Greatest College Cross Country Team of All Time

Everyone must agree the greatest NCAA team all-time was 1981 UTEP. What was the greatest Arkansas team during their run in the 1990's? What Hog team fits in with 1979 Oregon, 1982-85 Wisconsin, late 1990's Colorado, 2003 Stanford, and 2004-05 Wisconsin.

Any other legendary teams over the last 40 years that's belongs in the discussion?

An article on the 1979 NCAA championships

http://pa.milesplit.com/articles/57129

93 when they score like 30 points and won by 120 would be my vote but they had a run where

break it up wrote:

Everyone must agree the greatest NCAA team all-time was 1981 UTEP. What was the greatest Arkansas team during their run in the 1990's? What Hog team fits in with 1979 Oregon, 1982-85 Wisconsin, late 1990's Colorado, 2003 Stanford, and 2004-05 Wisconsin.

Any other legendary teams over the last 40 years that's belongs in the discussion?

[quote]asfadsf wrote:

93 when they score like 30 points and won by 120 would be my vote but they had a run where

[quote]break it up wrote:

Arkansas 1993 (1,2,4,8,16)

Jason Bunston

Niall Bruton

Teddy Mitchell

Brain Baker

Michael Morin

Wisco Fan wrote:

a huge asterix.

The Gaul?

i ran on the Allegheny teams in the mid to late 70's. We were never banned from running against D1 schools. We just had problems on getting invited to meets with other great teams. They didn't want to run against us. But the NCAA never banned us from running against D1 schools. We could only run invitational races and had to be invited.

WSU had Rono (four WR's), Kimwoumbwa (1 WR), Kimeto (very good 5K/XC runner), one-year wonder Joel Cheriyot (mid-13's, I believe) ... the problem (and it's a big one) no quality 5 guy. This happened quite a few times at WSU -- no quality 5 guy.

But yes, the top 4 were very good.

I'm going with 2 of those UTEP teams, than UO 77 (or 78?) national title team and the runner-up team to UTEP in 80 or so. Then again I have Northwest/West Coast bias. Arkansas has had some fabulous teams over the years as has Wisconsin, CU, and Stanford, among others.

Ya My Favorite 4 Man team was Western Kentucky

1974 - 6 Miles OVU Meet

1. Tony Staynings, WKU 29:44

2. Chris Ridler, WKU 29:44

3. Nick Rose, WKU 29:44

4. Dave Long, WKU 29:44

Alas 5th guy was 32:00+

If only one of the ETSU could have run for WKU

Cusick/Finucane/Flynn would have made them a real monster

A slight quibble, those places are after removing individuals.

Withrow was 9

Ford 14

Eagon 17

Nelson 18

Wagner 58

Your points still stand though.

The Olympic 5000 meter Silver Medalists had 3 teammates ahead of him at the 1981 XC Champs. Enough said. Stop talking about any other team.

UTEP was playing by the rules of the time until they were found to be giving out cash to those runners. A renegade program to the same extent of SMU's football team of the same era.

The screwed up thing with college cross country is you couldn't start a no name program with no tradition and win a title without doing that or pulling in a lot of older foreign runners. Even the Colorado, Stanford, and recent Wisconsin teams operate on a different level than 99 percent of college programs.

That's why my favorite great NCAA cross team will always be the Wisconsin teams from 1981-85. The 1982 team won it with a bunch of kids all from Wisconsin (they did have a 7th man from right across the border in Illinois.) Yes, it was a fluke somewhat to have the great in-state recruiting all at the same time in a small state but no other program before or since ever had that magic which is mainly responsible for the success that school has had in cross country since.

I remember reading about the 81 team in the Milwaukee Journal. It inspired my life long love affair with running.

The guys in bold are not exactly chopped liver. I was absolutely flabbergasted when I saw the results of this race (there is a great sequence of photos from the race as well, with Wisconsin getting increasingly dominant as the race progressed. Ben Gregory in 9th is both All Big Ten and not even officially in the meet as the 8th guy on the team.

Well, unless you go to Iten and sign up the whole St. Patrick's graduating class, it's pretty hard to beat 17 points.

This is true. Also, even if a school gets every top recruit in a class in their state, even in California, you wouldn't end up with four great racers like Hacker, Easker, Jenkins and Stinzi coming through like they did right away and then every year after.

For those not familiar, they won one title when most were sophomores and then their coach died suddenly. They were able to come back as seniors (without Easker) and win another title with nearly all Midwest runners. I think the roster for '85 was Hacker, Jenkins, Stinzi, Fry, Schoensee, Korhonen and Kelly-something, depending on the meet and who was on form.

They all hailed from WI, Ohio, MI, and I think Kelly was from Illinois.

adams state

It was also a shame that Wisconsin lost Coach McClimon in plane crash in 1983. He never got a chance to defend the title.

Oklahoma 2011 EASY, HANDS DOWN, NO QUESTION!

Article on the death of Dan McClimon.

http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/NCAANewsArchive/1983/19830427.pdf