Everyone slams Jerry for taking on too much with Oregon and BTC. So how does Mike Smith manage?

All Mike Smiths athletes with the exception of Rupp live in flag. Rupp comes for months at a time. The bowerman athletes would go to park city for months and Jerry would fly in for the workouts. Much harder to do with additional commitments at Oregon

I would contend that it hasn't been a bed of roses for Smith at NAU, either. Let's not forget that they (NAU men) failed to score a single point at last year's NCAA outdoor meet. Grijalva and Nur have been baked into the NAU system and likely have reasons outside of running to stay in AZ. Nur has been pretty hit or miss since he went pro. Kincaid was red hot early on but faded badly towards the end of summer and is not off to a good start. Rupp has struggled mightily under Mike Smith. Hiltz get an A+. I think the next two years time will tell whether the Mike Smith college coach/pro coach thing holds up. And I believe he also just had a kid. His priority will shift away from coaching even more.

BTW, I don't think NAU women should be considered a dynasty just yet.

Mike Smith is 100% committed to NAU - the pro thing is just a part time gig. no merch, no bells and whistles, no agendas, no payroll to worry about. he carefully selects pros who don't need a lot of hand holding; former NAU runners who he's already worked with for years and seasoned pros who are self starters. he tells everyone up front NAU has priority over them and they need to do all the heavy lifting themselves.

on a podcast Nur describes how Smith gives them schedules and its pretty much up to them to follow it. he might meet/train with him in person once a week. he doesnt even travel with them.

Bowerman is a much bigger thing than Mike Smith Elite - run like a company with high expectations and lots of pressure.

Jerry moved away from his training group. That’s the difficulty.

Training pros & collegians at the same time, on the same trails, roads, and tracks is much different than emailing and zoom calls.

There's a theory that it was never the intention for Jerry and Shalane to coach both Oregon and BTC long-term, and this was just a way to wind down BTC and eventually create a new Nike group without it being as obvious.

I don't bash Jerry for taking on too much. His former BTC athletes do. They also blame him for moving the entire team with very little notice.

I blame Jerry and Shalane for not taking a harder stance on doping. Shelby was doing this shirt right under their noses the whole time and likely others too. Jerry hides behind Nike, he hides behind UofO and he hides from any responsibility for his actions.

Coaching both college teams and pros at the same time is clearly a challenging proposition, and most coaches should struggle at it, in the same way that some people can have kids and continue to run well, while others see their running career end once they have kids. The success of Mike Smith does not mean it was a good choice for Schumacher to try it as well.

Listening to Nikki Hiltz on the Coffee Club Pod last week, they made clear that Mike Smith's focus is on NAU and the pros are somewhat on their own. Smith puts together the pros' training, but doesn't typically go to their races, and is fairly hands off compared to his investment in the college team. So Smith isn't really saddled with the same burdens as Schumacher.

Mike Smith’s accent coaches the pros, leaving the rest of him to coach NAU.

Post of the year!

I think she actually said that NAU is unequivocally his top priority and the pro group is a side gig. That hasn't been made clear with Schumacher, who seems to want to wear both hats at once. Everything tends to work better when roles and priorities are clear

Because Jerry is an overrated coach. Mike Smith is good at his job so he’s able to do it.

I think one of the big sticking points for the BTC folks has been location. The move to Eugene was not popular among Jerry's pros, and he had to then rebuild Oregon from the ground up. Mike Smith is already located in the professional training mecca of the USA and already had the NAU program up and rolling before he started taking on post-grads. Those are 2 huge advantages.

Who said Nur has been "up and down" as a pro? Seriously? Dude just made back-to-back US 5k teams, winning the dang race this year, and made the world final both times. Point me towards a "down".

Also has Nikki H. winning national titles and setting the US record in the mile, Henes has improved a ton, built Luis G into a legit medal contender, and had Kincaid run pr's in the 15, 5k & 10k, along with a national title in the 10.

Rupp won the US olympic trials in 2020 under Mike Smith, 8th at the Olympics, 2nd @chicago in 2:06, injuries in 2022, then 8th @chicago in 2:08 this fall.

Btc also has the financial backing of Nike while mikes team doesn’t have a brand sponsorship. Also It sounds like Mike smith is very transparent/realistic about what he can commit to on a pro level while jerry isn’T. it’s hard to lead adults by blind faith, especially when they have other options

Jerry will be fine when he recruits athletes who want to live in Eugene.

Issue was he moved people there by surprise, who did not want to be there.

Smith lives and coaches in a place pros are eager to be.

Hard to take a hard line on doping when Nike the company's motto is "Do whatever it takes to win." They are ruthless business competitors. Schumacher and Flanagan coach the team. Of course they knew who was doping. People like Jager showed on the leaked USADA report that listed him as "likely doping." Nike and Nike athletes do whatever it takes to succeed. Some get caught. Most don't.

From some limited experience of close personal relationships with runnners who have trained in each of their systems and time spent following the sport, there are two big differences that set up Mike Smith for success.

1. They're training to achieve different outcomes
Jerry is effectively running a meatgrinder, but for professional athletes. Like with meatgrinder programs in college, not everybody makes it out but the people who do are Herculean (Solinsky, Jager, Ahmed, Fischer, Cranny, etc.) It's almost like a moneyball sort of approach - if I have 10x of the best athletes in the world, I train all of them as hard as someone looking to medal at the olympics would need to train in order to do so, and 1-2 make it out, I'm making a stack on those bonuses. On the other hand, from what I know about Mike Smith, he's much more focused on the body as a biologic instrument that is intended to continue growing over time - he's also more focused on the health of the overall team of people he's training at NAU. It seems obvious to state that a runner who is in Flagstaff year round needs to train different, but anyone who has trained at altitude knows you can't hammer as much without incurring significant wear and tear on the body. As such, there's a need for a heightened focus on the body's ability to recover, adapt, adn continue progressing. This is what Mike Smith trains his athletes for. If he were to do a meatgrinder sort of approach at NAU, many of his athletes would get injured.

2. Flexibility with training
This is just as important as the previous points, but the best analogy I have to illustrate this is that Mike Smith is training his athletes to read a compass to navigate where they want to go and Jerry is reading his athletes turn-by-turn navigation instructions for where they want to go. There's much more agency and stronger focus on listening to your body. A very close friend who was in BTC at one point indicated that so many people are injured because they are required to hit so many different times at training regardless of how they're feeling. I don't know how he has adapted this at Oregon with a bigger group, but these contrasting styles do lead to different results. I think a byproduct of this is that Mike Smith's pros, in particular, have a bit streakier of a time during the season - they're responding to how their bodies are adapting and sometimes that can mean you peak earlier or later than intended. I think this is also an area where Jerry has notably had more success - in getting runners to peak - because he is setting the workouts very dogmatically for a sequence that culminates with a specific race.