ED EYESTONE THROWS SERIOUS SHADE AT SUDBURY, GAUSON, AND SMITH FOR INTERNATIONAL RECRUITING

Age cap 24 during XC Nationals, and that's being generous.

The NFL team beat the college all-stars over 90 percent of the time, you know..

Exactly what it stands for.

A top high school team could beat the Raiders right now.

Honestly, that's not very convincing, and certainly not "obvious". As another poster asked and I answered, I'd much rather have that window from 20-24 than 18-22.

Didn't know the first part, but if true that's very frustrating. 25 is common sense, and that would solve much of this.

Just want to note that there're some (including me) who called out the Kazmierska/Ayyildiz stuff. Most maddening of that was Kazimierska clearly barely cared about NCAAs relative to international success and was perfectly fine getting smoked by Maia Ramsden or Sophie O'Sullivan (international but actually cared about winning) or who-have-you. I feel like the NCAA works because winning it is a big deal and you get to see athletes rise and fall. Older athletes or ones who consider it a warmup for international competition take away from why it's great. I'm OK with NIL, and foreign athletes, but quasi-pros or ones who do NCAA transactionally just makes it less fun.

I guarantee not a single coach whose team is competing tomorrow would agree with you if the condition is that their athlete had to take two complete years off training before starting to compete. Not one. Not even Eyestone.

Ed Eyestone didn't create or start sending students on a 2-year religious mission so as to coach "older" runners for an athletic advantage. Iowa State, New Mexico, etc... are in fact recruiting through agents and financing runners for the sole purpose of gaining an athletic advantage. If you actually speak with Ed (I have numerous times), you'll learn that being an "older" runner doesn't guarantee you'll be a good runner. Athlete's often come back from their 2-year religious missions overweight and out of shape, and in some cases lose their competitive edge and or motivation. Nonetheless, Ed rosters them and loses their potential talents for at least a year while they train themselves into shape. That being said, the only issue with regard to an "unfair advantage" is age, and this can easily be solved by instituting a fair age limit. Many athletes and coaches have agreed that 24 years old should be the maximum age allowed to compete, and I agree! I'm also willing to bet the Ed Eyestone wouldn't have a problem with an age limit.

I don't value your guarantee when my experience and conversations prove otherwise.

Good work LRC. I knew it was bad, but not this bad. That is ridiculous.

"Of the 21 male athletes (seven per team) who represent No. 1 Oklahoma State, No. 2 Iowa State and No. 3 New Mexico, 18 are foreigners (all but one from Africa). So are the No. 1 runners for No. 6 Colorado, No. 7 Oregon and No. 9 Alabama. Let’s Run broke down the numbers for Saturday’s NCAA cross country championships: Of the 261 runners in the men’s field, 112 (43%) are foreigners. Only eight teams are composed entirely of Americans."

"Nine of the top 10 women’s teams have foreign runners — five of the teams with four to seven foreign runners — or 31 of 63 athletes. According to the Let’s Run research, of the 262 runners in the women’s field, 99 (38%) are foreign athletes. Only four teams are composed entirely of Americans."

Did you know that every female athlete at BYU gets $6K minimum NIL? Just by being on a team.

Ed Eyestone is a great coach, but he also has every single possible advantage available to him. Complains about overage athletes? Like - bro - be serious.

Ed, and Rita Gary, talk about US development like they don’t just pour 18 scholarships into women’s XC and ignore literally everything else.

Honestly it’s exhausting.

Does anybody else think Mike Smith saw the writing on the wall a couple of years ago and dipped out just in time and this is the reason why? I'm not saying he's scared, I just think maybe he knew what was waiting down the road and didn't have any interest in playing along.

To me, this really started with Dave Smith. If you remember, OK State lost a soul-crushing tie-breaker to NAU on their home course in devastating fashion. Then, the next year Dave Smith showed up with (basically) a whole squad of fresh East Africans, but Mike Smith still had pretty much the same squad. Alex Maier went from being top dawg on the OK State squad to like barely even contributing.

Experience my eye.

That $6K was a one year deal in 2022.

By your logic, all you think that matters is the amount of years you’ve been running and the consistency.

Let’s say we have two guys that have never done cross country in their life. Both just average guys that are not supremely out of shape or extremely in shape, same levels of talent. Would you rather have someone who is starting at 15 years old or 20 years old if you wanted to have the better performer over the course of 4 years? Easy, you’d take the 20 year old. More physically and emotionally mature.

Starting at 18 years old versus 20 years old is less of a gap than that, but there is still a gap where that extra 2 years will make a difference in maturation. I’d take the 20 year old every single time if performance over 4 years was the only thing that mattered to me.

Being 20 years old and not training for 2 years and being able to compete from age 20-24 trumps starting at 18 years old without a break and competing from 18-22 years old. It’s not that hard to understand.

As others pointed out, this is the BYU advantage. If you think that is unfair, then it’s certainly unfair for the 26 year old to start in the NCAA as a freshman while having no gaps in their training throughout their life.

Curious to know how many black male runners BYU has had on their XC teams over the years.

It seems very biased towards older morons, who are predominantly white..

Eyestone claims hes 'currently recruiting one", who if he gets in, is actually African American. Lets see if this even happens.

When they lost that tie breaker at home, everyone knew Dave would come back and squash them.

Really it’s 4-5 things hitting at once.

Transfer portal, NIL, international recruiting services figuring out the game. Scholarbook was around for YEARS but slow euros would pay 10k to get a US scholarship. Some Austrian girl with a slow 3k time might end up at a mid major. figuring out how to make the schools pay for it was genius. I’ll

The NCAA is an amazing deal. Food, housing, school, medical, training, equipment, travel, meets (our meets are awesome). That’s why Kenyans/ Ugandans, Euros, Aussies want to come here

Eyestone is upset because he worked for years to turn BYU into the Death Star and now their advantages don’t mean as much.

BYU’s advantages?

Altitude, religious missions giving longer eligibility, insanely cheap tuition for Mormons (not mentioned enough) massive roster (gone), amazing in state talent, huge budget (did you know they stay at Marriotts for free? Church buddies). Also every Mormon kid wants to go there. Lastly he’s a great coach.

Look at that list above… how is Tulane going to be competitive against that? THEY CANT

So this evens the playing field. And Eyestone is not super pumped.

I never said that is all that matters. How you came up with that idea is beyond me.

You’re doing abstract comparisons that aren’t reflective of the actual situation. We’re not talking about two athletes of different age, neither of whom ran for two years. We’re talking about athletes who took two years off compared to the other NCAA athletes who didn’t. Of course any coach choosing between the two athletes in the scenario you made would choose the older athlete. But that’s not what is actually happening.

Take the stone out of your eye, then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

UNM has 3 non-Kenyans in their top 7 (Mexico, Eritrea, France) - based on results from Mountain West conference champs. An athlete from CA was their #8.

According to their website their freshman recruits consist of:

1 - South Africa
2 - Kenya

1 - France

3 - USA (NV, IL, MA)

That is more American recruits than Kenyan. Just FYI.

I'm from NM so I'm curious about these things. I'm proud of our team and I think Gauson is a good coach who takes care of this athletes. His athletes seem to be good kids who do well in school and are good members of our community.