2012 MAC Cross Country

Wanted to jump in and say that scholarships and budgets shouldn't limit a coach from strong development of talent.

There are track/cc programs in the state doing a better job with much less than Miami in terms of budget and possibly scholarship.

Miami lost to Toledo and Ohio. Neither of those schools have track and I would assume their budgets are far less. Kind of hard to argue he should be doing a better job when you are losing to xc only teams and then trying to blame poor performance on lack of indoor track and budget.

Let's see what happens this year. Returning all scorers and a stud recruit along with some other nice pieces should make for a nice team.

Where is Matt Kaczor going?

Wanted to jump in and say that scholarships and budgets shouldn't limit a coach from strong development of talent.

There are track/cc programs in the state doing a better job with much less than Miami in terms of budget and possibly scholarship.

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I agree completely. My question, why has Miami gone down so far from where they once were? Legitimately asking .

Tec isn't running this year.

I enjoy following MAC x-c even though it doesn't have the depth of the Big 10. It is what it is, and, given the low level of support, it's enjoyable to see teams compete and develop in their own way, solid if not national-level, with occasional very bright performances. I'm curious if you mean by "Tec isn't running this year" that there is some possibility that he gets grades in gear and is allowed to return. Big blow for Central, but they look to have solid depth.

bluecollarsteeple:

A legitimate question unlike sayitaintso who I'm sure has never coached a day in his life and most likely never will. As you can find out the cc program at MU was doing very well in the late 90's and then a new administration came in and crushed the program. They created so many roadblocks to success it is ridiculous. From limiting how many kids on the team, to how many kids they can get in school, to how many of everything. The administrators really care lousy human beings for what they are doing to several men's teams. Swimming was one of the best in the conference and they gutted them also and now they are doing poorly. The MU coach is a good guy and has to fight uphill for everything. Some on this board will say that you don't need a budget or scholarship and those folks are completely clueless. You can't compete against schools that have more of both. Someone said that Toledo, Dayton, etc, places that don't have track have finished ahead of MU. Really, how many times ever? And we have to remind everyone that cc only programs can offer five full scholarships for the men and that is more than any MAC program has in the distance side. Certainly the MU program needs to get going and I think they will this year and start building back up. Every place has challenges but the MU folks have heaped so much crap on the program/coaches that its difficult. Unless someone came in and put all the scholarships into distance running (and sucked at track) then I'm not sure they will have much success with their limited scholarships. Thanks.

....Don't they already suck in track? They have been last almost every time the last five years.

Very well put! Sure you need to develop your available talent, but in order to be competitive, it takes money to attract top end talent. Somewhere along the line, the MAC got this crazy idea that it could be competitive with the BCS programs in football and started dumping obscene amounts of money into that money pit. Of course, that money had to come from somewhere and it came from men's Olympic sports (wrestling, gymnastics, swimming, and track & field). It flys against the philosophy of the MAC and disregards a long and proud history in CC/Track. Shame on those glory seeking AD's who couldn't see or appreciate what they already had on their campuses.

With Tec potentially out, this leaves maybe Kent State to challenge? Maybe nobody? I think Eastern may be too good as long as they are healthy.

I don't know much about the women but I was at the MAC Outdoor Championships and it is very clear who the top women's program is. If they have the receuiting class mentiomed above; the gap will widen.

Is this true about Adams? That would be devestating to CMU chances!

It is true.

MAC fan wrote:

Is this true about Adams? That would be devestating to CMU chances!

It really saddens me when people come on and criticize programs without really knowing anything about what they are speaking about.

