That CEO needs to be on a Zoom with Coach Rob right now ironing out the details. This brings understanding, intrigue and urgency to what is being watched which is the most important part to a sports product.
This is the greatest thing I have ever heard. To have REAL Team Championships and then an All-American meet for the top ranked athletes is a genius idea. I absolutely love that.
Like a second All American/Top NCAA T & F fun meet that also gives out the awards like the Bowerman one, the NCAA track Man/Woman of the Year award, and so on.
Great ideas. This aligns with what I have been saying. The meet can take all day as long as you keep the finals within the three hour window. There is nothing wrong with preliminaries and semifinals and finals.
@ Exactly. We cannot have meets with only finals, there has to be space for the less experienced athletes to compete and develop. The preliminaries and semis do not need to be televised.
@@faulypi How are teams supposed to develop talent otherwise that might not be ready? We would be seeing only those select few from North America or most of Europe who are basically ready to go pro after a year or two and drop out or those from east and central Africa who get missed as a Pro on sponsorship because of being only as good as a North American or European elite athlete.
@@caseysmith544I don’t think that the teams would change their structure. Teams will still need to have depth to compete throughout the season. The meetings will be structured to keep the finals compact to facilitate television coverage. Many professional meets already have this structure where only the finals are televised. The main advantage is to create a more compelling product where teams compete against each other rather than individuals as we have today. The downside is that the best individual athlete in an event who is on a weak team may not make it to the finals.
You've convinced me. I've watched your other videos as well. So, who needs to buy into a proposal such as yours? The CEO? The college presidents? The athletic directors? The college athletes? All of the above?
NCAA because they're profit-driven. That's like, with any corporation, when they are forced to pay people in a way they weren't previously so they decide to take cost-cutting measures to take away sports that are not profitable, which are virtually all female teams and sports that aren't football or basketball. If Title IX gets cut, which looks dire considering the incoming administration, the big money machine will stop at nothing if it doesn't mean making profit. If no regulations come around to protect it, or it continues to not make a profit, expect track, swimming, cross country, lacrosse, field hockey, rowing, archery, wrestling, equestrian, hockey, volleyball, synchronized swimming, soccer, softball, water polo to continue to get screwed.
Coach Rob-thanks for your thinking on college track. I like it. To be clear, I agree with you that a track meet now is not a television-ready event. But it could be, as you say.
Nice! I like this. The scoring makes sense and helps people to really care about the performance of the entire team. People will be complaining about strength of conferences for an automatic bid but i like that regular season meets will count towards the tournament as well
Love your proposal. You have got to get the media involved and they are not going to do anything over three hours. Back in the day ABC’s Wide World of Sports covered a lot of track and field and much of it included college meets. It is one of the things that helped me get interested in track. They gave a lot of lesser known sports exposure. Now you rarely see track and field. Certainly the system you propose will change the sport and hopefully get it more visibility.
Even NBC Sports gave track and field as well as other odd sports lots of coverage back in the 2000's to mid 2010's that NBC in 2000's was bumping off for more mainstream sports or even boring PBA events. They even played events like Curling or Luge, the summer and Winter Olympic sports, but then went all in on horse stuff and it became the channels downfall and why it was stopped on TV. Now to see these events you need to be subscribed to Peacock at least in the USA.
the win/loss column could just be scored the same as the meets and then ranked. at the end of the season there could be a commitee who goes back and ranks the meets based off of performances and then adds or takes away points due to the performance score of the meet
Netflix should take a page from what Peacock (USA) did with their Olympic coverage abc look into streaming Track & Field since their Christmas football streaming coverage was such a success.
A solid way would be putting the regionals and Championships in Major cities like LA, NYC, Chicago, or Austin where there’s plenty of money for fans to attend and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg like flying out to Eugene
This used to happen until the Nike's money paid for Eugune in 2000's for a World Track & Field championships level course in the 2000's that got updated in the early 2020's due to more the World Track & Field rules to have more lanes because no city/country during the World Track & Field in 2022 wanted to be the host when Eugen agreed in 2020 (mainly due to Corona Virus/other events happening), before the change in facility rules for World Track & Field.
