What's the slowest time that will get you on every single collegs team????

Seems like the consensus here backs up what "lease" said: Something under 4:04 for 1600 (for an actual mile, that would be 4:05-high).

Remember what the OP's question asked: EVERY SINGLE team.

4:04 is too low.

Stanford is probably the place to draw the line. I know more than a couple of kids that were invited to walk on at Oregon but didn't get a look from Stanford, all around the 4:10 mark.

I'd go with 4:08.

Todol wrote:

roblox oof sound wrote:

its the minimum standard at nau, dude. "Check the statistacks"-big shaq

Maybe NAU lets 4:20 guys try to walk on. I don’t know. I do know unequivocally that plenty of places do not let 4:20 kids walk on.

I just hope you’re not a 4:20 kid who goes around telling people, “Yeah, I could get on any team in the country, they just wouldn’t give me a scholarship”. Because that is not even close to being true.

i wish i was a 4:20 kid

rn im in like 5:10 shape

Todol wrote:

roblox oof sound wrote:

4:20 walk on nearly everywhere?

Not even close. Even many mediocre teams aren’t keen on taking 4:20ish guys (assuming that’s the kid’s best time- i.e. no superior 800 or 3200). Usually it’s an issue of limited roster spots and resources, or sometimes coaches simply don’t like having walk-ons.

What are you talking about?

Not completely accurate, but a good estimation. I am the coach of a team in the middle of this list and I have to recruit and scholarship (partial) 4:20 guys. In fact, usually, if I don't offer enough money to cover tuition combined with academic aid (10-30%), I often lose 4:20 guys to the Power 5s in my state (I'm guessing they offer books or something).

To answer the original question, I would thing 4:12-4:16 would be allowed to walk on for even the top ten schools on this list. Someone said 4:20 could walk on at Oregon or NAU. I wouldn't think so, but maybe...but why would you do that to yourself?

Don't worry about it. Seems like you won't qualify academically anyway.

You are in Indiana so you should know that Notre Dame isn't even responding to kids who are off the charts smart and running 4:10. Indiana University offers nothing to distance runners until they break 4:10 or 9:00. They have guys at 3:59, 4:01, 4:07, and 4:07 right now. Throw their 1:47 guy in and you have several nearly full ride guys in the mix already. Assume that they spread 3 scholarships to distance, 3 to sprints, 2 to throws, and 2 to jumps and that leaves about 2 to spread around to the remaining 40 guys. In the 800, they have a 1:50 guy and a 1:51 guy who probably are getting 1/2 each so that leaves pretty much nothing for guys coming into the program who may be hitting 4:15 in HS. They are lucky to make the team. There is definitely nothing for 4:20 guys and they probably don't even want them taking up space in the locker room. Remember that they are also trying to attract kids running 47 in the 400 in HS or long jumping 23 feet. Those kids are at the outer edge of scholarships but they need to court them too.

Not nau wrote:

NAU is more willing to develop guys than Oregon or Stanford. They won’t touch guys unless they are 4 minute milers.

I know a kid who was recently heavily recruited by Stanford with 4:09 1600 and that was arguably his best race distance.

Notre Dame just signed Zach Kreft, and he is exactly a 4:10 guy, and they were in talks with him before he ran 4:10. Also, I know a kid with a 9:12 PR who got an offer from Indiana. Indiana's Kyle Mau never broke 9:00 in high school. Neither did Bryce Millar, Cameron Clements, Cooper Williams, Kyle Burks, or pretty much anyone on their team now other than Ben Veatch. Joe Murphy was a 9:22 guy. You don't know what you are talking about.

For the purposes of this discussion, does walking onto the XC squad count as "making the team"? A 4:10 guy might not grab a spot on some track rosters for various reasons, but I can't imagine that any program wouldn't at least let that kid walk on to the XC team.

If we're talking purely about landing a guaranteed spot on the track roster, the 4:04 figure that's been mentioned might be about right. Landing a spot at a particular program isn't just a matter of being "good enough" for that team. Recruiting strategy also comes into play. A school that took a 4:10 walk-on last year might be focussing on beefing up their throws and jumps with this year's recruiting class, and they might not be willing to bring on a 4:10 guy again this year. You have to run pretty damn fast to get interest from every coach regardless of their existing team's strengths/weaknesses and their current recruiting objectives.

vivalarepublica wrote:

Tyler Day, the 3rd place finisher at the 2017 NCAA XC championships, was a 4:20 miler in high school (although he had some impressive competitve performances). I wonder how many schools passed on him for his less than stellar times.

There are a number of factors that affect a runner’s performance in high school and development in college.

Of course a high school 4:20 miler could possibly go on to be a top collegiate runner. Nobody is arguing against that. But for every one who makes massive improvements, there are another 5 who make more modest improvements and another 2 or 3 who dont improve.

So for a college who is able to chose only sub 4:10 guys and still fill their roster will do so. They have roster limits, especially on the men's side, because they need to balance out football due to title 9. Taking on that 4:20 guy means leaving somebody else off in a different event, probably somebody with an equivalent field or sprint event performance to a sub 4:10 mile.

The coaches arent saying "a 4:20 miler will never amount to anything." They are just filling their rosters up with more proven runners. They're playing the odds. The second tier programs then take those 4:20 runners and some of them develop into a much better runner.

Its like how people love to look at Chico beating mid level D1 programs and say "see, if thpse D1 programs didnt have such stringent standards, they would be faster." The reality is Chico looks great because they have 50 mens distance runners. Not all 50 make huge improvements.

When your roster size is nearly unlimited, you can afford to take risks and develop talent, because you only need 15% of them to step it up and survive the training and you have a full squad. If the D1 schools set up a program so intense that only 15% survive the training and the other 85% wallow in overtraining, they would have 1 to 2 guys do well.

