Meet Directors giving the NCAA the middle finger

Word Vomit wrote:

In the 2019 NCAA Rules book it states

Publishing Entries (Rule 4-1.11)

The meet director shall publish, as part of the online information for the competition, a ranked list of event entries disclosing all performances used to determine entry in each event and the source of those performances.

Many meet directors continue to not disclose the entry marks when posting a accepted entry list. Is this because they don't know the rule or just don't care? Stanford and Florida Relays are two prime examples from this weekend.

Will the NCAA ever start enforcing this rule?

Kelsey Bruce's case bring this to a spotlight. I would like to see the athletes chosen ahead of her in the 10,000.

This happens all the time. If you're not from a P5 school you often get the shaft, and if you're not in college anymore you can just forget about it. There are multiple people with marks of sub 29 for men's 10k that do not get accepted to Stanford because they are not in college anymore. And people running sub 14 trying to get into meets like Mt. SAC and Stanford.

USATF needs to set up more fast sections for post college people to get into. There are a lot of guys and girls out there that are 23/24 years old and within 10-15 seconds of USATF championship qualifying times for 5k/10k but they can't get into the good races to hit the times they need.

A personal experience of mine I entered in a 5k race, was put in the slow section because I was no longer in college. Ended up running the 2nd fastest time of the meet (a competitive meet) and ended up competing at USATF championships later that season. It would have made for a much better race in the fast section if they didn't throw me in the slow heat just because I'm not in college anymore.

Not sure why they cant do this. EVERY big HS meet that has online entries post heat sheets days before the race. Its not that bog of a deal. My HS team always call online heat sheets the liars page anyway

I had a very similar experience after finishing college. I am a 800/1500 guy and I was looking to run a 600 indoors. They put me in the first heat of 5 heats, slowest to fastest. I ended up running totally solo for the whole distance and won the event by one second over the fastest heat. My coach from college was there and he came running up to me after the final section shouting “you won, you won!”

They are aware of the rule, they just don’t care because who is going to enforce it. Additionally they don care because then their own athletes and athletes from other teams they want to attend the meet would either not get in the meet or be forced to run with athletes of the same ability levels.

Also, as a collegiate coach I could care less if post-collegiate athletes, even if fast, are no longer get as many NCAA/university subsidized opportunities. I realize that’s an unpopular opinion but as far as I know there is no other sport where non-collegiate athletes can jump into an NCAA sponsored competition. The onus on that should fall to the USATF, which we know won’t do anything, but that falls on us for never holding them accountable for a decade plus of unbridled corruption and ineptitude.

YMMV wrote:

Word Vomit wrote:

In the 2019 NCAA Rules book it states

Publishing Entries (Rule 4-1.11)

The meet director shall publish, as part of the online information for the competition, a ranked list of event entries disclosing all performances used to determine entry in each event and the source of those performances.

Many meet directors continue to not disclose the entry marks when posting a accepted entry list. Is this because they don't know the rule or just don't care? Stanford and Florida Relays are two prime examples from this weekend.

Will the NCAA ever start enforcing this rule?

Kelsey Bruce's case bring this to a spotlight. I would like to see the athletes chosen ahead of her in the 10,000.

The rule doesn't require them to choose only the fastest entries, it just requires them to publish the entry times they used to determine entries.

Anyway, if you want to see a list of who was chosen ahead of Kelsey Bruce, that list exists: it is the list of entries, everybody accepted to the meet was accepted ahead of her, for right or wrong.

Why wouldn't you want fast non-collegiate athletes in some of these meets that the sole purpose of the race is to run fast qualifying times? In my college days a few years ago it was great being in races with people like Tegenkamp, Diego Estrada, German Fernandez, and many others because they helped make the race fast. And if they make the race fast and fill up the first heat, that means more fast guys are still in the second heat. It raises the competitiveness for the whole meet. Why does a 29:45 runner have to go all the way out to Stanford to run a 29:45? There are plenty of other places where people run a time like that and only about 5 or 6 meets in the whole country that run under 29 outside of championshpi races. Stanford, San Francisco (only because the fast non-collegiate runners that Stanford won't accept run sub 29 there at San Francisco instead), Mt. SAC, Portland, Payton Jordan, maybe Raleigh,. So only accept the fastest people to a meet like that and let non-collegiate runners in.

The top NCAA runners want to race the pros at these meets and the pros want to get into these meets because there aren't any other places to race.

Come to Canadian 10,000m champs if you want a fast track time:

http://www.bcathletics.org/pacificdistancecarnival/

Thursday 13 June, Vancouver, BC.

