YMMV wrote:
Lots of fake news in that video. So UMass/Amherst was where "all the top runners went"? (Other than Randy Thomas, who went on to become a very good marathoner) Thomas' school record in the mile was 4:08.
Maybe he meant they were better than Harvard at the time. I tend to suspect this is a case of "The older I get, the faster I was".
When Legere was a senior in high school -- presumably when Harvard "recruited" him -- Harvard actually had some very good runners who were coming back the next year. If Legere was too slow to make any of those three lists that I linked to -- and it's certainly possible that he was merely overlooked -- I don't believe that he would have been a very attractive candidate for Harvard to recruit for cross-country or track. They didn't need 4:28 milers and 9:45 two-milers for their team.
I wasn't aware that UMass/Amherst was especially good when Legere decided to attend. I don't believe that Randy Thomas was still there. UMass/Lowell (which was then called the University of Lowell) had Bob Hodge and Vin Fleming. Northeastern had John Flora (a future U.S. record holder on the roads), his brother Bob (a little slower, but still very good), and Bruce Bickford (who later was ranked No.1 in the world by Track & Field News). The best collection of college runners in New England back in those days were actually at Providence College, which had, among others, future 2-time world cross champion John Treacy, his brother Ray, Mick O'Shea, future 2-time Boston Marathon winner Geoff Smith, Gerry Deegan, and Dan Dillon.
I understand that these kinds of inaccuracies and distortions can arise as information gets passed from one person to another, and perhaps that happened here, but I do wonder why some people in high places feel the need to embellish about this stuff. (I thought tht Paul Ryan's fabrication, on a nationally broadcast radio show in the heat of a presidential election, was especially bizarre.)