pat tyson's recruiting class

The prediction was right, Aubrey was wrong.

Pat Tyson may have a been a fantastic High School coach and Camp Counselor, but that does not make him an instant College recruiter. You do not always sign great athletes on personality alone. He is much older, and most older coaches hate traveling, making 50+ calls per week, text messaging, and emailing. Those things are essential to recruiting.

As for his signing class, he really did not do anything special at all. He had an entire year to recruit, but signed no blue chip athletes. However, he did get Galen Rupp's brother. Even though he has very little SEC or NCAA potential, it's a great name.

The men's team did sign 4 USA today HS All-Americans, so somebody on the staff was doing some recruiting.

Trackster17 wrote:

Pat Tyson may have a been a fantastic High School coach and Camp Counselor, but that does not make him an instant College recruiter. You do not always sign great athletes on personality alone. He is much older, and most older coaches hate traveling, making 50+ calls per week, text messaging, and emailing. Those things are essential to recruiting.

As for his signing class, he really did not do anything special at all. He had an entire year to recruit, but signed no blue chip athletes. However, he did get GALEN RUPP's :-0 brother. Even though he has very little SEC or NCAA potential, it's a great name.

The men's team did sign 4 USA today HS All-Americans, so somebody on the staff was doing some recruiting.

OOPS! I meant the WORLD/ letsrun FAMOUS ALAN WEBB!!! Not Galen Rupp...

His brother is Chris Webb, and is going to Kentucky (1:58, 4:36)

Pat is no longer at KY, he now works for Nike

Reviewing the Spokesman Review wrote:

The prediction was right, Aubrey was wrong.

From what I heard about his Kentucky job, there were only a couple scholarships to work with and Pat was not in a position to call the shots on who they went to. I think he actually had a lot of decent recruits, but with no position to offer them anything.

I find it both disturbing and scary that you would go out of your way to try to put down Pat Tyson. I wouldn't even be surprised if you have a little Pat Tyson voodoo doll with a Mead sweatshirt on it.

What I find really hard to imagine is who the hell you are.

I hope you are just an ignorant recent high school graduate who is unaware of the success stories Pat has had with his state champions going off to run well at college. Maybe you ran at a rival school and that's your beef. Well would you like to tell me how many of your schoolmates went off on D1 scholarships to run well?

Please don't tell me you are some assistant coach or someone who graduated in the 90's. It would be utterly pathetic (actually in any case) to carry this grudge out of high school more than a year or two.

Despite being a competitor of Mead myself, I found Tyson to be an inspiration. He took the time to not only talk to me, but motivate me. I can honestly say that Pat's words helped me make a jump that got me a partial scholarship at a D1 school.

Pat has probably affected so many people in this way, I can't even imagine.

I wonder what you've done.

I ran for Mead/Pat Tyson is the fall of 2002. Tyson is one of the greatest coaches / individuals I have ever met.

I already knew about him living with Pre, but he only talked to me about it because I kept bugging him.

I am now the head xc/track coach at a community college and I will be using all of what I got from Mead while studying under Tyson.

Also, I have been wearing my mead shirt all last night and this morning. weird.

Good luck to Pat and all he does.

I looked at the UK website yesterday when reading a thread about John Mortimer's whereabouts and someone said Mortimer had gone to UK. The roster listed Don Weber as the UK head XC coach and Mortimer as the assistant. No mention of Tyson.

what runners are these?

[quote:]

I know 4 Mead alumni that made it through the years at Oregon, and I'm willing to bet we faired better than you and your team has/will/did/dreamed of. You ever place 3rd, 7th or 5th at NCAA's? That was our last 3 years.

Do you blame your father for not teaching you to have confidence? Now that (I'm assuming here) you're out of your fathers house it's on you to be a man. Those things dangling 'tween your legs aren't for decoration.

If you're going to come out and attack Tyson so extravegantly, bring your balls and state your name. Have a little accountability for those accusations.

Tyson could've retired 8 years ago and he would still have had more success and positive impact in this world than most of us will in our lifetime.

Rob[/quote]

Thanks Rob.[/quote]

[quote]njl2 wrote:

what runners are these?

Matt & Micah Davis, Rob Aubrey & Greg James.

I think he's referring to their cross country team finishes at NCAA's since they were all on the team. I know Matt Davis did place 5th individually at NCAA cross and something like 15th the time before that. I think Rob and Greg both placed around 50th in different years, and Micah was all american in the steeple at least once.

This is all the same story rehashed. All the knobs bashing Tyson couldn't come up with more thn a coach or two - and not even one they know personally - who have had more success in high school coaching OR whose athletes ran better after high school than Tyson's did. I love the dork above somehow construes a coaching job with Nike to be a sign of failure. Inetersting world, you must live in.

This thread is a good example of the worst of letsrun.

Is it not possible to talk about a specific college xc team or coach without the smearing?

If I were a moderator I'd ban all anonymous users who write negative things about any program without sufficient evidence.

Letsrun has been great for spreading information about a sport where there's little media coverage. However, I don't think we really learn anything from unsubstantiated smears.

These things may seem insignificant, until Joe Runner is trying to decide between two colleges then chooses the worse one because some dumbshit anonymous poster decided that googling "X University XC" should bring up 12 letsrun posts about how bad X University's program is.

If you say something negative, you must have evidence for this or you wouldn't have said it. Show it to us!

i have never met Pat Tyson, but I hope he isn't as goofy as the guy who portrayed him in the Prefontaine movie.

I've never understood the angry, bitterness, hatred, and jealousy of this board. Every coach is considered awful, every runner is considered overrated.

I've seen these guys ripped on here (among others): Webb, Lagat, Prefontaine, Billy Mills, Seb Coe, Ovett, Teegenkamp, Ritz, Dan Lincoln, Nick Symmonds, El G, every world record holder. No one is beyond the wrath of Letsrun's message board via the jealous words of the middling high school or college intramural runner. I don't get it. I hope it doesn't speak for American distance running, which is seeing a new renaisance right now.

Back to Tyson: a tremendous prep coach, I thought after the Matt Davis era, he should've really pushed for a college job in the West Coast. WSU or UW should've hired him a long ago. Kentucky is a hoops school first, a football school second, a baseball school third ... they're not going to give him the tools to succeed, and they won't care if if succeeds or fails.

Northwest Run wrote:

Back to Tyson: a tremendous prep coach, I thought after the Matt Davis era, he should've really pushed for a college job in the West Coast. WSU or UW should've hired him a long ago. Kentucky is a hoops school first, a football school second, a baseball school third ... they're not going to give him the tools to succeed, and they won't care if if succeeds or fails.

This is not a Pat Tyson rip or anything, but we are giving this unproven college coach way too much credit. You can't blame UK for not making him successful... He did not get the NIKE job, so you can't blame NIKE... There are no Div. 1-A schools where track is a #1, 2 or 3 sport. Don't mix success with importance. It’s still about the money$$ Kentucky has won a national championship and finished top 4 on 4 other occasions. They can be good in the distance events there. Plus, no AD wants any team to be bad…

I met Tyson at his track camp and he’s an excellent individual. His kids love him, and children draw to him. Once again, that still does not mean you can recruit. Also, Tyson was not fired, he quit! So what does that say to his commitment outside of his HS comfort zone? SEC & National level recruiting is not easy, and I think he just chose to bail rather than stink one more year with a poor signing class…