get the Kenyans out of there vs blaming the coaches. Sorry than little johnny and his 15:20 got snubbed by an international.

Jane Hedengren will probably turn pro before finishing her 4 seasons of eligibility.

NCAA track and field and cross country has been in process of getting ruined by influx of international students in the recent years in the sense that Americans are losing interest in NCAA track and field and cross country championships. It is hard to relate to a bunch of foreigners and cheer for them. It is really no fault of anyone really as long as international students are allowed into American universities. International athletes view competition in NCAA as a stepping stone in their training, possibly getting a regular job and career in the USA or just getting a free education. Coaches view them as a way to get ahead of the competition and get their performance bonuses. Barring them from competition just opens up a door for law suits which NCAA seems to lose on a regular basis. Those who are invested into Americans getting on the podium may just have to lower their expectations and view qualifying for the nationals as the ultimate achievement for the most with the exception of the best and most talented.

Have you seen some of the regional meets for NCAA XC? The whole front packs were all kenyan this year, and last year. It's not always about the top winner, it's about the majority of the top runners being african.

There should be some kind of way to adjust things to stop the influx of 25-30 year old foreigners who will tend to dominate Amreicans who are majority 18-22. If a school has more than x number of foreigners they lose y in funding or support or additional scholarships. The coaches should be penalized as well. Heck, they already are admitting they don’t have the ability to develop homegrown talent. In before a whiny coach or leftist complains to have this post removed.

I'll take the cheating (drug/age/import etc) out of it for a second:

The number one thing hurting NCAA XC is top athletes, particularly hyped young Americans just...not racing? We now have athletes who are running MAYBE once before conference/regionals. We want to watch the future stars. The NCAA is the best developmental program in the world, but we're seeing less and less of the young blood.

Maybe I'm naive. I know coaches have their reasons, but it seems that athletes would benefit from learning new distances and tactics in the college field

You can't be serious. When was the last time that the American public was interested in Cross Country ?

Like 1973

I think there will be an influx of Kenyan High School athletes too (see Jane Wangari in GA). It will be hard to not speculate about age cheating and doping. This isn't discrimination, it's just a reputation that Kenya and its distance athletes have earned in recent years. At the high school level they can escape drug tests and maybe even age verification.

It's a simple question. Are Americans more or less likely to watch the XC national championships if 25 of the top 30 are Kenyans that are much older than their American competitors?

The answer is OBVIOUSLY LESS LIKELY.

The same delusional coaches that whine and complain about the need to grow the sport are the ones SHRINKING the fan base.

Every year there are proposals by those coaches to REDUCE the size of the fields at NCAA Regionals.

There are always proposals to eliminate the current XC regional qualifying system and only make it so 64 or 72 teams qualify for 2 regionals of 32 or 36.

And they supported the roster cuts, or even cut rosters beyond what was necessary!

So at the same time they are reducing overall participation at NCAA championships and reducing roster sizes nationally, they are giving the majority of those roster spots (and scholarships) to international students that nobody in America cares to see compete.

The only possible outcome from all those decisions is a massive drop in viewership and eventually cross country being dropped as a sport from either the NCAA or by individual schools

Whiny Baby Thread of the Week

sorry about this posted in wrong board and didn't sign in.

This is a fantastic thread and I 100% with the overall sentiment here.

Every attempt to justify the hoard of internationals has been thoroughly debunked.

If something isn't done, many schools will soon have 17 Kenyans on their roster and zero Americans.

I think everyone can agree that would be entirely unacceptable. I think most fans would even agree that a 50-50 split is even inappropriate.

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2024/11/heres-why-there-are-so-many-top-kenyan-runners-in-the-ncaa-this-year-scholarbook-the-new-ncaa-math/

It sounds kind of ridiculous. The funny part of the Letsrun article is schools are paying recruiting companies $25,000 a year to find prospective Kenyans, plus all the other expenses. You could justify it if it was a revenue generating sport like football, but I can't believe schools are spending money like this all for the purpose of building a better cross country/track team. Whether a team places top 4 at nationals or doesn't even make the meet makes essentially no difference to the school's reputation/prestige due to how niche the sport is. Absolutely no real benefit from the school's perspective besides managing egos of the athletics department. If an international athlete wants to come here and contacts a coach on their own, then that's one thing, but why get into some kind of Kenyan recruiting arms race just for cross country?

No, the Kenyan distance runners are just getting caught the most. That doesn't mean they are doping more than other countries. There are a lot of drugs that acheive similar things with different detection times and costs.

en.wikipedia.org

Survivorship bias

Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not. This can lead to incorrect conclusions because of incomplete data. Sur...

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Kenyans are more talented but maybe their training and nutrition etc. isn't as optimized as it is for top Americans.

A good point about the ages of the athletes. Especially for cross country 3-4 years of age does a lot.