Gags back to Rutgers

This could(!) certainly make the Big East interesting.

Syracuse is still poised to dominate X-C and distance events for several years. Villanova is solid. G'twn, Providence, ND and L'ville make it one of the deepest conferences in the NCAA. Would be very cool to see RU in the mix.

Does anyone think that Rutgers will move in the direction of a combined Mens and Womens team. It appears in many situations this allows for stretching of coaching resources . Seems like teams with older coaches stay with separate model and younger leadership like Penn State, UVA, Duke have gone to the combined model.

Also I was at NJMOC..anyone know if any of the winners are Rutgers bound. I heard Notre DAME, Miami, Nebraska, Harvard,Stanford , Tennessee but NO RU. I did see the womens coach hanging around the jumping events.

Dr. Dent wrote:

What did u say? wrote:

Please pay attention. That way you won't sound so stupid when you post.

http://bigeast.org/portals/5/fls/19400/stats/otrack/2011/menfinalresults.htmhttp://www.bigeast.org/fls/19400/stats/itrack/2011/mens-Results.htm

If you know anything about what Gags has done and what he is currently doing, and if you've followed Gtown's men's team for the past six years, you should be able to figure out that Rutgers will beat Gtown soon enough. Gtown's women are solid (nice work, Milt, and congrats on the promotion) but the men do nothing after mid-April. When Gags coached there, you could expect their distance guys to be a major factor at the NCAA meet. Now, they're happy to score at Big East. If the AD is happy with that, then fine, but Gtown used to be so much more. And don't throw out Bumbalough's name to refute me, since I've heard from several people that he would have been successful under any circumstances.

Oh yeah....He wants to coach collegiates so bad, he hasn't done so since 1998.....Why didn't he coach collegiates at Oregon? Or Stanford? It's all about his club.

silly talk wrote:

Oh yeah....He wants to coach collegiates so bad, he hasn't done so since 1998.....Why didn't he coach collegiates at Oregon? Or Stanford? It's all about his club.

What are you talking about?

Gags was the head coach at Georgetown until '99, and didn't leave for the Farm Team until 2002. He was still coaching at Georgetown during that time - and would've stayed but they kicked him out.

Why didn't he coach collegiates at Oregon or Stanford? Because they already had a damn good distance coach - Lananna, another one of Gags' friends.

Look - you want to troll and slam a coach - fine, be a douche. Contribute to Letsrun the only way you can.

Gags' will go on coaching. His athletes will continue to do well. You'll continue to troll. Same as it ever was.

This is great for Rutgers. No matter what anyone says, Mike Mulqueen is a tremendous human being and a great hurdle and long sprint coach. Distance running, despite what you may read on these boards, is the easiest thing to coach. The hard part is inspiring a group of young people to work together and get gung-ho about it. An avid runner will succeed no matter where he is, he can just go out and run on his own.

Gags is not the type of coach who will be writing books on various training systems and any type of jargon. He will make you want to run for him and race hard for him. Mike and Gags have worked well together in the past, and I hope that having Gags around will get NJ kids to stay in State and run for Rutgers and bring cross-country back to the level they were in the the '70's.

The move is likely in large part due to a NCAA rule that limits non-university personell from being allowed to use university facilities and be paid (not by the university). Ask Leo about this as he and the group that train here in Austin cannot use the UT track to train due to this rule. I was actually wondering how Gags group was getting away with using the Rutgers facilities.

Gags had little if any Middle Distance or Distance Running success until he inherited Joe Lang's crew @ Georgetown back in the '80s. Did a great job with them however. He's always seemed to be a great motivator.

Big Easter wrote:

This could(!) certainly make the Big East interesting.

Syracuse is still poised to dominate X-C and distance events for several years. Villanova is solid. G'twn, Providence, ND and L'ville make it one of the deepest conferences in the NCAA. Would be very cool to see RU in the mix.

If Gags is such a good coach then how come Dan Wilson never qualified for Footlockers??

[quote]jamief wrote:

Gags had little if any Middle Distance or Distance Running success until he inherited Joe Lang's crew @ Georgetown back in the '80s. Did a great job with them however. He's always seemed to be a great motivator. [quote]Big Easter wrote:

Do you have any idea of which you write. At Roselle Catholic he won at Penn in the two mile relay, at Manhatten they were NCAA indoor champs(Centro, Keough and a bunch of other, at Rutgers NCAA indoor champs in the 4x880 and a second at Penn and second in the IC4A's, when that was a big deal-and a sprinter who was second in the world champs. He didn't get the job at Georgetown without having prior success

jamief wrote:

Gags had little if any Middle Distance or Distance Running success until he inherited Joe Lang's crew @ Georgetown back in the '80s. Did a great job with them however. He's always seemed to be a great motivator.

