"It didn't help that all of the Mead High School grads were injured all the freaking time."
Is this true?
"It didn't help that all of the Mead High School grads were injured all the freaking time."
Is this true?
ROB-OB-OB AUUUUUUUBRY!
I've got no inside information, but I can't believe they'd have drafted the job announcement like that if Nike, I mean, Oregon, hadn't already come to an agreement with Lananna.
Wouldn't surprise me if they came to this agreement back in February or March, either.
Is anybody actually recruiting athletes for Oregon right now?
RRRRRRRRR BBBBBB!
Northwestrun, I respect your right to hate the Oregon track program (though I myself disagree with it.) The problem is that you’re basing your judgments on a relatively narrow time -- “the late Dellinger years.” Teams and attitudes are not static, they do change over time.
The current team, whether you give the credit to Smith or to the assistant coaches, is a conference championship team. They scored an all time high 152 points in winning the Pac-10 championship this year. They unequivocally are not a dual-meet team.
Nor, unfortunately, does winning an NCAA championship prove that one has a great track team. The LSU women, for example, have won many NCAA titles while only finishing a legitimate third in their conference championships – the NCAA meet can typically be won with as few as seven athletes – not much of a “team” by 21-event track and field standards.
Also, the idea that “if Rupp had never come along, Martin Smith would still be the coach” is incorrect. The latest USA Junior Cross team consisted of three former Oregon high school runners – none of whom wanted to run for Smith (Stuart Egon, Ryan Vail, and Rupp). On top of that national recruit Mike McGrath (fastest US 800 in h.s.) quit the team because he didn’t want to run for Smith. Smith had put himself in a recruiting crises situation – where the really great distance guys (all across the country, not just Oregon) didn’t want to come run for him. It also didn’t help that in his last year as cross country coach the team failed to send anyone to the national championships for the first time in 15 years.
It is neither a cult nor a conspiracy – just an unusual situation (by U.S. standards) where a significant number of the locals really care about T&F.