U of I Distance Job?

I would bet that you would lose that bet big-time!

Oddsmaker wrote:

I would bet that you would lose that bet big-time!

Agreed. Also keep in mind that just because a head coach is not a distance coach, this does not necessarily mean that Illinois will ignore distances. Wisconsin doesn't have a head distance coach, and they seem to do ok.

In fact, were I a head coach in the Big 10 at a school other than Mich or Wis, I would think twice about focusing on distance. It needs to be one of the focal points just because of the points available, but the Big 10 is far, far deeper already in distance than it is in any other area. Let's face it, for the resources that ALL of those schools have, it just isn't that strong a track conference. I could name at least three schools that could (should) be in the top-5 every year indoors and out. This simply isn't happening.

km- I agree with the thinking, but it does go back to resources. Look at the HEAD coaches in the conference. Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Penn State all have distance heads who put at least 6 fulls in the area. Wisconsin, Michigan State, Minnesota, and Purdue all have very understanding head coaches who also flood the area. Indiana and Ohio State seem to be the only schools who haven't mortgaged the track side of things in favor of cross. Wisconsin does it because they also get football (freebies) and Minnesota suvives because they have great coaches.If Illinois treally wanted to win track, they would hire a sprints guy because the sprints are WEAK and say to heck with the distances. Why haggle over whatever little points are left over once Wisconsin, Michigan, and any studs from other teams get done? Incidentally, Robert Chapman, along with Gary, are the two best coaches who have turned around programs that sucked for quite soem time to very, very solid programs without the resources (scholarship/budget/ moron head coaches) of the aforementioned.

The reason the Illini haven't been recruiting is because Wieneke(sp?) has been gradually shutting it down over the past few years. He has had some very good mid-distance and distance kids at U of I in the past. Look at the last several years of Sam Bell's career at Indiana. Same thing was happening.

My impression is that it's flat out difficult to recruit sprinters (jumpers, etc.) to the North, or at least the northern midwest. That's independent of the football angle, of course.

Wisconsin tries to have a pretty balanced program - the track and field coaches are pretty good in addition to what Schumacher has shown he can do. And they do recruit pretty hard, but I just don't see the good southern sprinters going up north, year to year. I'm sure that must be somewhat true for the other Big 10s, as well.

So what I'm saying is that those types of school (up north, that is) might have better success at recruiting distance runners than sprinters and jumpers, and a distance emphasis might be the way to go. UW wins Big 10's regularly with the balance they have.