Brilliant, as usual Coach, except more so. Watching this I do kinda feel like a hopeful math major walking into calculus 201 after just getting by Calculus 101. In other words, I need to get in a study group or watch this three more times. The first thing that pops into my mind is what the impact will be on recruiting, considering that, by and large, the most successful/ illustrious programs do, already, tend to attract the best recruits. You're not going to change that, and it might even get worse, especially if there are cutbacks in scholarships and (maybe even more important) program support from coaches, dietitians, trainers, medical staff and psychologists. Another issue, and I'm not being negative, is how do you convince the Arkansas, the Floridas, the LSUs, the Alabamas, etc., who win again and again, that it's in their interest to change the rules? There is a parable in economics, I think, called the Tragedy of the Commons. That's where everybody's animals get to graze the common fields, but the richest farmers with the most animals have no reason to voluntarily limit the size of their herd in everybody else's interest. That's because the amount of grass seems unlimited; until one day, there's no more grass for anybody's herd to eat.That's what seems to me to be happening right now. When I lived in Texas many years ago it was called Big dog eat little dog. I wish you luck Coach. This all makes good sense, to the extent I understand it. Using the XC scoring model, which we all understand, is very useful, because it works. And the cross weekly team rankings during the season are understandable, although not entirely predictive (example: Wolfpack ranked 13th, finished 8th). But that system gives you a somewhat realistic picture of the outcome that could be transferrable to athletics at large, to construct a national championship bracket. Anyhow, that's my two cents, even if I don't really know what I'm talking about. Keep thinking creatively, and especially on how to get the Big Dogs to go along, and also that they need to run with the little dogs, not eat them. And also, the impact on D2 and D3, or if it even matters. Happy New Year by the way! PJT
You can still do a win loss record. Everytime at the meet has a head to head and you either win or lose. It also allows you to be able to have an overall winner
It has always blown my mind that track isn't like any other type of racing where points are awarded for winning in the season to produce a championship race.
I just love track and field season, indoor and outdoor, the field sports especially. Man the women’s hammer, discus and shot-put is just amazing to watch and are they some powerful athletes. If the organizations that run the field events could just be turned loose and let us folks give money to each individual field athlete with a scannable QR code or something I would be all in. They need to let the fans get involved more and just not be so damn concerned with football and basketball.
Season records for other sports are only used to give teams seeds, thats the same reason you gave for all the meets leading up to conference meets. The only difference is you can watch the standings of teams in other sports and see where they rank vs for track and field its harder to see that and its not written out which teams are projected to win. I believe a solution for this would be to calculate the results of conference meets every week, similar to what the xctf coaches association does for cross country nationals, giving teams rankings based on the times their athletes run or distances they jump/throw each week. Its not hard to assign a program to go through tfrrs and calculate where teams would stand at the end of each week. The only issue I can see with this is if an athlete is ranked in multiple events, ex: 100, 200, 400, 4x100, etc. and they obviously wouldn't run all of them. Coaches could be asked each week to give a pre declaration for big meets like conference and nationals to iron out the rankings and give fans an idea where their teams stand. This could also make it interesting to see if coaches play mind games or it could help them see what athletes would be better in different events. I'm not sure as to how this concept would be completed or where it would be shown to reach fans, but I believe the concept could help the sport and its competitiveness.
These are genius ideas right here, the ncaa track and field committee should watch this video and take notes. The sport of track and field is at risk and something has to be done to save it.
I think if NCAA Cross Country closest to Track and Field can have more of a team dynamic, then so can NCAA Track & Field can where it is not just individuals competing at the top level but force more of a team dynamic for the sport. Indoor Track & Field has this team dynamic for the NCAA finals so why not use that model for the Outdoor season that normally gets more views anyhow.
Will eventually need to be tiered to a group of top athletes/teams that can bring in any revenue then everyone else. Needs to be more events available in the big glittery meets, not less, to give the most access. Limit on # events per athlete (1 indiv + 1 relay leg maybe). Make the teams really think how to deploy not just overload the top guys like they do at conference meets or I did in high school. To survive the sport for the masses in all seriousness...the 2nd tier athletes like I was can do it on free gear and shoes plus whatever meets were accessible in a couple hrs by stinky 25 year old vans. There are plenty of athletes willing to be on teams and compete without the $ at the college level. The cost to stage a XC or track meet is very small.
Unc is low-key media coverage for College athletes cos I didn’t know how big the American Uni Athletics. I didn’t even know that it was this big and produced so many pro-athletes and how so many kids over the world go there to elevate their athletics career or see it as a next step. I knew some South African students transfer that but thought it was just that. Them getting sponsorships and academic opportunities,only to find out that some of them are even in Olympics
I like your idea. Definitely could be done. However, just 3 athletes? May need more. You need subs in case an athlete is injured during an event. Your format also could establish school rankings like the other NCAA sports (e.g. #1 Alabama, #2 Ohio State, etc.).
