How are some colleges so bad at distance running?

Some Coaches Suck wrote:

Both schools I used as an example are both D1 and have scholarships. So they are both bad at recruiting as well as training.

I’m sure they could get kids from other parts of the country to come to their schools to run in California at their D1 programs they just don’t know how to recruit at their level and expect to find national champions and don’t go after realistic prospects.

Yes, some coaches suck. Actually, some who do still have reasonably successful programs because their schools prioritize the sport. So you're correct. Incidentally, some car salesmen suck, some doctors suck, pretty much some of any group you can think of suck. But having a school that's really bad at cross country and track does not in any way prove that the coaches there suck. In many cases the schools is bad at the sport because being even mediocre at it is not something the school's administration cares about. At such places there are different administrative reasons for sponsoring the sport. If a school really wanted to be decent at cross country and track and was bad because it had a coach who sucked it would likely replace the sucky coach.

Some Coaches Suck wrote:

Some of these college programs need to just fire their coaches and move on. There are some D1 programs that would lose to local high school teams. You could get regular people walking across campus and train them to be better than what they have. Some can’t even field a full cross country team. So pathetic and a waste of what could be a good college program and a coaching position.

I am a cross country athlete at one of the programs you describe - not just D1, but a P5 school no less. And I mostly agree. It's frustrating, infuriating, and disheartening, but it's true: there is no good reason we should be as bad as we are. But the reason we are comes down to two things: coaching and investment.

Monetary investment is obvious. The more money you pour into a program, and the better facilities you build, and the more travel opportunities athletes have, and the more scholarship money that can be given out to draw in recruits, the more the team is going to succeed. Money is simply the easiest and quickest way to make a program successful.

But the most important kind of investment is not monetary. Adams State, North Central, even NAU - none of these receive huge amounts of money for operation. The difference with schools like these is obviously the coaches. Martin, Carius, and Smith are giants in the sport, not simply because of their success, but how they achieved it. They not only incredible coaches from a technical standpoint but they very obviously have worked hard to foster a strong culture born out of there investment on a personal level. They want to win, and they know what that requires from their athletes emotionally and physically.

So why do colleges like mine? For us it's a combination of both issues not only does out administration not invest us at the most basic level (monetary), our coaches are not invested. They are not good on a technical level (the training is terrible) and they are not invested personally; our head coach in particular is almost solely focused on collecting a paycheck, and he refuses to stick his neck out by asking the administration for the resources to build the program up. Success doesn't matter to him.

Again it all comes down to coaching and investment.

This is obvious historically. Look at Arkansas. Look at Oregon. Look at Georgia. These teams have always invested heavily in the sport (both monetarily and in coaching) and they have been perpetually successful because of it. But other schools are starting to figure it out. Look at Syracuse. Look at Ole Miss. Look at Notre Dame. These schools hired young, enthusiastic, determined coaches that A) know how to train athletes, B) fight for the resources to help make them successful, and C) use those resources effectively. And they have catapulted themselves and their programs to the highest echelons of the sport within a few short years by doing so.

Building a successful program in this sport really is not as difficult as people might think. It just comes down to whether or not the university administration and the coaches are competent care enough to actually make it happen. But where you lack administrative support its still possible with the right coach.

D1 P5 XC Athlete wrote:

So why do colleges like mine?

Why do colleges like mine fail?*

Thanks. Noticing a lot of typos now, should've proofread more

^ this is the right answer to these kind of threads. Spot on

I think we are almost on the page but I have to slightly disagree. I think the easiest solution is not money but having a good coach.

You don’t have to pay a good coach to be invested in the program. A good coach can take the athletes that are there and at least make them improve and not just take a paycheck. A good coach can start to build something where eventually athletes want to come there to run for that coach, regardless of the location of the program. All the programs mentioned have scholarships so they shouldn’t be using them on nothing. No reason to give an athlete a scholarship if the coach isn’t going to invest in those athletes to help them improve.

Some Coaches Suck wrote:

I think we are almost on the page but I have to slightly disagree. I think the easiest solution is not money but having a good coach.

You don’t have to pay a good coach to be invested in the program. A good coach can take the athletes that are there and at least make them improve and not just take a paycheck. A good coach can start to build something where eventually athletes want to come there to run for that coach, regardless of the location of the program. All the programs mentioned have scholarships so they shouldn’t be using them on nothing. No reason to give an athlete a scholarship if the coach isn’t going to invest in those athletes to help them improve.

I think we're entirely on the same page. I stand by my original statement, as I think phrasing is important money is the easiest solution, but it's not the best solution. I think I'm making more or less the same point when I talk about schools like ASU, NCC, and NAU. These are coaches don't have a lot of money to work with but they still make a path to success.

Ole Miss in particular is interesting to me. 10+ years ago, they had guys on their team that couldn't break 5:00 in the mile. For real. This past weekend they had 4 guys break 4:00 in a single race. And it started with O'Neal. When he got the job, there was very little money being invested, but he worked to get those necessary resources like scholarships. When Vanhoy took over he was able to carry that momentum, and I say momentum because I see it as a cycle: a coach needs resources to be at the top. They need scholarships, they need basic facilities, etc. But they won't get them until they show success. It's a chicken or the egg scenario, a constant tug of war to get the money. But every bit of progress builds momentum. You get one good guy on a meager scholarship, and that recruit begets more good recruits. Suddenly you have a decent team, and the admin notices and you can lobby for more scholarships. It compounds on itself.

