Are sixth- and seventh-year college students responsible for the increase in sub-4 milers in the NCAA?

One of the factors that has been put forward to explain the dramatic increase in sub-4 milers in the NCAA (and faster NCAA times in general) is older collegiate runners taking advantage of their extra eligibility. I decided to take a couple of hours to put this theory to the test.

Using the chronological list of US sub-4 milers provided by Track & Field News - - I looked up the current year in college of every American NCAA runner who broke 4 for the first time this year (I tried finding their ages, but that proved to be very difficult, so I used current year in college as a proxy for age). When I say current year in college, I mean actual current year in college, equivalent to how many years they've been out of high school. So, redshirt seasons don't matter.

trackandfieldnews.com

The U.S. Sub-4:00 Miler's Club (Chronologically) - Track & Field News

Sieg Lindstrom

THE READERS HAVE SPOKEN! After a brief period where we had announced we were terminating updating of this feature we... Read More

Link:trackandfieldnews.com/u-s-sub-400-mile...

To find their current year in college, I looked at both their school athletics website profile and Milesplit for each runner (to ensure data accuracy). Here's what I found, in order based on current year in college (CYIC):

Name
School
CYIC

James Donahue
Virginia
1

Isaiah Givens
Colorado
1

Marco Langon
Unattached
(Villanova)
1

Camden
Marshall
Indiana
2

Nathan Green
Washington
2

John Lester
Stanford
2

Ethan Strand
North Carolina
2

Baidy Ba
Kent State
2

Parker Wolfe
North Carolina
2

Nathan
Mountain
Virginia
2

Nicholas
Bendtsen
Princeton
2

Ben Godish
Northeastern
2

Cole Sprout
Stanford
3

Thomas Boyden
Stanford
3

Steven Jackson
Boston College
3

Carson
Williams
Furman
3

Ronan
McMahon-Staggs
UCLA
3

Rhys Hammond
Cornell
3

Graham Blanks
Harvard
3

Carter Solomon
Notre Dame
3

Wil Smith
Gonzaga
3

Conor Murphy
Virginia
3

Brett Gardner
NC State
3

Garrett
MacQuiddy
Cal
3

Adian
McCarthy
Cal Poly SLO
3

Jack Eliason
Virginia
3

Lex Hilton
Arkansas
4

Joe dosReis
Davidson
4

Acer Iverson
Harvard
4

Tyler
Wirth
Cincinnati
4

Christian
Baker
Tulsa
4

Alexander
Rizzo
Navy
4

Sean Maison
Air Force
4

Jesse Hamlin
Butler
4

Michael Keehan
Penn
4

Arjun Jha
Michigan
5

Jake Gebhardt
Indiana
5

Anthony
Camerieri
Mississippi
5

James Lee
Duke
5

Chad Johnson
Iowa State
5

Kenneth Rooks
BYU
5

Karl Winter
Syracuse
5

Ryan Wilson
MIT
5

Ryan Riddle
Missouri Southern
5

Xian Shively
Cal Poly SLO
5

Ben Nagel
Virgina Tech
5

Jack Aho
North Carolina
6

Mac Franks
North Florida
6

Luke
Julian
CO School of Mines
6

Brandon Hontz
Penn State
6

DJ Principe
Providence
6

Matthew
Wilkinson
Unattached
(Minnesota)
6

Gavin Gaynor
Unattached (NC State)
7

Here is the distribution by current year in college:

First year (high school class of 2022): 3
Second year (high school class of 2021): 9
Third year (high school class of 2020): 14
Fourth year (high school class of 2019): 9
Fifth year (high school class of 2018): 11
Sixth year (high school class of 2017): 6
Seventh year (high school class of 2016): 1

Of the 53 runners on this list, 35 (66 percent) are within their first four years of college, and 46 (87%) are within the normal first five years. Only 7 runners (13 percent) are in their sixth year or higher. Also interesting: more runners broke 4 for the first time in their very first year in college than did runners in their seventh year.

Conclusion: For this year, I conclude that age is NOT a significant factor for explaining the increase in sub-4 milers in the NCAA.

Limitation: The limitation of this study is that it's only one year, as that's all I have time/willingness to investigate. I invite others to examine previous years and share your findings here.