What percentage of collegiate men's T and F teams are mailing it in?

A great many schools can’t/won’t realistically hire all of the coaches needed to adequately cover all of the event groups.

Ehso wrote:

A great many schools can’t/won’t realistically hire all of the coaches needed to adequately cover all of the event groups.

A great many coaches are too lazy to try and be actual track and field coaches instead of specialized event coaches.

Many if you don’t understand college track and field. Much of a teams success at the conference level is based upon the ability to get depth across several event areas. Each school has their own financial aid situation and cost of attendance. Those two things great impact a teams ability to be successful at their conference meet.

You are extremely ignorant if you believe it is based upon only the talent of a particular coach or staff. Typically public universities have an easier time being strong across multiple event areas due to cost, academic scholarships and need based aid. Of course there is a lot more to it than just that.

Ehso wrote:

A great many schools can’t/won’t realistically hire all of the coaches needed to adequately cover all of the event groups.

A fully funded men’s T&F team has 12.6 athletic scholarships.

Try having depth in 21 events with only 12 full scholarships.

There are 2 types of long term coaches and they’re easy to spot.

1. The competitive go getter winners, always in the hunt for team championships.

2. The mail it in lazy glorified baby sitters. They do the bare minimum to field a team. The ad doesn’t care as long as the minimum expectations are met.

SpecialDelivery wrote:

There are 2 types of long term coaches and they’re easy to spot.

1. The competitive go getter winners, always in the hunt for team championships.

2. The mail it in lazy glorified baby sitters. They do the bare minimum to field a team. The ad doesn’t care as long as the minimum expectations are met.

There is far more to it than this simplistic explanation.

wrong address wrote:

SpecialDelivery wrote:

There are 2 types of long term coaches and they’re easy to spot.

1. The competitive go getter winners, always in the hunt for team championships.

2. The mail it in lazy glorified baby sitters. They do the bare minimum to field a team. The ad doesn’t care as long as the minimum expectations are met.

There is far more to it than this simplistic explanation.

Explain. What other types would you add? No matter how you spin it if you aren’t trying to win you’re just taking up space.

It’s definitely a challenge but you can get the most out of that by giving partial scholarships and looking for kids who also have financial need. It can get complicated but that’s the game.

Some of you are trying to explain it away with math. The OP’s point is valid. Pick a P5 conference. All of the schools have the same number of scholarships and roughly the same amount of academic aid and same number of coaches. It comes down to actual coaching which entails recruiting and building a winning culture.

It is not an even playing field. You are clueless to say that. The “cost of attendance” alone makes things different. There are so many factors but the ignorance in some of your statements is astounding. I guess this is letsrun.

SpecialDelivery wrote:

wrong address wrote:

There is far more to it than this simplistic explanation.

Explain. What other types would you add? No matter how you spin it if you aren’t trying to win you’re just taking up space.

If yer not first, yer last!

I assume you know the answer, but you're just creating discussion about the lack of funding of Men's T&F.

Very few schools can afford to field a full men's team, and if they did the Title IX consequences in other sports would be devastating.

Now that men can compete in women's races things might start to change. The good thing is that you can compete and you dont even have to train very hard.

You are fantasizing. You are saying that the more expensive schools within a conference perform more poorly and the more expensive schools perform better? Michigan is one of the more expensive schools in the big ten and Northwestern is the most expensive. Go through the results to see if there is a direct correlation of cost and performance. How about the Ivy League? That destroys your argument because all of the schools charge the same amount and offer no scholarships yet there is a huge disparity in the performance of the track teams. It all comes down to coaching.

You’ve proven nothing except your complete lack of knowledge. Let’s start with the Ivy League. Go back, do research and get back to us. That is likely the most even league where coaching matters most (maybe service academies are more even) but even in the Ivy League nothing is quite as simple as the simple minded folks like you think they are.

It's difficult to field a full team across all events with 12.6 scholarships on the mens side for both Track and Cross Country. Service Academy teams are able to do it because essentially they are all essentially on scholarship (Air Force has a competitive advantage in that regard). Other schools try to find crafty ways around that (New Mexico and their amigo scholarship essentially doubles their number of scholarships if they bring in foreign athletes). What I will say is that the depth of competition has certainly improved (look at the number of sub-four mile times today versus 20 years ago).