Anybody want to tell me why college meet directors have such big sticks up their asses about unattached athletes?

The marginal cost of having 1 more athlete come in is nothing, especially when it costs $20-40 to enter the meet. As others have said, it raises the overall competitive level of the meet.

I am a decent, but not elite post-collegiate (PR 10.1x 100m) and struggle to get into any of these meets except at my former school on the other side of the country. It is ridiculous and shameful that people who supposedly care about the sport can't find a spot for people who would at least place in the top 8 for a race.

Keep in mind that at a majority of meets, most, if not all, of the meet officials are USATF officials. They're certainly not NCAA officials. Even more reason why post-collegiate athletes *should* be able to compete, besides the obvious reason of raising the level/depth of competition.

Its never just 1 more athlete. Meet directors get a lot of requests. Some ablige. Some dont. Additional reasons:

Take up extra lanes/positions on the track

Make the meet longer if enough are accepted to add heats/sections

Top end UNA; sure ok but then if you get the mid to back of the packers its just making the meet bigger if they are concerned with size of meet

Take away positions for college athletes in finals if games committe allows them to advance to finals

Take away team points for college teams if allowed to advance to finals in a team scored meet; issue in running events, not field events

As the meet director for large collegiate meets I can tell you two reasons why meet directors could care less about post-collegiate, or unattached runners. Number 1 post-collegiates/unattached lie like crazy. Just because you ran 14:05 for 5k in 2015 doesn't mean you should enter your performance as such. Tell the truth. Number 2 post-collegiate/unattached don't bother showing up most of the time. And then don't even get me started on agents. Scum of the earth.

As a meet director, I only post times if they are 100% verifiable with recent performances. Otherwise it's he said, she said and as much art as science in terms of putting the best possible fields and heats together. It's hard enough to do that, but to post the times and have to subject the event to endless scrutiny about what you did what you did, even when the end result speaks for itself more often than not, no thanks.

They want to sell programs/Heat sheets

I could not figure out where my daughter's seed times came from for her first mile and 3000 meter indoor races this past season. I don't recall her running those times in any races anytime in the last year or more. Due to prior injuries she had only a few indoor and outdoor track times in the prior year and there were not as fast as her seed times. To my surprise her finish times for both these indoor races was within a few seconds of her seed times. At this point I am assuming her coach based the seed time on his knowledge of how her times in training would likely correspond to a time in a race. These were not meets that gain national attention so I don't think the meet directors would care enough to confirm seed times were run at recent meets. I don't think her coach would exaggerate seed times and would not likely make one up for conference championship or national level meet. I think the rule should be enforced for national level meets but I am not sure it makes sense to spend the time to enforce for all meets as long as athletes and coaches don't abuse the systems. If done repeatedly I think meet directors would pick up on this sooner or later or other coaches would point it out to them.

There were a handful post collegiate runners at these meets and there were in the fast heats were they deserved to run.

Most of these complaints are easy to rectify. Require verify performances within some period of time.

It is just bullsh_t and the coaches here know it. It doesn't take but 30 seconds to look and see if a seed time is legit or not if proof is provided.

Not ironic at all, these same coaches will let heats go that are half filled or b_tch at performance standards/minimums for events. Can someone tell me why D1 meets are letting guys who run 53 in the 400 or 11.4 in the 100 compete, but can't find a spot for a guy who has legitimately run 46.x in the past 12 months? In what world does that make sense for the sport or the meet? Who is really benefiting from this? Why are we measuring 6.5m long jumps?

Playing devil’s advocate, I’m not sure why people think that meet directors (or anyone else, for that matter) should go out of their way to let post-collegians into their races. If you’re not a collegian or a professional, then you’re a hobbyist. Do hobbyists in other sports compete against pros and collegians? Do they get upset about the lack of such opportunities, or feel entitled to have them?

I am not sure what go out of their way means. The marginal cost is basically 0 so long as you limit the number of people or hold high standards.

Track isn't like other sports, but there are others where "unattached" can compete in exhibition. Unattached do compete with collegiates in rowing and swimming in exhibition races. Many basketball, soccer, baseball, and softball teams compete in exhibitions against non-collegiate teams, often internationally.

NCAA track is filled with USATF trained officials. If it were not for these officials, there would be no meets in the first place. It is not as-if they are doing this all on their own.

nbrowne1 wrote:

Come to Canadian 10,000m champs if you want a fast track time:

http://www.bcathletics.org/pacificdistancecarnival/

Thursday 13 June, Vancouver, BC.

How does the chase the pace 5k work, is it just an on track 5k with a pacer?