How are some colleges so bad at distance running?

Agree that some d1 coaches arent very good. However, the facts are that not all schools at the d1 level invest anything in distance running. Some d1 programs have zero or 1-2 scholarships which severely affects recruiting and talent. If you are one of those schools and you dont have an elite academic reputation or low cost then it is very difficult to attract athletes. This leads to challenges of developing team culture which leads to being stuck at the bottom.

You might argue that some d3 coaches can pull this off but if you look at the best d3 programs they usually include elite academics or state schools (low cost). The exception is north central.

If a school provides exceptional financial aid this has a huge impact. Currently the financial aid landscape is incredible and schools move in and out of short term discount rates that result in huge recruitment/enrollment advantages for cheap schools.

I see plenty of high schools that do more then some universities. No scholarships in high school. Some cheap state schools that have scholarships can field a good team. These coaches just think they know how to coach and try and reinvent training so they don’t just follow what works.

As with any sport it is about recruiting and resources.

There are only a finite number of good coaches, athletes, and colleges.

Some great high school programs and no scholartrips- true. Several recruit kids into their program or attract nearby kids from programs who just dont care.

I dont believe you can compare college to high school. This doesnt mean there arent good high school coaches who can be successful in college - i believe there are some.

The biggest difference maker in college at the d1 level is resources. At the d3 level it is resources combined with instituitonal recruitment qualities- academic reputation and cost.

Each year the quality of coaching in college gets better in that the softball coach isnt also the xc coach. Still though it is true that there are some poor coaches.

One last example - a college coach i know is capable and enthused. He works at recruiting but his institution is a small christian school with a limited budget and enrollment of 500. He true recruiting pool is enormously small. Is he a bad coach?

Yea, it’s all about who you can get to come to your school. High school is comparatively easy in that basically the average hs is average meaning all the high schools basically get kids from a group of 1000-2000 kids meaning almost every school has a couple good/great kids a bunch of ok kids and some wack kids... it’s hard for a high school to look horrible competing against other school basically running under the same conditions.
In college almost every kid was one of the best on their team (even at the really bad colleges) what separates good colleges is that the Oregons of the world get 3-7 best kids on a high school team and they are often the great kids at a great school where as a small d1 school or random state naia school is getting 1-3 best kids from a team and the best kid they are getting was from a small hs with 400 kids or the 8th best kids in a school with 1500 kids.
It’s not realistic to say bad coaches make bad teams, some great coaches work at schools where they make the kids way better than when they arrived but they arrived as 10.5 min (guys) 2 milers. Where a school with resources/a good reputation/cheap may get multiple 9-9.5 minute kids... even if the coach is terrible that team will likely always make a well coached team of 10.5 min recruits kids look wack.
To be good in college you need to recruit well, to be great you need to recruit well and coach well, to be ok in college you need to recruit or coach well, to be bad at college you need to coach poorly/recruit poorly (or have a hard school to recruit to).

I ran at a college that didn’t have great distance runners and a pretty bad XC team but would get top 3 at indoor and outdoor NCAAs as a team.

I’m in Northern CA and I can come up with a list of colleges that are terrible. You could take people off the street and train them for six months and be better than a Sac State or UOP.

How are some colleges so bad at the jumping events?

And don’t get me started on the throws.

So true. These coaches just take the jobs and phone it in.

One thing I never see mentioned with this is that some schools are genuinely unappealing to student in general.

In high school you're placed somewhere based on proximity or maybe a desire to be at a private school, but from HS to college there's a big filter that is going to push people toward some areas and away from others.

There are absolutely bad coaches at this level. There are absolutely teams underfunded. But most schools that are generally appealing still have a solid team even if they're getting smoked by other DI schools. It's usually the ones that have weak selling points for the average student and student-athlete that are genuinely only competitive at the high school level.

Some schools, even DI, just aren't places that people want to be. Coaching and resources may not fix that.

Even in unappealing locations you are still giving out scholarships and should be able to take an average runner and make them better. Sac State just ran a 5K and their top female runner was 18:57 and then four women in the 19:30s on a easy/medium course, they were terrible but beat UOP that was even worse. Their 5 ranged from 19:22 to 21:49. It’s not the women’s fault they are obviously not being trained to be that slow.

Coaching distance running is a relatively easy and straightforward sport to coach runners to solid improvement. There are proven philosophies that work. However, some AD’s and colleges feel they have to hire cutting edge and new age coaches with the ‘secret sauce’ and bells and whistles and all this smoke and Mirros that makes them seem smarter than the rest. I know this is a half baked post but I don’t have time to elaborate

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Juice Springsteen wrote:
Coaching distance running is a relatively easy and straightforward sport to coach runners to solid improvement. There are proven philosophies that work. However, some AD’s and colleges feel they have to hire cutting edge and new age coaches with the ‘secret sauce’ and bells and whistles and all this smoke and Mirros that makes them seem smarter than the rest. I know this is a half baked post but I don’t have time to elaborate

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Some Coaches Suck wrote:
I’m in Northern CA and I can come up with a list of colleges that are terrible. You could take people off the street and train them for six months and be better than a Sac State or UOP.

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Let' say that there are 3000 guys running D1. The same pool of guys would just be more evenly spread

It's not always the coaches fault. There are plenty of teams were the guys do not give a nutsack about running. The only training they do it lowering their beer chugging time. I know one school that doesn't have a track program and the guys petitioned to not participate in winter xc so they could have their regularly scheduled winter slack off bender. Coaches can't coach a team if they team will not participate.

When I was in college the school did not have a paid cross country coach. He coached because he wanted to. There was no financial aid, no recruiting budget, no help from the admissions office. In fact, I've always suspected that listing cross country on an application actually decreased the applicant's chances of getting in. Athletes from other sports whose grades and SAT scores were worse than some rejected distance runners got in regularly. The AD didn't want to have a cross country team and I'm pretty sure he got the admissions office to try to strangle potential runners.
No, we weren't very good.

My kids both ran at a school that's very hard to get into, costs a bundle, gives no scholarships and gets no help from the admissions office. They also are not especially good at cross country or track.

My point is that if a school doesn't recruit distance runners, they won't have good distance runners simply from whoever goes out for the team from the school.

They may focus on sprints or jumps or not focus on anything.