Name D1 schools who use all Track Scholarships for distance runners

Duke does have more of a distance focus but has recently signed national champs in the shotput and decathlon....

"ridiculous," your comment about offensive linemen is ridiculous and not at all applicable.

If they gave national championships to the best offensive line (XC in your analogy), then yeah maybe it would make sense. Not to mention that a solid group of distance runners could produce individual national champions and all-americans in track as well.

I don't like the "all distance" approach of some schools, just as I don't like the "no distance" approach of other schools.

The event niche approach hurts the sport in the overall scheme of things, in my opinion.

I will concede that very few if any schools can cover all events. Let's say, however, that we divide them up into sprints, middle distance, long distance, jumps, and throws.

I understand why one of those areas may have to be seriously down played in order to do have a functional program in the other areas. But I dislike it when schools shut down more than one of those areas.

If a school throws out long distance, but still puts out sprinters, middle distance (800 meter types), jumps, and throws, I say they have a valid track & field program. Or, if a school bypasses sprinters, but has middle and long distance, jumps, and throws, I think that is good too.

I'd like to see the all distance programs be forced to put some resources into some other events or else just be eligible to run cross country. Otherwise, what they are doing is cherry picking.

You couldn't win a football game with 80 offensive linemen.

You can't win a dual or tri meet in track with only distance runners. There was once a time when dual and tri meets were the heart of a track team's schedule and you knew that your team wasn't going to win anything without some sprinters, jumpers and throwers.

But those days are gone and really, no team wins much of anything anymore. You look to get qualifiers for regionals and nationals. You look for good individual performances and if you get a few of these you can conceivably win a big multi-team meet or even a national championship.

But that's so unlikely that it doesn't even seem a realistic goal for a school with limited resources. A school like Iona is never going to be able to attract enough top level athletes to contend for a national track championship but if they go all out to get distance runners they can be national runners up in successive years.

you all are just choosing to rationalize. it is a track and field team with track and field scholarships.

the fact that it has become rather common place does not mean it isn't as absurd as having all offensive linemen.

it is why our sport is becoming irrelevent. ADs don't care enough to have standards for track and field programs. coaches get a pass for having a few individuals qualify for regionals, while the team finishes near the bottom at a conference track and field championship.

if you want to go all distance, the NCAA has an option for you. DO NOT SPONSOR TRACK AND FIELD. Just sponsor cross country. Then you are limited the to number of scholarships you can use. You will also be limited in the number of track races you can compete in. Which is OK because distance coaches and distance runners really only want to race like twice per season anyway.

When a coach says, "I can't compete for a track championship" that is a cop out. Work harder. Is it ok for a baseball coach to announce that because their weather isn't great, or their stadium isn't state of the art, or their location and reputation aren't the most attractive, is it ok for the coach to just announce they can't be competitive? Can the head baseball coach who loves skilled short stops just have 10 of those guys on the team?

And AD would go crazy if his basketball coach announced they couldn't be competitive for some crazy reason and then just recruited power forwards.

If you can't be competitive, then find a coach who can. Or go to an environment where you can be competitive. Anything else is a cop out.

And I like watching good cross country teams as well but I have to ask, if the team has 10+ track and field scholarships in distance runners what have they really accomplished? Now a team like Nebraska's women that qualify for the NCAAs in xc, but have a complete team where scholarships are spread equally and they probably have maybe 2 or 3 in xc runners. Now that is accomplishment. Yes they may finish 29th, but they have achieved more than Providence or BC that finishes 15th but with 15+ scholarships with distance runners.

The same is true for a team that has 18 scholarships in sprinters. They damn better have a 4x1 and 4x4 at NCAAs, but it isn't impressive.

The thing that about this is you cant compare schools across the board even if they have the same number of scholarships. You have school "A" that is a state school, academic standards not high, great facilities, money invested in sports programs, low cost tuition. School "B" private, higher academic standards, so-so facilities, not much money invested into sports, high cost tuition.

"A" can easily bring in and field a high level balanced team. They can break up scholarships and bring in twice as many athletes to cover all those events. Simple math.

teams are compared by division and by conference. and the coach knows that when taking the job. anything else is an excuse. of course everyone doesn't have the same resources. do you expect a head start in the race because of it? No, on the day, you line up and compete. Just as the coach must compete in his job. No excuses, just work hard. recruit harder, coach harder, or find another job.

iowa states another one

How about Liberty?

Liberty has a complete track and field team for both men and women. I know, I used to be in the same conference as them, and they destroyed everyone by all the points they could get from areas no one else could invest in. They also have a couple IC4A team championships back in the 90s, maybe some more recent also. They are not only distance.

Besides OSU, maybe UTEP, Providence, Liberty, Iona, Portland? I really have no idea, I'm just basing this on teams that have really strong distance programs and not much else.

It's a lot cheaper to take in ten distance guys and not have to hire field event coaches or buy pole vault equipment for the ADs. The schools that take this approach, 9 times out of 10, will also "go foreign", as the twenty or twenty one year old freshman who is at near the top of his country will be the equivalent of a successful US junior in college. The school will tend to find a lot of success in cross country. They never win track meets, but they get a lot of noteriety just the same because the best of their athletes will often be stand outs.

Again, Liberty is NOT a distance only squad. Just in 07, Liberty sent not just Josh McDougal to nationals, but also a decathlete and a hammer thrower. Liberty is a FULLY FUNDED TRACK AND FIELD TEAM.

There are something like 18 events in a track meet and two of them are relays which require four runners. Even if you're giving out your full allotment of twelve and a hallf scholarships, and many places don't, you're going to have to make choices about what events are going to be left uncovered.