Again, do you even know what you're talking about?

Before he got to Georgetown, Gags coached guys like Ron Spiers (5th in the '75 NCAA mile), Mike Roche ('76 Olympian in the steeple), Bill Sieben (7th NCAA 6 mile), Chris Devetta - 5th place '77 NCAA 1000m indoors, Brian Grimes '80 NCAA 3rd place at 600m.

Rutgers - yes Rutgers - WON the 4 x 8 at the '81 NCAA indoor meet. Gags coached 'em.

Rutgers took the Joe Lang coached Georgetown team to the line in the '81 Penn Relays 4 x 8 - losing on the lean.

Before Rutgers he coached at Manhattan College - where his guys won the 1973 DMR - in then WR time, and Mike Keogh won the 2 mile, with Cliff Bruce 3rd in the 1000y - helping Manhattan win the NCAA title,

In 71 they were 2nd in the DMR. He coached John Lowell to 2nd in the 800 in '72, and the 2 mile relay was 5th. Back at it in '74, where Tony Colon was 5th in the NCAA mile.

But I guess he never had much success before he got Joe Lang's athletes.

What about the Rutgers Girls? Will Gags coach them too?

The Rutgers girls will continue to be coached by Jan Merill-Morin. Aside from the fact that this is only an agreement between mentor-mentee/coach-athlete/coach-assistant coach/best friends, there is no way Gags would be willing to put up with the bullshit that a lot of the girls on that team are absolutely notorious for. As most people know Gags loves people who behave like champions on and off the track. Put Gags in charge of that group and 80% of them will be cut by the end of September.

You have no idea what you're talking about. That's a law in the state of Texas, not an NCAA rule.http://www.runtex.com/web/1-2440.asp

LilTex wrote:

The move is likely in large part due to a NCAA rule that limits non-university personell from being allowed to use university facilities and be paid (not by the university). Ask Leo about this as he and the group that train here in Austin cannot use the UT track to train due to this rule. I was actually wondering how Gags group was getting away with using the Rutgers facilities.

Former Scarlet Knight wrote:

Distance running, despite what you may read on these boards, is the easiest thing to coach. The hard part is inspiring a group of young people to work together and get gung-ho about it.

Distance running is NOT the easiest thing to coach. However Gags to Rutgers is an amazing coup.

If you really think that "an avid runner will succeed no matter where he is, he can just go out and run on his own," then I seriously doubt you're a distance runner.

Fact is that Rutgers has had a number of avid, successful distance guys come into the program over the years and very few have panned out - and MANY of them have had to run on their own - how has that worked out? An earlier post notes that MM will readily mention that he's not a great distance coach. If true, it's a slap to the face of every distance runner he's coached. If you're not good at your job, either vacate or learn something so you become good. Don't just wallow in your "oh well, I'm just not that good at it" mentality and ship the careers of the kids you've recruited up the river. I'm sorry, but that's bullshit.

Also a former Scarlet Knight wrote:

Fact is that Rutgers has had a number of avid, successful distance guys come into the program over the years and very few have panned out - and MANY of them have had to run on their own - how has that worked out? An earlier post notes that MM will readily mention that he's not a great distance coach. If true, it's a slap to the face of every distance runner he's coached. If you're not good at your job, either vacate or learn something so you become good. Don't just wallow in your "oh well, I'm just not that good at it" mentality and ship the careers of the kids you've recruited up the river. I'm sorry, but that's bullshit.

Mulqueen hardly shipped the careers up the river. He didn't get great talent, yet produced some decent runners.

But he wisely never recruited big time distance talent. Why? Well, being in the Big East, he knew that he'd have to compete with Villanova, Georgetown, Providence, and Notre Dame for distance points. So he chose to focus on sprints/hurdles/throws/multis - and he's carved out a pretty nice niche in the Big East.

Rutgers has had some talent, but not talent that you need to succeed in the NCAA. You need 9 minute 2 milers, 4:10 milers, and 1:50 800 guys. Rutgers never got that. They got 4:18 milers, 9:25 2 milers, and 1:54 guys. You have to have an awful large stable to get that kind of talent to produce on the NCAA level.

I cannot believe that this isn’t getting more attention. If he is legitimately coaching Rutgers this is power shift in the Big East and possibly something beyond.

Amazing Stuff wrote:

I cannot believe that this isn’t getting more attention. If he is legitimately coaching Rutgers this is power shift in the Big East and possibly something beyond.

Nah, it shouldn't surprise you. Gags gets no love on these boards. Given his age (and the commute), one does have to wonder what type of time commitment he is making here, ie is this just a very short term type of thing, or is he thinking something of indefinite length?

It will be interesting to see. He will certainly have plenty of local NJ/NY talent from which to draw.