University of Oregon's propensity to poach other programs top athletes: What do NCAA coaches/fans think?

Ding, ding, ding. NCAAs is a four day commercial for UO. I get the weather, crowds and Nike money are important but it throws off the balance of competition by hyping one school above the rest. UO is known to have some clever money tricks to stretch their dollars.

Alexi Pappas had also graduated from Dartmouth before going to Oregon for graduate school. She still had NCAA eligibility.

Waverly Neer - Columbia - transferred out of Columbia to go to Oregon.

Not many kids transfer out of the Ivies (the only ones I know of are Neer, Conor McCullough, Courtney Smith, Judy Pendergast, and Andrea Keklak). Most of them you see running in other uniforms are due to them graduating and having leftover NCAA eligibility. Oregon is the recent favorite, but there have also been a number to New Mexico (Peter Callahan, Molly Renfer, Whitney Thornburg, Adam Cotton, to name a few).

But this situation is known as the "Rooney Rule".

http://hepstrack.com/about/history/the-rooney-rule/

Hounddogharrier wrote:

Add to the list Eric Jenkins and Alexi Pappas, Personally, I think Jenkins success after he transferred really gave momentum to the idea of transferring to Oregon.

Jenkins ran slower (5 km) once he moved to the U of O while competing during the NCAA season. Look it up. He had a meteoric change in his PR's while back east before moving to the U of O.

Who is the other transfer from Utah?

I think maybe they didn't see Gehrich listed and were alluding to her?

Ute wrote:

Who is the other transfer from Utah?

Add Samantha Nadel from Georgetown. Sam was partly responsible for Oregon's winning the triple crown last year. She scored some critical points that put them over the top.

But both Sam and Sabrina Southerland did graduate from Georgetown and had extra eligibility.

Wrong. Investment banks, hedge funds, PE shops etc don’t recruit from non-elite schools. Yes, if you want to move up the ranks of some random company it doesn’t matter where you graduated from. However kids making 250-300k in their mid-late 20s at investment banks definitely did not graduate from Oregon or Texas or Pitt. Of course you don’t earn anywhere near that nor will you ever so I don’t expect you to know any of this. So yes, no one at your BS company in Wichita cares that you graduated from Oregon with the rest of the low IQ clowns this country breeds.[/quote]

Like many a poster has said before, in most cases these athletes have graduated from an Ivy and you can be sure this is on their resume. I wouldn't be surprised if they're getting money for grad school for academic reasons. Free, or mostly free grad school, and an opportunity to keep running- seems pretty smart to me.

Connor Clark graduated from dartmouth, an ivy league school where they only allow 4 years of participation in sports and no redshirting, so he is spending his last year of NCAA eligibility at oregon. Pendergast along with at least one other top Harvard runner bot left harvard after their coach left.

bloviating wrote:

Ding, ding, ding. NCAAs is a four day commercial for UO. I get the weather, crowds and Nike money are important but it throws off the balance of competition by hyping one school above the rest. UO is known to have some clever money tricks to stretch their dollars.

Spot on!

Guys have been transferring there since the 70s. Climate, coaching, easy academics, the running culture, and teammates that force you to up your game make it attractive.

Not to mention the slutty Duck track groupies!

I think other universities are just as bad if not worse, New Mexico lobos comes to mind as one of the biggest offenders. They seem to assemble teams rather than build them

fghrunner wrote:

I think other universities are just as bad if not worse, New Mexico lobos comes to mind as one of the biggest offenders. They seem to assemble teams rather than build them

UTEP takes the cake on that under Wayne Vandenberg in the 70s.flew in a planeload of Kenyans every year.

For Pete's sake, these transfers have completed their undergraduate degrees and with their remaining eligibility want to see what they can do in one of the premier T&F programs in the country.

They may be national class at the NCAA level but for the majority it's now or never to shine because a year later they will leave running behind to pursue traditional careers. Why not go out in a blaze of glory at Oregon and have something to tell the grand kids about.

Wasn t Ted Banks the coach at UTEP in the 70s.

ck3237 wrote:

Wasn t Ted Banks the coach at UTEP in the 70s.

'73 on.

Banks was the coach who brought in the Africans although Vandenburg had a lot of foreigners on his rosters. John Bednarski of England and Kerry Pearce of Australia for two.

No bigee. The mediocre academic schools all share the same pool of athletes.

I agree with this sentiment when it applies to those who have graduated and have another year of eligibility that can’t be used at their alma mater. Those like Pendergast, who got caught up in an unenviable position and likely needed a fresh start are in the same boat in my opinion. It’s those who have not got their undergrad AND who are unlikely to contribute to Oregon as they did to their previous school that makes me question if UofO really is hoarding athletes.

I can't listen to this wrote:

For Pete's sake, these transfers have completed their undergraduate degrees and with their remaining eligibility want to see what they can do in one of the premier T&F programs in the country.

They may be national class at the NCAA level but for the majority it's now or never to shine because a year later they will leave running behind to pursue traditional careers. Why not go out in a blaze of glory at Oregon and have something to tell the grand kids about.

Yep, transfers in the 5th year of eligibility are a rich, often overlooked source of talent. Most commonly these athletes have completed their undergrad. They don't come exclusively from the Ivy League either. This was a big part of Vin's playbook at Stanford and they are (smartly) running it at Oregon.

For the kids, it's a great chance to take a shot at seeing how good they can be -- while at the same time staying in the college system, having lots of fun, and maybe picking up a master's degree. It's a way better deal than putting your life on hold for a lonely year on a sub-elite or elite professional club.

For the school, it's a great source of proven and hard-working talent. And the talent pool self-selects for those who view it as their shot and who will really make a strong commitment.

Most universities aren't willing to invest the effort in recruiting these kids for just a year of payoff. It's a real moneyball strategy and only a few programs are able to pull it off. But when they do, it's a real win-win for both athletes and students.

sorry, "a real win-win for both athletes and programs". submitted too fast :)

I have heard a coach of a top 20 program joke that the NCAA Championships are Oregon's biggest recruiting day and he wasn't talking about high school students.