"Unattached" athletes......really

who ...... cares?

NCAA is a farce, why even pretend their rules make sense?

Honestly a lot of that is probably true, but as it was stated already, no one in the NCAA is going to give a shid unfortunately.

College dude from nowhere wrote:

Does anyone really believe that they paid for themselves to travel across the country, get their own hotel, pay for their own meals, get their own rental car, pay for their own entry fee?

Sure, why not? College students travel for all kinds of reasons. If kids from my school in the Northeast were able to go to Mexico for spring break, I don't really see why some runners from around the country couldn't come up with their own funding to run a meet in Boston. Not everyone is broke.

Elvin wrote:

College dude from nowhere wrote:

Does anyone really believe that they paid for themselves to travel across the country, get their own hotel, pay for their own meals, get their own rental car, pay for their own entry fee?

Sure, why not? College students travel for all kinds of reasons. If kids from my school in the Northeast were able to go to Mexico for spring break, I don't really see why some runners from around the country couldn't come up with their own funding to run a meet in Boston. Not everyone is broke.

Didn't Spencer Brown travel around to a bunch of indoor meets to run unattached last season? Didn't he just stay with family? It's all documented on youtube.

y'all take your intramural sports pretty damn serious.

it's a race, race who shows up ....who cares what uniform they wear

The real issue is the only 4 years to compete bs. Let students run while getting masters and phds if they want. There already is not an age limit, so it wouldn't hurt anything.

College dude from nowhere wrote:

So BYU and Arkansas athletes show up in Boston and run "unattached". Does anyone really believe that they paid for themselves to travel across the country, get their own hotel, pay for their own meals, get their own rental car, pay for their own entry fee? Really? The "unattached" crap is just an NCAA violation that won't get looked at.

Yes. Of course. Many runners who would travel across the country are big scholarship athletes. Parents will often pay to have them do this. Better than paying full price for college.

O.P. brings up an excellent point. There are rules and that is nonsense to use University resources for that. The redshirting/unattached athlete is supposed to pay all expenses and enter themselves.

You know not everybody is as broke as you.

I suppose you could just say it’s a training trip. Teams are allowed to travel to train, so why not use unattached racing as training?

Wonderful use of a gray area in the rules! I’m surprised it hasn’t been done more.

Sounds like most don't really care.

College dude from nowhere wrote:

So BYU and Arkansas athletes show up in Boston and run "unattached". Does anyone really believe that they paid for themselves to travel across the country, get their own hotel, pay for their own meals, get their own rental car, pay for their own entry fee? Really? The "unattached" crap is just an NCAA violation that won't get looked at.

not sure how this is any different that all athletes that compete in competition in meets/games then red-shirt so I am sure that it wouldn't be an NCAA violation anyways. Schools are allowed to pay for a couple out of season competitions for their athletes, red shirting athletes included.

As a college athlete, you can take a Spirit airlines flight on your dime- $250

Hotel: Then your college teammate gets a double room paid for by the team that you "crash" on their second bed-$0

Food: Coach gives team mate full per diem and he buys you Chipotle for dinner -$0

Ground Trans: Teammmate Uber's to/from hotel, airport, you hop in the car with them-$0

Entry fee: maybe you use a coupon code that you find lying around that you coach got for paying for 10 athletes.-$0

BYU NC state Arkansas cheating wrote:

O.P. brings up an excellent point. There are rules and that is nonsense to use University resources for that. The redshirting/unattached athlete is supposed to pay all expenses and enter themselves.

I'm 99% sure the athletes can get their travel expenses paid for by someone else without violating rules without creating a rule issue. Meaning their travel and expenses could have been paid by an outside party such as the race. As long as they are not profiting from, getting an appearance fee or prize money it's not an issue.

For example, college athletes that make national teams get their travel to the competitions paid for by USATF without creating a rule violation. Your expenses do not have to be paid out of your pocket or the universities.

As long as the student-athlete is eligible and on the full-time roster they can travel with the team.

who ...... cares wrote:

who ...... cares?

NCAA is a farce, why even pretend their rules make sense?

The thing with rules like this is - even if the rule is dumb and most of us disagree, you don't want those following the rules to be penalized by doing so. Picking and choosing which rules are legit is a slippery slope.

REAL. wrote:

As long as the student-athlete is eligible and on the full-time roster they can travel with the team.

Athletes who are red-shirting (aka the only reason to run "unattached") cannot travel under the schools budget or at least couldn't at my school, idk if that's an NCAA rule or a school rule.

Don't NCAA wrestling programs do this all the time sending redshirts and non starters to wrestle unattached in tournaments so they can get some competition they miss not competing in duels?

True story... was redshirting indoor track... I arranged own transportation to an indoor meet and ran unattached. However I wore my team jersey and lost the season because of that!