Just some tiny percent of football revenue would fund all these sports, but we are past this point and they are going to let the smaller sports fail or be majorly downsized.
Best part of this plan is that the NCAA can implement immediately. Conference winners are already awarded. Only problem I see is that there are about 38 conferences. That’s a lot of automatic qualifiers
There’s about 30 conferences. But some champions would have been automatic bids anyway…. But those rules apply to ncaa champs for all other d1 sports with a bracket model
@ then there are major conferences like the MAC that unfortunately only field 5 men’s teams. There would need to be minimum teams to have an auto bid. Maybe a super conference meet
Penn Relays is a way to get TV coverage if promoted correctly. Another way to get eyeballs is to follow the old USA vs the USSR dual meet model. How about best college athletes against countries for meets. USA college stars versus Russia for example. I do like your team system with XC scoring. In fact, you might not even have 2 per team in some events. 8 teams, 8 lanes on the track. Simple. Track meets that last 14 hours aren't even good for the super fans and clearly don't work with casual fans and TV. To make fans care, I do think the meets need to include natural rivals. Michigan fans don't care if Michigan is in a track meet and they beat Baylor, Washington and Ucla. They want to have bragging rights over Ohio State. More relays is brilliant too. Everyone likes to watch a relay and it gives more athletes a shot at making a contribution to their team performance.
What about the really talented athletes that don’t want to go to one of the best track schools? Wouldn’t this create a concentration of the best athletes all going to the same few schools, leading to more programs getting cut. I think you also need to add at large bids to all the meets, making it more like nxn for hs XC. I agree that something has to change but this would just result in too many top athletes being left out.
Coach is right. In April, EVERYONE is going to Penn Relays to see BULLIS vs Jamaica. Thats the draw. One relay team vs the other. That stadium is going to be full. Now imagine, if it was ONLY Bullis vs Jamaica and they competed vs each Other in the 4x1, 4X2, 4x4, 4x8, smr and dmr. That will only be the length of a ncaa basketball or football game and its a team sport and it would pack the stadium and tv. In college, imagine Florida vs Florida State or Penn State vs Notre Dame or as they do already Army vs Navy. Team sport is the way.
So the “A” and “B” schedule is rotating weekly? Wouldn’t the whole set up water down performances and create a bigger divide between professional track and college track? This set up will also limit the amount of track and field athletes on each team. If I can only race up to 3 athletes per event, it wouldn’t make sense to have more than 3 athletes that can compete in that event. This would turn into a team full of “multis” with maybe a few athletes that specialize. If there are less athletes on the team, schools will believe that less coaches are needed and now there are less athletes and coaches on college track teams. Also, the way that XC runs works for XC because everyone is running the same race. It’s too many events to make that work in track, even with you getting rid of a few events and having meets only offer half of the events. Lastly, how does this help athletes? I get needing to make chances to be more profitable but it shouldn’t be at the expense of half of track and field athletes.
NCAA wants all sports gone including NCAA Basketball because they are not the semi pro Football that brings in The. This is just sad and I bet a bunch of schools drop down to the D1 for NCAA football becuse of what is going on right now with these leages outside of the big 3 SEC, Big 10 and somehow the southern ACC still together (one North Carolina is in) maybe Big 12 and Pac 10 and a few that were second tier like Mountain West or Mountain East will be the next level but I doubt it for these smaller FBC schools going fully down to D1.
Calling college track a series of weekly time trials is unfortunately accurate. I don’t understand how you would calculate a team record after a season of 12 team meets? Average place?
Average place and best finish are what gymnastics uses to track team standings. That could be tracked both inside and outside the conference. But another way to do it involves a lot more math, essentially running a dual meet calculator across all the teams in a meet. So on that day you technically get a win or a loss against each team present. 10 teams in the meet would suggest best case scenario you get 9 points or 9 wins and 0 losses. Worst case scenario you get zero points for losing in each mathematical faceoff. In the second example your “points” which is an (adjusted win loss record) become your standings in and out the conference. In the second example Strength of schedule is easy to calculate because every team you faced has a record. The more teams you beat with high W/L point values, the better you must be as a team yourself.
