Confirmed by LRC: UCLA track coach, Sean Brosnan, won't return to UCLA for year #2

Genuine question, what's the reason for it being against the rules to not recruit athletes outside of the transfer portal? Is the transfer portal just the official NCAA way for coaches to make offers to athletes to make sure there's no shady business going on?

I didn't even know the transfer portal was a real thing until like a year ago, I thought it was just a figure of speech. I still don't really know how it works, but from the bits and pieces I've gathered, it sounds like coaches can't try to recruit an athlete from another school until they're in the transfer portal, and then it's fair game? And the claim is that Brosnan in some form contacted those 3 big transfers before they entered the portal, and then snatched them up as soon as they were in the portal?

As the #1 Sean Brosnan fan, I'd be really disappointed if that's what actually happened, purely because if you're gonna break the rules, you shouldn't be so blatant about it. I can sometimes justify someone bending the rules a bit, so long as it's not obvious, but unless it's normal for transfers to be in and out in <24 hours, that's a pretty bad job of hiding it. On the bright side, until something official comes out, I can still withhold judgement :)

Tyynismaa kind of a bad example, as her father, General Tyynismaa, US Army, was an NC State grad and had been stationed in Alabama. Tyynismaa and Seymour were friends from SEC days. This was more good fortune for NC st than Henes out there recruiting hard to build a super team.

Tynnismaa's coach left in December, thats why she transferred. These are not the same.

I have zero inside knowledge of this case, but as a former college coach and former DI runner myself, I am inclined to believe this. This sounds like the kind of slimy crap that scummy AD's pull on good coaches for dumb self serving reasons all the time, particularly at these big schools. Very unfortunate for Sean.

Da Broz isn't some amazing coach.

He lucked out with 2 gifted families.

Broke cif rules and got some transfers. Coached at a larger school with wealth.

The athletes didn't win a single TF title.

Take Crater a school with 800 vs 2400 students or Central Catholic or heck Ventura.

He's had no long term history of success!

I have seen the word POLITICS in all caps come up a couple times on here. Can someone elaborate on what that refers to? Actual political leanings, or inside UCLA drama?

"The Rise" was too much of an embarrassment for a school with a top-5 film making program. He had to go. Waiting for S1 E1 of "The Fall."

I don’t know. There was a since deleted post by someone who claimed to be on the UCLA team who said that Brosnan was a big Trump supporter. I don’t know.

Trump supporters believe in hard work. That’s doesn’t jive in cali academia

he didn’t “take” dalia from duke. she was obviously unhappy there and wanted to be back in california. since brosnan was hired there this gave her the opportunity to do so

sean doesn’t need my defense any more than he needs the haters here, but i’ll still offer some facts, opinions, educated guesses, and hunches from a registered user:
fact: every distance coach since larsen at ucla was on a one year contract, from eric petersen, to johnny gray, to forest braden, to elizondo.
.
educated guess: i’d bet this applies to 99% of the assistants in the sport of t&f (ncaa).
hunch: despite the iowa coach’s extension, my hunch would be that 90% of head coaches in t&f are one year contracts.

fact/educated guess: maybe 9/10 freshman athletes who go to faraway universities consider/want to come home after one year. the fact part of this is that it’s true (or close, since i haven’t done the actual math) at least with all the h.s. athletes of mine who’ve gone away to college, though not necessarily all at the d1 level.

fact/educated guess/maybe opinion: regarding the legacy “built on two families”: that’s a load of b.s., because the fact is that many coaches would have still found a way to either completely screw them up, or not coach them anywhere close to their full potential. anyone who’s been in coaching for a while knows this to be true.

fact/educated guess/maybe opinion, pt. 2: brosnan worked harder (and likely smarter) than most h.s. coaches, myself included (can’t say if this is true with college coaches). most h.s. coaches are uncomfortable admitting that someone else is working harder than them (or smarter than them), so it’s easy to point at luck, criticize egos, make accusations of cheating (recruiting, etc.); unfortunately, we see some athletes do the same when they get beat, so this shouldn’t surprise anyone with coaches…

educated guess: i actually doubt brosnan had to recruit illegally (or even unethically, for those who may argue the slippery slope of “everyone else is doing it”) at either the h.s. or collegiate level; success tends to speak for itself, and build on itself. that said, i don’t mind confirming what an earlier poster said about the hawthorne program in the 80s, fake addresses and all. pretty sure long beach poly’s heyday had the same issues, not to mention any private school powerhouses here in california with other sports.

educated guess, pt. 2: i don’t mind admitting that i’m very unfamiliar with the rules of the transfer portal, but if i knew i was planning on entering it, wouldn’t i also have a good idea on exactly where i want to go? it seems silly to find something nefarious in a college-aged athlete to decide “within hours” of entering the portal, when the decision was probably made before. and to expect multiple athletes in the age of social media to not talk about it together beforehand seems a little naive (fact: unlike in my age where you likely didn’t meet your teammates or roommates until day 1 of practice/school, today they all know each other long before school starts).

fact/educated guess/i’d bet the farm: most–but not all–of the posters on this thread have limited–or no–experience coaching at any level. as always, tough to wade through the typical letsrun $#!+ to find level opinions of brosnan, pro or con…

opinion: i think ucla’s made a mistake here; as an alumnus, i was excited about the hire, and i’ve been excited about the progress; yes, you can probably cherry-pick or spin stats to argue there wasn’t any progress, but i’ve talked to a few of the athletes and a few of the athletes’ h.s. coaches, and i’m comfortable with my opinion that there has been progress…

that’s my story and i’m sticking to it,
cush

Amaris’ dad graduated from NC State and she has a lot of family up there. Makes sense to me why she went there!

Cush, you seem to have missed the post(s) that said that Brosnan had contacted the transferred athletes prior to them being in the portal, either directly or via his wife. There was one a few pages ago that is purportedly from a mid-major coach. These would be violations, full stop. Of course, these are anonymous posts and these rumors are not verified (though they're rampant), but not everyone is saying that immediate announcements after entering the portal are smoking guns (which they're not).

You'd have to be pretty disconnected from reality to think that is what got SB fired (sorry, non-renewed).

The inference was the politics in the UCLA athletic department. But it's also true that Brosnan is a right-winger and tweeted a bunch of anti-vaccine, pro-Trump, and anti-Newsom (Calif gov) stuff during the pandemic. Think he deleted some or all of it. But if Brosnan's personal politics were an issue, UCLA wouldn't have hired him in the first place.

No proof?

Ah yes, the irrefutable "he deleted tho".

You guys take hating a guy for his coaching arrogance and extrapolate that to hate him in all kinds of creative ways. What's next? Animal abuser?

Does this release of Brosnan really surprise anyone?

He is arrogant as can be and is 100 mph at all times which is a sure recipe to rub plenty of his peers the wrong way. Also would not surprise me if he bent or broke the rules a bit to try and secure better athletes to build his reputation with.

He has some talent and understanding as a coach but the baggage he brings with his personality and attitude is too much downside for non-revenue producing college programs. Especially in today's day and age. Actually, I'm surprised he made it a full year at a California school.