Mike Smith Considering Offer to Be a Nike Coach in 2025 - Update it’s a done deal.

Ben Thomas is a much better investment, you are right.

Smith's group really underperformed this year (except for Nico).

I think Smith is a great coach, but his most valuable athletes (Luis, Hiltz, Nico) aren’t Nike ones, so that’s tough. I suppose you hope he can recruit the likes of Valby, Nathan Green, Sahlman down the road etc.

If Sahlman and Green don't go train with Hocker and Teare then they are IDIOTS.

Nathan Green I don’t know. Sahlman staying in Flagstaff feels like it’ll happen. Shane Cohen to Ben Thomas I hope happens.

I could totally see him doing this. I'm sure the money Nike is offering is beyond anything he could ever make at NAU. the best part is he gets to stay in Flagstaff where he and his wife want to live forever. that was apparently a huge factor in him not taking the Oregon job.

Cornfeld is a great coach and it's only a matter of time before he steps up to head coach. taking over at NAU makes sense and would be a fairly seamless transition.

it'll be fascinating to watch Smith assemble his own pro team 3 years out from the Olympics. im sure he's getting phone calls already from runners all over the country. i bet all the Bowerman runners in Eugene are already looking at real estate in Flagstaff. even Parker Valby will start doing altitude camps up there.

Sarah rocks, it’s nice to have an actual journalist covering the sport!

I agree. I think Nike's plan is to shut down Bowerman and have Jerry just coach college runners and send the pro runners to a different coach.

Salazar was a better coach.

of course there's also a good chance Smith is just flirting with Nike to leverage a bigger deal from Adidas. i had an employee do this once and damnit it worked and I gave the ambitious little b*stard a raise.

Smith is not committed to Nike and will just be a short term disaster. Smith see lots of injuries and I don’t see this actually going through.

Imagine saying I’ll consider this job next year as I coach other athletes from other companies. And don’t worry to my new college athletes; I might not be here after next year. If Nike does this they are f@cking brain dead. What in the world is Cap thinking these days.

Signed sealed delivered.

Nothing is happening for a reason.

Mike already sold his soul by taking on Galen, so nothing about his coaching methods can be trusted at this point. There’s no way his pros are (all) natty.
He had a pretty poor Olympic showing, so maybe full focus on one training group will improve things.
Olympic sports may not exist in the NCAA over the long term. Getting out would be smart.

2024 will be Mike smiths last year at NAU, broke the news to the team today and news is spreading like wildfire. Will remain in Flagstaff as a coach however rumor has it Nike is investing in new pro groups across the US.

talks now for Provo, Boulder and Flagstaff (Where Mike would be the head Coach) big investments for LA 2024 Olympics.

Jared Cornfield to become Director and take over NAU program.

Possible . . . but rather doubt it.

Believe Phil Knight's plan was to have UO athletes feed into BTC after they graduate or decide to turn pro. Like Lananna did when he started The Farm Team at Stanford back in the late-1990s.

Also, BTC is far more than just the pro team. In it prior incarnation, Bowerman Athletic Club was solely focused on youth as well as elite citizen runners. Then, Team Jerry was merged with BAC back in April 2014 to form BTC. The pros do a lot of volunteer work with the other groups which enhances the entire organizational dynamic.

However, it should now painfully clear to all sponsors of professional distance teams that living and training at altitude year-around is pretty much required to reach your best if you race the Steeplechase on up to the marathon. 800 & 1500 runners can live at sea level while attending altitude camps 2 - 3 times/year. However, for long distance runners, full time at altitude is optimal.

So, Nike does have a choice: shut down the BTC pro team and start a new altitude-based pro team from scratch, or keep BTC going in Eugene as a recruiting attraction for the UO program while concomitantly starting a new altitude pro team. My $$ is on the latter.

Regardless of how this all plays out, the real Q is: what does Nike do with its other pro team, the Union Athletic Club currently based in Portland? UAC was created to accommodate the remains of the shuttered NOP. But now -- minus Brazier, Hull, Koko, Engels, and others -- UAC is just a shell of its former self. And, with a coach who lives in Boulder.

The Swoosh has some decisions to make.

And, of course, the elephant in the living room:

Where does Sean Brosnan fit in with all this? :-)

I had the same thought. Brosnan has been connected to Nike for a while now. I”ll be honest I heard rumors about Brosnan with another group this fall, but I can see him involved with one of these Nike groups.