@ I like the idea of a team going 11-0 or 7-4 for the meet. That’s a score for the weekend you can tell someone when they ask “how did the meet go?” It also preserves your rivalry meets like Lehigh / Lafayette or a Penn Relay and a team can still get 50+ head to head scores
No, no, no...we dont need to focus on rankings or conference standings. Just show the big invitationals, the big conference championships, and the national championships for D1. For DII and DIII, shows the national championships. And dont turn the meets into anything like the Diamond League meets with a limited number of events that vary. Again, no tournament-style nonsense, please. EDIT - I knew it before you even got there - DO NOT CUT THE MEET DOWN BY RUNNING ONLY HALF THE EVENTS. This isnt the Diamond League. EDIT 2 - No XC scoring, either. Just as a regular sports fan, the fewest number of points doesnt resonate. Just score it as we do the events already.
So you seem to think things are fine the way they are? I respect that opinion. Unfortunately the present model doesn’t generate revenue and is threatening to cut programs as a result…
@@SCATrackandField No, I dont think things are "fine". The problem is not "revenue generation", it is fiscally irresponsible colleges and universities that prefer to fund, for example, hundreds of DEI positions that rob potential students of academic scholarship and student-athletes of athletic scholarships or prefer to fund humanities program that are nothing more than grievance studies programs that misallocate institutional dollars or to fund absurd "scientific research" to study chimps throwing feces or gambling pigeons. College athletic programs like gymnastics, swimming, wrestling, etc., also do not generate revenue. At most universities, football does generate revenue and onyl at a few does it generate a sufficient amount of revenue to actually fully fund the rest of the athletic department. I dont think we should treat track and field like college football or basketball not only because the sport doesnt lend itself in comparable competitive ways, i.e., team vs team, but doing so has completely ruptured college football what with the transfer portal, NIL deals, and mega conferences that are leaving most D1 programs behind. To say all of this isnt to say that "everything is fine". It is to say that professionalizing college track and field, imo, isnt the right approach.
@@SCATrackandField Silly reply to suggest that I must think everything is fine. If the only metric is that somehting isnt revenue-generating, well, absent a relatively small number of D1 institutions, then theres a problem acroiss the board. But revenue isnt a problem or the problem. The real problem is fiscally irresponsible college administrators and bureaucrats that misallocate and improperly spend public dollars. See these colleges spending millions of worthless DEIA nonsense that rob students of academic scholarships and student-athletes of athletic scholarships and see how they waste federal dollars and there own matching dollars on wasteful research like gambling pigeons and chimps throwing feces (turns out most chimps are right-handed). Besides, absent a few major D1 schools,, athletic departments are not generally generating sufficient revenue to cover their own programs, let alone the entire athletic program. Gymnastics, swimming, track, wrestling, among others have been cut by a variety of institutions, this is not a unique problem to track and field. I appreciate the coaches association's perspective on this and I respect your opinion on this...I just happen to disagree. But, Id prefer not to see XC and track be professionalized like college football which is causing adverse disruption across the board with megaconferences, transfer portal, and paying athletes now. The public is not imposing fiscal discipline on these institutions...which they should be, but dont have the time or interest to do so. College administrators, padding their own wallet and creating their own little bureaucratic fiefdoms are the problem. They need to be held in check from their prolific spending problems. Professionalizing XC and track like football doesnt do that. And upending the sport of track to create mini-meets and extending the seasons wont, either.
Why so negative. I made the team in 1984, when athletes could not openly accept payment/moneys from participating in the sport. Since the seventies, we have tried to create a profession around track and field, it didn’t work. If you are concerned about scholarships, D2 has shown to work on limited budgets. I know, I had a scholarship from one of them. Secondly, NJCAA has provided scholarships to many Olympic athletes. Notably Fred Kerly and Vernon Norwood. We gonna be alright. Frankly, many of the scholarships given out by D1 schools go to non-American athletes.🤷🏾♂️. D1 needs to evolve to emulate D2.
People have to care. If you don't have stars no one will care. NIL has made the line in the sand. No longer can all of coligent sports ride the wave of football. It's over for track.
