Especially laughable seed-result discrepancy

Could it have just been a real slow first half or something?

Awww...someone didn't get to play in the fast heat with the Haverford and 'Nova kids. I'm so sorry.

Doesn't seem bad at all to me. Might have just been a strategical race.

Sure, a strategical race with the winner 17 seconds clear of second place. And I'm sure all of those guys with nice round seed times like 14:40.00, 14:50.00 and 14:55.00 went into the meet having run, in a startling coincidence, precisely those times.

As always, this place is a bastion of analytical acumen.

bitter much?

Why are so many of you so stupid as to associate pointing out what amounts to cheating by others with bitterness or jealousy? I guess referencing the bad pharmaceutical practices of known dopers is also a sign of envy and anger? You might have a brain. If so, use it.

yeah theres a lot of lying in seed times. Like the other person said those results dont really look that crazy but whatever. Also people could be using outdoor times from last year and not be in shape yet- and itll be a cold day in hell before most people/coaches seed athletes 30-45 sec or whatever slower than their approx PR heh.

OK 14:40 versus 16:06 isn't close, but the other seed times aside from all being about the same at just under 15 also may have been affected by a slow race. Maybe a few others had an off day or lost contact when a slow race broke open, a liar or two and voila: discrepancy. We live in an age of world hunger, famine, disease and threat of global nuclear destruction. Thousands of children die every day of hunger and disease. Could you find something better to worry about aside from a bunch of 15 minute 5k'ers??

This is why our sport is a joke.

The basketball coach at Quinnipiac can't just tell the NCAA seeding committee it is 24-8 in hopes of getting into the tournament.

But yet we dumb ass track coaches either flat our lie or have completey fooled our own selves into thinking our kids are that good.

"Because everyone else does it" is not an acceptable answer.

We wouldn't tolerate lying from our student athletes, and we wouldn't accept that excuse either.

Until we as coaches have some ethics, the problem won't go away. What we need to do is enter honestly. Let that become the majority. We need to keep making it public about those that don't.

Or we need meet directors to take a stand. Have a 1 year pilot program. After each meet, compile a list of coaches with ridiculous seed times and send them and their AD a letter. Keep the letter on file. If the same thing happens the second year, ban them from the meet and let their AD know that too.

It will take a little extra work at first, but we can solve this and stop being the laughing stock of college athletics.

Wait...the Quinnipiac kid was the only one who even ran remotely close to his seed time. It's more like the Basketball coach at Lehigh can't tell the NCAA his team went 28-2 to get into a tournament. I'm sure you were just making a random example but the QU kid was the only one remotely close. It actually wasn't too slow either. The race went out in about 4:42 led by Meany (placed 12th in the Mid-Atlantic region in XC) then the Haverford kid went through 2mi in 9:35 and kept pace. There was a big pack but pretty much everyone died except for the kid that one.

Thousands of children die every day of hunger and disease. Could you find something better to worry about aside from a bunch of 15 minute 5k'ers??

There you go! There are huge iniquities in the world (war, famine, natural disasters, Tara Banks' talk show); therefore, it's silly to point out when others cheat. This includes doping. We should just let that trivial stuff go. In fact, sports are just games and shouldn't be governed by silly rules at all.

By the way, I looked up some of the PRs of the runners in last night's "fast" heat, as given by their schools' athletic sites. You guys can toss idea that these guys ran those marks at a a time when they were in better shape out the window. This was a fudge-fest.

And for God's sake knock off the crap about the athletes being caught up in a slow, difficult, "tactical," or otherwise time-ruining race. I expect that next someone will tell me it was windy inside the Armory.

ridiculous wrote:

Or we need meet directors to take a stand. Have a 1 year pilot program. After each meet, compile a list of coaches with ridiculous seed times and send them and their AD a letter. Keep the letter on file. If the same thing happens the second year, ban them from the meet and let their AD know that too.

I don't think you need to go through all that. Just let it be known that a seed time should be a time that has actually been run, and then require info on where and when it was done. Then the meet director just needs to put a little effort into spot-checking. Pretty much everything is on the internet these days.

I had this kind of experience happen to me my first year as head coach. I was coaching the distance runners and was now responsible for meet entries. I had to submit entries for a fairly big invite, and I had no marks on a couple of kids for the 110 and 300 hurdles. Rather than extrapolating or guessing, I submitted them as "no mark". They ended up in the slowest heat, but unbeknownest to me they were giving our medals to heat winners instead of overall times. My hurdlers looked like a champions (winning by sizeable margins) in their slower heats. I ended up looking like a sandbagger coach.

Long story short, I get a letter for the meet management about my seeding times (or lack thereof) and I ended up learning a valuable lesson some 25 years ago.

Somewhere some parent, coach, athlete, or meet director is going to be quite concerned about that $1.50 medal and ribbon that they didn't get so make sure your enrty times are fully accurate down to the 1/100th of a second.