NAU does great with developing talent because they focus their track roster on distance, so they can keep extra guys around. Oregon gets crapped on for not taking a 4:10 guy, but who should they have cut to make the roster spot? Cut a 17 foot freshman in the vault? 25 foot long jumper? 10.3 100m runner? 46 400m runner?

I coached a hs kid in the 400 who ran a mid 47 and Oregon wouldnt allow him to walk on, so it isnt just distance runners.

Some hard a$$ coaches who are looking for something very specific and have limited spots might not take the 4:04 guy if it's between that and another athlete that specializes in something the school needs. Sometimes it's just a crapshoot based on the circumstances.

You do realize that there are only 12.6 scholarships. Are you saying that the 4 guys on the team that are running 4 minutes are not getting scholarships so that they can give a scholarship to a guy running 9:12? That would be silly. Are you not believing that all of their 800 studs are getting scholarships? Maybe they don't give scholarships to the sprinters, throwers, and jumpers? You cant argue both ends. If they give scholarships to their current studs, there isn't anything left for guys running 9:12. What is your point about Mau? He is a stud who certainly would have started out with a scholarship and would now probably even be on a full ride. Veatch and Kuhn may be on full rides. Most of the guys that you mentioned walked on and some worked into scholarships. I think you are making a point that you dodnt realize that they have so many current studs on scholarship that they cant give anything to anybody new. Again, it has can't exceed 12.6.

Using Kreft as an example of a guy going to Notre Dame is silly since he is one of the top XC guys in the country at 14:30. How early were they talking to him? I hope they didn't violate any NCAA rules. If you read some of the other posts on this site, you will see that Notre Dame is only talking to National studs and it seems to have worked with their current recruiting class.

You guys apparently don't believe me but I am an actual Division I head cross country coach.

We are not national contenders, but my team is consistently in the top half of that list.

Typically the best Americans I get run 4:20 to 4:24 in high school. While 4:20 may not get onto a few rosters, it will attract offers from a lot of schools at the DI level. Not fulls, but scholarships. Maybe I am an outlier and in other parts of the country 4:20 running 17 year olds grow on trees, but even for better than average programs 4:20 is a good recruit.

We believe you but we are more familiar with the Power 5 schools. I don't doubt that you are giving scholarships to 4:20 kids but the major track schools are not. Many of the large state schools continue to attract in-state talent due to the cost and they use a little bit of scholarship money to go after the national class kids. Look at Michigan. They have 7 guys this year who have run 4:10 or better and 4 of those have run 4:06 or better. I estimate a school like Michigan distribution of scholarships as 2 throws, 2 jumps, 4 sprints/hurdles, and 4 distance. Teams like Wisconsin probably put 6 into distance and teams like Ohio State and Iowa only put 1 into distance. Most of the other Big10 teams are probably somewhere in between. So if Michigan puts 4 into distance and carries 30 on the roster, they can only give out 2 full, 2 at 1/2, and 4 at 1/4. that leave 22 guys with nothing. That is just math that you cant ignore. Click through their roster and you will find numerous 4:15 and 9:15 HS runners that are not in their top 20. I was even surprised at how many Footlocker and Dream Mile types that they have on the roster.

One college coach's perspective is helpful but I have a great deal of interaction with all of the distance runners across our conference so I have quite a bit recent information. We have talked a lot about Notre Dame on this site so I will say it again, they are not even responding to kids with off the charts SATs who have run very fast. Oregon doesn't talk to guys unless they run 4:05. Look at Stanovsek's bio on their site. Stanford guys will attest to the fact that they don't look at guys unless they run 4:07 or 8:55. Power 5 schools are not offering anything to kids unless they run 9:05 and that typically gets you books to at most 1/4.

LetsEatDoughnutsInstead wrote:

Some hard a$$ coaches who are looking for something very specific and have limited spots might not take the 4:04 guy if it's between that and another athlete that specializes in something the school needs. Sometimes it's just a crapshoot based on the circumstances.

I was taking this possibility into consideration when I posited a sub-4:04 1600. But the OP's question was "what would get you on every team?" and not necessarily "what would get you a scholarship?"

I was factoring in squad limits, too. In my opinion, a sub-4:04 kid would "force" a coach to make room for him on a limited-size squad (and boot another, if necessary). But I concede your point: There might be one or two programs that wouldn't take *any* distance kid, even if he'd run 3:57 in high school!

Regardless, IU can't beat Purdue at cross country anymore and most of the Purdue guys were 4:20 milers. So IU is doing something wrong, no matter how fast their guys ran in high school.

vivalarepublica wrote:

Regardless, IU can't beat Purdue at cross country anymore and most of the Purdue guys were 4:20 milers. So IU is doing something wrong, no matter how fast their guys ran in high school.

Could be, but that wasn't the OP's question. Let's stick to the topic:

What's the slowest time that will get you on EVERY. SINGLE. college team?

That's what the OP wants to know. Scholarships, developing 4:20 guys...not what the OP asked.

tzerkhlgui; wrote:

vivalarepublica wrote:

Regardless, IU can't beat Purdue at cross country anymore and most of the Purdue guys were 4:20 milers. So IU is doing something wrong, no matter how fast their guys ran in high school.

Could be, but that wasn't the OP's question. Let's stick to the topic:

What's the slowest time that will get you on EVERY. SINGLE. college team?

That's what the OP wants to know. Scholarships, developing 4:20 guys...not what the OP asked.

Forget the topic. The diamond-in-the-rough 4:20 miler makes for a better story than a 4:05-4:10 guy that barely gets better.