I'm not mad at your suggestions coach, but I still think it's gonna take significant leadership who actually know what they are doing and cares about the sport to advocate - especially for TV rights because I agree - that is the biggest issue. Some of these suggestions aren't just college issues though, it'll completely change the landscape of the sport. Scheduling especially regular meets can be easy - when I was a club coach, one year all of us area coaches got together and decided we were no longer doing all day meets - we limited events each meet until championship so I'm not mad at that. Some of the other changes tweaks things completely and will be a big challenge. I don't think the biggest issue is needing to completely change the landscape but for more exposure and that could even be done with a few minor tweaks including the limiting teams and events at each meet. I would say that would be a good starting point before completely blowing things up. We have to continue the conversation - this is good stuff!
So the “A” and “B” schedule is rotating weekly? Wouldn’t the whole set up water down performances and create a bigger divide between professional track and college track? This set up will also limit the amount of track and field athletes on each team. If I can only race up to 3 athletes per event, it wouldn’t make sense to have more than 3 athletes that can compete in that event. This would turn into a team full of “multis” with maybe a few athletes that specialize. If there are less athletes on the team, schools will believe that less coaches are needed and now there are less athletes and coaches on college track teams. Also, the way that XC runs works for XC because everyone is running the same race. It’s too many events to make that work in track, even with you getting rid of a few events and having meets only offer half of the events. Lastly, how does this help athletes? I get needing to make chances to be more profitable but it shouldn’t be at the expense of half of track and field athletes.
I respect your objections. However roster cuts are the only definite. Teams will have 45 but perhaps even 35 athletes on the men’s side next year for D1. So the teams will be severely limited no matter what. The concept of limiting athlete participation simply matches how other sports are formatted. Reserves don’t play unless the coach subs them in. Theoretically a 4th or 5th 100m sprinter would have to get put on the line by the coach. Admittedly the “integrity” of running all the events Olympic style is sacrificed in this model to make a tv ready product. I respect all new ideas. But if regular season and championship meets can’t be cut down to fit a tv window, none of the other changes made will matter. The lack of future revenue potential will be enough for Athletic Directors to justify cutting the team. The current model treats T&F as an exception to the rules every other team on campus is held to. And the threat to eliminate programs is a result of colleges no longer having an interest in footing the bill for the track exception. The world we are headed to will either be a new model for college track (which will come with consequences I admit”, or mass program cuts over the next decade “which I believe is even worse”
That CEO needs to be on a Zoom with Coach Rob right now ironing out the details. This brings understanding, intrigue and urgency to what is being watched which is the most important part to a sports product.
This is the greatest thing I have ever heard. To have REAL Team Championships and then an All-American meet for the top ranked athletes is a genius idea. I absolutely love that.
Like a second All American/Top NCAA T & F fun meet that also gives out the awards like the Bowerman one, the NCAA track Man/Woman of the Year award, and so on.
@@Jahsper it's like a championship and then an all-star game with real meaning so everyone shows up and gives their all.
Great ideas. This aligns with what I have been saying.
The meet can take all day as long as you keep the finals within the three hour window. There is nothing wrong with preliminaries and semifinals and finals.
The finals would be the only part of the event Televised anyhow.
His ideas will kill track and field for good. fast runners will just team up and crush everybody lol
@ Exactly. We cannot have meets with only finals, there has to be space for the less experienced athletes to compete and develop. The preliminaries and semis do not need to be televised.
@@faulypi How are teams supposed to develop talent otherwise that might not be ready? We would be seeing only those select few from North America or most of Europe who are basically ready to go pro after a year or two and drop out or those from east and central Africa who get missed as a Pro on sponsorship because of being only as good as a North American or European elite athlete.
@@caseysmith544I don’t think that the teams would change their structure. Teams will still need to have depth to compete throughout the season. The meetings will be structured to keep the finals compact to facilitate television coverage. Many professional meets already have this structure where only the finals are televised.
The main advantage is to create a more compelling product where teams compete against each other rather than individuals as we have today. The downside is that the best individual athlete in an event who is on a weak team may not make it to the finals.
You've convinced me. I've watched your other videos as well. So, who needs to buy into a proposal such as yours? The CEO? The college presidents? The athletic directors? The college athletes? All of the above?
NCAA because they're profit-driven. That's like, with any corporation, when they are forced to pay people in a way they weren't previously so they decide to take cost-cutting measures to take away sports that are not profitable, which are virtually all female teams and sports that aren't football or basketball. If Title IX gets cut, which looks dire considering the incoming administration, the big money machine will stop at nothing if it doesn't mean making profit. If no regulations come around to protect it, or it continues to not make a profit, expect track, swimming, cross country, lacrosse, field hockey, rowing, archery, wrestling, equestrian, hockey, volleyball, synchronized swimming, soccer, softball, water polo to continue to get screwed.
