Why has the Payton Jordan Cardinal Invite Slowly Died?

Azusa is easy. It started as the second tier meet for anyone who didn’t get into Mt SAC. So, schools from all around the country could bring the whole team. The best runners run Mt SAC, the slower runners do Azusa. Pretty fair if you ask me. Then Mt SAC said they don’t want schools doing that and it will kill Mt SAC off as coaches will give the middle finger to Mt SAC for being ridiculous.

Yeah, totally. I think a lot of meet organization comes down to being open to allowing more people to race. If you do that, your meet will grow. If you’re closed off, elite and aloof in how you communicate with people - teams and athletes will stop coming to your meet…which is essentially what has happened with Stanford and Mt. Sac.

I blame Jerry Schumacher.

Too expensive — the meet, the flights, the hotels, and per diem to the athletes

Pretty sure it reflects two things: (1) Milt left Stanford and new coach doesn't seem to care about hosting a big meet that caters to the pros (either that or he has done a poor job of it), and (2) Sound Running and others stepped up to fill the gap.

I find it comical that you can't even find entries for the meet, less than 48 hours out.

Basically every single other meet this weekend has had entries available for at least two days.

The entries have been out for a while but no one provides a link to them. I was able to finally find a tweet that had the link.

https://www.rtspt.com/events/stanford/pjc24/accepted.htm

Yes, the Payton Jordan meet used to be special. I wouldn't go so far as to say Milt really promoted the meet. The meet was left to him and he just maintained it. Remember, for a short time they started excluding the top collegiate athletes from the meet. But now the real problem is JJ Clark. Let's be honest, he doesn't give a shj$#@t about anything other than a few middle distance athletes. He is horrible at running a complete track and field program, and even worse promoting a special meet like Payton Jordan. There were so many better candidates for that job when he was hired. People that would have promoted the heck out of Payton Jordan and the complete team. Just a dam shame.

It could be a combination of things. Also seems that post-covid lots of teams and even elite athletes just don't want to travel much and instead train at their home bases in preparation for championship events.

Agree the meet has gone downhill, but the other things you are saying are ridiculous. Are you that unemployed coach who has been bashing the Stanford program hoping to get hired there? (Your post sure comes across that way.)

My alma mater used to try to send a few distance runners to Stanford each year. However, my understanding was they weren't the easiest to work with. Eventually they just started going to Raleigh and Mt. Sac (now Azusa) instead.

It's the lingering effects of the Covid-19 Lockdown.

Except for Taco ns Burrito shops, many small lunch joints have folded up shop.

In 2023 Google, Apple, Nvidia, HP, etc. ordered engineers back to the office to work at least 3 days a week.

In 2023 the AI Bonanza hit Silicon Valley.

As of January 1, 2024 the car traffic is back to pre-Covid levels.

Companies can't find AI engineers. 80% have to be given training to learn AI.

It's a riot here now.

I think Payton Jordan will come back soon. Maybe not in 2024. But definitely in 2025.

Stanford lost Vin. That’s why.

Agree that the post is hyperbolic but I don't think it's as far off as you do. JJ Clark was a mediocre hire made by a historically-bad athletic director in Bernard Muir. He has overseen the cratering of Stanford's athletic department financially and the end of Stanford as a premier football and (men's) basketball school. Makes terrible hire after terrible hire. And Clark was one of them.

I don’t know about that. People used to rarely fly anywhere for regular season indoor track meets. Now all the good West Coast college teams and pros fly to Boston 2-3 times a season. You even have lots of pros flying from Japan just for an indoor track race. And the Big Ten will soon span both coasts, with other major conferences likely to follow. Seems like people are flying more than ever for good competition.

By far Payton Jordan/Stanford Invite consistently have the best weather and racing conditions year after year.

A meet that lets everybody in does not make it successful, anyone can do that if a money grab is their objective. Azusa is nothing but a huge cluster F of nobody runners and a terrible viewer experience. It's painful to sit through heat after heat of C, D and E level runners just to get to a recognizable name. If Stanford opened it up to letting everyone in that wanted to be in, it would be big too, but who wants to manage that mess other than Azusa? Valby was the only name at Azusa, the rest was boring, it rained yet again and other than Valby, absolutely no fast times were run. At least there are recognizable names running this weekend, I'm excited to see what Ostrander can do in her return to the steeple.

stanford has lost a lot of its institutional/staff-level ties to pro running/nike, and the broader elite distance running culture/community

pros/elite collegians would rather go to smaller meets with fewer heats of each event and not sit thru 20 heats of 1500s unsure about exact start time

new insanely tough standards for global championships means that just being a really good meet isn't enough, meets need the perfect setup to justify being one of a couple bites at the apple an athlete gets in a cycle

covid forcing innovation with small meets accelerated everything