The MAC was a great conference of excellent coaches who had to develop talent as they never got blue-chip athletes. In the 1960's you had the great Western Michigan cross country teams that won NCAA titles. In the 1970's there were the great Miami teams that went to NCAA's. The 1980's found Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Miami all going to the NCAA's. The 1990's found more of the same. Now in the 2000's you have the outstanding Akron track teams and the great Toledo cross country program. The MAC is a unique conference in that it always had coaches having to go after the same pool of athletes, so everyone knew everyone else. The MAC was a vibrant and exciting conference. In both cross country and track the MAC held its own against the more powerful neighbors in the Big 10. No, the MAC was not better than the Big 10, but on a regular basis EMU (M&W), Kent, Miami, CMU, WMU took the Big 10 teams to task. Just one of many, many examples I could provide - one year there were five women LJ'ers in the MAC ranked higher nationally than any LJ'er in the Big 10. On the throwing side Kent States incredible program was as good if not better than any program in the Big 10. So the MAC has had a wonderful and successful history.

This despite the fact that the budgets were smaller and the scholarships not as numerous. The budgets I have seen have the MAC programs having about 25% of what the Big 10 programs have. So the MAC coaches have always had to do more with less. But that is what was great about the conference, the coaches had to actually coach and not just recruit stars.

Then the conference was destroyed. What happened in the 1980's the MAC became a "training" ground for young athletic directors who wanted to get their name out, and get a bigger job. The MAC became a stepping stone for every want-a-be athletic director. Most of the new AD's that came into the MAC did not have a coaching background as that changed to more of a "business or fund-raising" background. So essentially the MAC was inundated with young AD's trying to get ahead. The only way that happens in the smaller DI conferences is for the MAC AD's to pump all their money into Football or Basketball (more FB) so they could show the bigger schools "progress". And they AD's focused on cc/track. You can go around and see some of the top AD's in the country at BCS schools were at the MAC (for usually a very short period of time).

So the MAC went from having 13 men's program (and womens') and great competitive championships to Marshall, Toledo, Bowling Green, Western Michigan, Ball State, Ohio University being dropped. The young AD's gutted the conference. The AD at Ball State wanted to make the FB coach happy and put in lights. Where did that money come from? Dropping track.

So the MAC went from a wonderful conference where athletes of all abilities could have a great experience to one that is known throughout collegiate athletics as the place young AD's destroyed.

So that is where we are now. No one on the outside can truly understand the damage done by the young AD's. It is very sad. Some of the present coaches are still fighting these types of battles. Someone on this thread criticized the Miami program. They fight every year to even stay in existence. While I know some of the posters on here think they could do a better job, its not as easy as it looks from the outside.

So I hope that this little history lesson has shed more of light on a conference that I have all the respect in the world for. The coaches and athletes in the MAC are doing great things given the circumstances.

Rich

Why isn't Tec competing this upcoming season?

No doubt a lot of that is true Rich, but MAC coaches also seem as though they'd rather gripe about not having certain resources and use it as a crutch as opposed to working harder, challenging their teams and themselves respectively! MAC athletes take on the same defeatist attitudes as their coaches and then are aghast when their conference is accused of not being as good as the Big 10, SEC, etc. And then they sound like cry babies.

Kent and Akron are fully funded, have indoor tracks that are nicer than 95 percent of the NCAA and are located in Ohio, which is a top 5 or 6 state in the country for talent. Anybody can get into these schools and survive easily. Why can't they make Nationals in cross country? Why can they not place in the top 20 in track?

What happened to the Miami women?

It sounds like you, bluecollarsteeple, really are clueless yourself. "You can't compete against schools that have more [scholarships]." Wow, way to go buddy. You could say that about any school with a small budget and rationalize shi*y performances. If you really knew anything about Miami's program you would thoroughly know that the training system the coach uses is straight up backwards. He can't develop a mediocre runner into even a decent runner to save his job. He can't even keep half of his team healthy enough to compete in more than a few races a year. The only reason he still has a job is because he gets in enough talent that the department thinks, "Ohhh this could be the year!" Hell, it should be the year. All the pieces to the puzzle are there and if they come together the team will actually be good. Trust me though, it won't happen. This team needs a coach. Adding a few workouts called "tempo runs," a workout the current "coach" knows nothing about, into the training regime might be all it takes.

moversandshakers wrote:

What happened to the Miami women?

Have finished in the top 3 in conference each of the past 4 years, including 2 championships. You make it sound like they have fallen off tremendously. 3rd during a down year is better than most places during their best year.