That process starts first and foremost with the coach. I agree with that. I might modify my statement about money being an easy solution, because without a good coach that knows how to train his athletes and how to handle the money properly, money is just a bandaid. But how likely is a university to invest that kind of money in something like XC/TF if there isn't a competent coach pushing for it to begin with?

I'll just add a couple of things... schools like NAU or Portland (etc) have really good coaches who made the effort to create a great team culture and environment to train and thus they are successful. That said, I'd be willing to bet they have more scholarship money than some of the schools the OP is disparaging.

If admins or the controlling powers are not behind a program it makes it that much more difficult for a good coach to have an impact... it may take years to change the trajectory and probably some luck too.

I don't disagree with some of the thoughts but I just don't think it's as simple as the OP makes it sound. There are just many many variables which make things difficult and especially this year the pandemic is a huge factor. It just isn't fair to judge anyone this year because every school's administration has handled things differently. Perhaps the schools mentioned by the OP were not even allowed to train together until a week before that race??? Very difficult to judge things this year...

anyway that's my thought on it.

Yes we are on the same page. I agree with the stuff you posted.

Amazing the turnaround some programs can make with the right people onboard. If only admins at colleges would see that.

I don’t think I ever said it was easy. Coaching is not easy and takes a lot of hard work. I just don’t think the coaches at the programs I mentioned (or any in a similar situation) either don’t know what they are doing or don’t try.

Some Coaches Suck wrote:

I don’t think I ever said it was easy. Coaching is not easy and takes a lot of hard work. I just don’t think the coaches at the programs I mentioned (or any in a similar situation) either don’t know what they are doing or don’t try.

To further add to this I think its important to note that its not so one-dimensional as the onus being entirely on the coach. In a lot of ways, the coach themself is a form of the university admin's investment in the program. If admin wants a good program, they will put in the time and effort to hire a coach that they know will be invested and competent. If admin doesn't care about having a decent program and they don't care about winning in XC, they don't care what the coach does. Thats certainly the issue I see at my school: if the admin really wanted the XC program to win they would have fired our coaches and found better ones ages ago, but they haven't because they don't care. Phrased another way, they hired a coach that doesn't care because they also don't care. Again, its a self-feeding cycle, and both admin and coaches are in different ways equally responsible. The main difference is that the coach has to be the biggest advocate for the program in order for it to be successful.

Most of these coaches likely don’t know how to train or motivate college level distance runners. They think high school type of training with 50-60 miles a week and 20 minute tempos will prepare guys to run the second half of a 10k. This type of training simply doesn’t. In contrast they should be putting in 80-100 mpw and 8-10 mile tempos like what we see all these top programs do. Does that mean they will podium at NCAA? No that takes years to develop because you’re fighting stories programs and/or high altitude ones that entice top recruits, But there’s no reason every larger university in this country can’t produce a quality XC team.

Some Coaches Suck wrote:

If anyone coaches for the money then they are lost. There are high school coaches that put in more hours then some of these terrible coaches and make a fraction. Money is no excuse for being a terrible coach.

There are a lot of coaches that do it just for the money. There are also schools out there that only have a track team to meet the minimum requirement to be a D1 school in the NCAA. Some of these schools don't care about these track athletes and their accomplishments. All of these things are a reality for many of the low tier programs. Not all programs, just many.

I would just focus your attention on track programs with actual funding (meeting the max scholarship cap for mens and womens track, travel to top tier college meets, ect.).

I do of course enjoy seeing athletes that come from mid-tier programs (with barely any funding) and watching them place qualify for NCAAs.

There are some poor coaches just like in any profession. My original comment was that there are many important factors that go into a successful program and often very good coaches are hamstrung by lack of interest or investment by the administration.

The biggest difference is quite often institutional investment-not coaching. A program with max scholarships will more often be better than one with no scholarships. A team that can travel to the best meets also more often beats a team that is unable to do so.

A program where the school is located at altitude has an advantage.

The more of these things you have the better you will likely be.

No doubt coaches have a large influence in terms of team culture. Al carius is perhaps the master of this.

my 3 cents wrote:

Most of these coaches likely don’t know how to train or motivate college level distance runners. They think high school type of training with 50-60 miles a week and 20 minute tempos will prepare guys to run the second half of a 10k. This type of training simply doesn’t. In contrast they should be putting in 80-100 mpw and 8-10 mile tempos like what we see all these top programs do. Does that mean they will podium at NCAA? No that takes years to develop because you’re fighting stories programs and/or high altitude ones that entice top recruits, But there’s no reason every larger university in this country can’t produce a quality XC team.

+1

Syracuse is imploading. Coach leaves, culture changes, program slips.

I do think that some college programs do a lot of work to hire the wrong person. Many colleges will hire people just because they we good as an athlete but they haven’t done anything as a coach. If they were smart they would talk to the coaches former athletes or former place of employment to see how hard he’s willing to work and what results he got.

I don’t think it’s the coaches.

At my college we had guys running the 800 in 1:45 and others that couldn’t break 2 minutes with the same coach.

There were no 1500m recruits and walk ons might not go under 4:10 for the 1500.

And the 5000 was worse.

It’s not coaching.

It’s what events you recruit for and who randomly may walk on with any talent.

What if you only have four on your cross country team? The coaches typically do the recruiting and coaching.