Football has eleven positions, twenty two if you count offensive and defensive positions as separate and twenty four if you add a punter and place kicker. And they can give eighty five scholarships. Baseball gets something like twelve scholarships. baseball gets twelve or so scholarships and has nine positions. Limit football to maybe a dozen scholarships, basketball and baseball to three or four and you'd see some differences in the way those teams recruit and assign players.

Remember that most of us regard cross country and track as separate sports but the NCAA does not agree with us and counts scholarships given in either sport against a school's limit for both. With the system that we have, coaches need to make decisions about how they'll allocate resources. One attraction of distance runners to a school with limited funds is that they don't require expensive, high tech poles and landing pits, runways, heavy implements or even an actual track.

Just because you don't like the way some coaches allocate their resources doesn't mean it's wrong or should be corrected with some sort of legislation and if the sort of rule you're suggesting was implemented it would be easy enough to send one of your distance guys into the hundred where he could jog to the finish in 20 seconds, send another off to the pole vault where he'd go out without clearing any height, etc.

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teams are compared by division and by conference. and the coach knows that when taking the job. anything else is an excuse. of course everyone doesn't have the same resources. do you expect a head start in the race because of it? No, on the day, you line up and compete. Just as the coach must compete in his job. No excuses, just work hard. recruit harder, coach harder, or find another job.

Not asking for a head start just noting that there are alot of coaches doing a great job with their schools situation and they are probably still not getting the championships. They are working harder and recruiting harder already maximizing their resources. Just like there are quite a few coaches in programs that are set up in great situations and they do great without the coach having to recruit harder, coach harder. I know I used to be in a program where honestly most first year grad. students could have kept the program up and competitive by showing up.

again, rationalize all you want, but schools like FSU and Arizona State seem to be getting the job done across the board. FSU has a distance coach as a head coach, but he isn't saying I only want to do distance. They find a way to break up the 12.6 and have teams at NCAAs in cross country and still win NCAA Championships in track. They have every event covered. That is one end of the spectrum of a school that has resources. But how can you call yourself a division 1 school, in a major conference and not even TRY to field a track and field program? How can that be acceptable? The fact that people are making an argument that it is OK shows just how far this sport has fallen.

Do you think every baseball team in division 1 is fully funded? logic would dictate that there must be "have nots" in baseball too. There must be schools that have only say 5 scholarships for baseball. So what does that coach do? Do they play with no outfield? The coach would be fired on the spot. Yet we say it is OK for the track and field team to only recruit and coach distance runners.

Again, if you want to do distance running only, then don't sponsor track and field. That is an option. But then the coaches that complain they can't be competitive in track and field, want the benefits of offering MORE scholarships and going to MORE meets. You shouldn't be able to have it both ways. You can't argue that you have both decided not to be competitive in track, but yet want the protection to offer more track scholarships to distance runners.

If pits and equipment are too expensive, if hiring coaches who have to show up for more than 2 workouts per week is difficult, then DO NOT SPONSOR track and field. Tell the NCAA your school is just doing cross country. Limit yourself to the 7 max scholarships you can use if not sponsoring track and field, and then there is no argument.

But, what if those schools limited the number of athletes on that baseball team to 10, I suspect a coach would simply leave, but if not would have to create some strategy like spending all his money to get the best pitchers in the country and attempting to win games with pitching rather than offense.

Our sport fortunately has a more realistic approach built in, national track and field championships are won by scoring big points in a few events. I was coaching at a school that finished 14th in the country with 2 seconds and we considered it a worse season than others because our goal was not nationals but our conference. But, if the athletic administartion had said the number of athletes you can have is limited it makes it difficult to win conference titles. Aiming for a few high placers and consistent high CC finishes and high track national finishes makes sense.

The comparisons with other sports don't work because it's impossible even to play a baseball game with less than nine players or to win a football game with less thano A eleven on the field. But schools with fewer football resources than a Michigan or USC make decisions all the time about what sort of player they'll recruit. Places like Hawaii, Tulsa, Texas Tech and so on have devoted much more recruiting resources to quarterbacks and wide receivers than to guys who play other positions because they don't have the recruiting budgets that allow them to go after and get high school blue chippers at every position. When Al McGuire was coaching at Marquette he said he always looked for "an aircraft carrier," one guy with the potential for carrying the scoring load and a supporting cast because Marquette didn't have the resources to recruit a top guy at all fibve positions like a UCLA or Duke could do. Are you seriously suggesting that places like Portland, Providence, Iona, etc. can compete on equal terms across fifteen events? "Require" such schools to compete in all track and field events and you'll either drive them out of the sport or see distance runners throwing the shot fifteen feet because the school is required to "compete" in the event.

Some years ago Arkansas won an NCAA outdoor championship despite sending only five athletes to the meet. I remember thinking that it was not a particularly good thing for the sport. But if you can win a big meet with only five guys what possible difference does the events those five compete in make? Why not let each school and coach figure out how to allocate their resources to get the optimal results for their school rather than create another layer of bureaucratically imposed headaches for them?

My alma mater, Butler University gives all Track scholarships to distance guys although, I'm not sure if they use the full 12.5.

You almost see the complete picture with "if you want to go all distance, the NCAA has an option for you. DO NOT SPONSOR TRACK AND FIELD. Just sponsor cross country."

The problem is that cross country is not treated EQUALLY as a separate sport. If cross country programs received 7 scholarhips as a fully funded program, and the track & field programs received their full compliment of scholarships, then your argument would be legitimate.

This would allow schools to have solid cross teams and balanced track & field teams. It would give good coaches the power to compete in both sports. And if they couldn't, then yes, find one you can.