So the kids get to run but their score doesn't count. However, the kids running does affect the overall meet score of the other teams because they are competing. You are either in or out, if you are in then it should count otherwise they shouldn't have been in at all. One false start you are out so I am not sure the false start on the admin side of entering the athletes should be any different.
This happens in high school all the time and you don’t hear about it because 99% of the time it’s handled with a quick phone call or email. Instead this was handled in almost the worst way possible (second only to not letting the runners compete at all), the Mountain West could have handled this like Gentlemen and instead chose the petty and dishonorable path forward. I hope the MW coaches were looking for every uniform violation they could find too, got to win at all costs after all. As so many others have pointed out, in no other team sport would this have happened. Thank you to the Mountain West for once again getting our sport into the headlines for some negative reason and giving the average Joe and Jane one more cause to shake their head and say “Track and Field, what a joke”.
This is part of what coaches are paid to do. And they get fired if they don't.
Could this have been some sort of political scheme against AF from the mountain west? Seems likely as this isn’t the first time AF entries have been skewed.
Breaking Good News for you, 'ASU guy': Louie Q finally left ASU! And now the distance gentlemen are coached by C. Leslie, and they are improving rapidly! But a Louie Q remnant is still coaching the distance ladies. Also, I agree that Coach Ryan Cole was great for ASU when he was there. Cole is a great coach!
To 'Political Stint': My earlier mention of the possibilities of 'why' the entries were deficient included 'clever sabotage'! And that is the most interesting possibility. Did other similar institutions have trouble?
justthefacts wrote:
Only in ice hockey do they play with a player or two sitting out for a major penalty, but not for the entire game.
Also, soccer and field hockey. And in the 1960s, I personally saw the great softball pitcher Eddie Feigner, along with the other three members of his team ("the King and his Court"), play against a full complement of nine players:
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/sports/othersports/13feigner.htmlFinally, I note that when two of the Harlem Globetrotters fouled out of a game, leaving them with only four players to take the court, their dribbling ace Marques Haynes dribbled almost a full quarter to preserve a one-point victory:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/sports/marques-haynes-harlem-globetrotters-star-dribbler-dies-at-89.htmlsounds like the AF job will be open soon...
Most of you seem to have no idea how conference championship entries are handled in the NCAA:
Coaches submit entries on directathletics.com. Performance lists do not come out until entries are final (there is always a published date). The idea behind this being all teams must enter without knowing the entries of other programs.
What usually happens when a deadline like this is missed is the conference office calls a team before entries are published to inform them they missed. The program is then fined but the entries are submitted.
What likely happened is the conference office did not look real close but saw every team including Air Force was entered. They then published the declarations and that is when the AF staff realized they screwed up an entire event area.
By the rules the team is lucky the conference let them run the distance athletes at all. You better believe the Colorado St. coaches care. There are bonuses and pay raises at stake.
You think that's bad, ever forget to bring a condom on the 3rd date?
UnsureSherlock wrote:
Breaking Good News for you, 'ASU guy': Louie Q finally left ASU! And now the distance gentlemen are coached by C. Leslie, and they are improving rapidly! But a Louie Q remnant is still coaching the distance ladies. Also, I agree that Coach Ryan Cole was great for ASU when he was there. Cole is a great coach!
Yeah, now I feel bad for OSU women, I live in Oregon now. I really like Louie as a person, but Cole really knew what to do for the kids. Walt Drenth brought the program back from death.
This was not AF's first time doing this. The conference was tired of them pulling this stuff. No one thought the decision was good, everyone thought it should be just like the NCAA. Not compete. Every year athletes are not allowed to compete in the NCAA when their coaches don't do their professional job. In the past another team did not get their entries in on time. Who was the biggest voice about not letting them compete in the conference championship........the AF head coach......and the athletes did not compete. Karma.
justthefacts wrote:
1. You don't have a clue how meets are run and 2. you did not read my post.
I didn't blame or put the burden on the Conference, I suggested that a courtesy call would have been a better way to deal with this. Also, if the Conference is like most conferences and posts performance list of entries prior to the meet, someone (the AF coaches) would have noticed their mistake and tried to fix it. There would have been time to do that without any issues as to setting up heats, etc. A late entry fine would have been the appropriate answer to the problem and that would have been the end of this.
To come up with a milktoast compromise of letting the athletes run but not score is like kissing your sister. It was not the best decision I would suggest. The team took a hit, the conference took a hit. I can't think of another sport where this kind of administrative decision would be made. It is as if track and field sets up roadblocks just to make the sport look unprofessional.
When was the last time that a basketball team was only allowed to play with 3 players, or the football team was only allowed to have 8 men on the field. Only in ice hockey do they play with a player or two sitting out for a major penalty, but not for the entire game.
So you're blaming the mountain west? Good god man.
Sliding Scale wrote:
The idea behind this being all teams must enter without knowing the entries of other programs.
Why the secrecy?
The entire coaching staff should be fired. At the very least, the head coach and the distance coach.
Most coaches triple check what the deadline is and then triple check their entries. They didn't even check the entry deadline.
As an administrator, it doesn't matter how successful the coaches have been in the past - this is unforgivable. Even at a school like Air Force, the coaches can never gain the respect of the athletes back. The athletes train their hearts out and run 100+ miles a week and the coach is too lazy to do entries which take no more than 10 minutes. Unforgivable.
The athletes should not have been allowed to compete at all, the league screwed this one up.
First rule of meet management is don't harm those who did everything right just to accommodate the screw ups. For example, if a kid forget to put his spikes on you shouldn't hold up the race so he can put them on.
The Mountain in this situation prevented athletes from other schools from becoming individual conference champions, earning all conference honors, etc...If the Air Force kids are pissed they couldn't compete, they should be pissed at the coaches not the conference. They should transfer to Army or Navy.
The coaches are still on the website but their bios were removed....is this a sign that they will be fired?
Mountain West should have prevented them from competing.
Air Force coaches should get fired.
Meat Tornado wrote:
Sliding Scale wrote:
The idea behind this being all teams must enter without knowing the entries of other programs.
Why the secrecy?
The thought behind this is you do entries independent of other schools.
While many of you think this is ridiculous, this is how every conference operates. It is the easiest and most fair way to do things.
Ryan Cole is one of the most over-rated coaches in the entire country. Air Force's results have mediocre at best, all things considered, with Ryan.
-Everyone goes to Air Force free of charge, so money is never an issue.
-7000 feet of altitude will help draw in recruits and help everyone get much faster
-you have the power of the US Government recruiting for you across the country, and you can send stuff like this out to recruits:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BMzPR-BDL2E/
There are a lot of teams achieving a lot more with less resources and less talented athletes out of high school.
Plus Ryan can't even enter his athletes correctly. Way over-rated.