Coach Rob-thanks for your thinking on college track. I like it. To be clear, I agree with you that a track meet now is not a television-ready event. But it could be, as you say.
Nice! I like this. The scoring makes sense and helps people to really care about the performance of the entire team. People will be complaining about strength of conferences for an automatic bid but i like that regular season meets will count towards the tournament as well
I like that you put work into trying to fix track so it can survive and thrive going forward.
Love your proposal. You have got to get the media involved and they are not going to do anything over three hours. Back in the day ABC’s Wide World of Sports covered a lot of track and field and much of it included college meets. It is one of the things that helped me get interested in track. They gave a lot of lesser known sports exposure. Now you rarely see track and field. Certainly the system you propose will change the sport and hopefully get it more visibility.
Even NBC Sports gave track and field as well as other odd sports lots of coverage back in the 2000's to mid 2010's that NBC in 2000's was bumping off for more mainstream sports or even boring PBA events. They even played events like Curling or Luge, the summer and Winter Olympic sports, but then went all in on horse stuff and it became the channels downfall and why it was stopped on TV. Now to see these events you need to be subscribed to Peacock at least in the USA.
the win/loss column could just be scored the same as the meets and then ranked. at the end of the season there could be a commitee who goes back and ranks the meets based off of performances and then adds or takes away points due to the performance score of the meet
this was amazing coach Rob very well thought out and marketable
THIS is the most sensible thing I've ever heard about track and field.
Netflix should take a page from what Peacock (USA) did with their Olympic coverage abc look into streaming Track & Field since their Christmas football streaming coverage was such a success.
A solid way would be putting the regionals and Championships in Major cities like LA, NYC, Chicago, or Austin where there’s plenty of money for fans to attend and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg like flying out to Eugene
This used to happen until the Nike's money paid for Eugune in 2000's for a World Track & Field championships level course in the 2000's that got updated in the early 2020's due to more the World Track & Field rules to have more lanes because no city/country during the World Track & Field in 2022 wanted to be the host when Eugen agreed in 2020 (mainly due to Corona Virus/other events happening), before the change in facility rules for World Track & Field.
Brilliant, as usual Coach, except more so. Watching this I do kinda feel like a hopeful math major walking into calculus 201 after just getting by Calculus 101. In other words, I need to get in a study group or watch this three more times. The first thing that pops into my mind is what the impact will be on recruiting, considering that, by and large, the most successful/ illustrious programs do, already, tend to attract the best recruits. You're not going to change that, and it might even get worse, especially if there are cutbacks in scholarships and (maybe even more important) program support from coaches, dietitians, trainers, medical staff and psychologists.
Another issue, and I'm not being negative, is how do you convince the Arkansas, the Floridas, the LSUs, the Alabamas, etc., who win again and again, that it's in their interest to change the rules? There is a parable in economics, I think, called the Tragedy of the Commons. That's where everybody's animals get to graze the common fields, but the richest farmers with the most animals have no reason to voluntarily limit the size of their herd in everybody else's interest. That's because the amount of grass seems unlimited; until one day, there's no more grass for anybody's herd to eat.That's what seems to me to be happening right now. When I lived in Texas many years ago it was called Big dog eat little dog.
I wish you luck Coach. This all makes good sense, to the extent I understand it. Using the XC scoring model, which we all understand, is very useful, because it works. And the cross weekly team rankings during the season are understandable, although not entirely predictive (example: Wolfpack ranked 13th, finished 8th). But that system gives you a somewhat realistic picture of the outcome that could be transferrable to athletics at large, to construct a national championship bracket.
Anyhow, that's my two cents, even if I don't really know what I'm talking about. Keep thinking creatively, and especially on how to get the Big Dogs to go along, and also that they need to run with the little dogs, not eat them. And also, the impact on D2 and D3, or if it even matters. Happy New Year by the way! PJT
You can still do a win loss record. Everytime at the meet has a head to head and you either win or lose. It also allows you to be able to have an overall winner
Can't find local college track and field meet locations online. Live in Philadelphia.
It has always blown my mind that track isn't like any other type of racing where points are awarded for winning in the season to produce a championship race.
I just love track and field season, indoor and outdoor, the field sports especially.
Man the women’s hammer, discus and shot-put is just amazing to watch and are they some powerful athletes. If the organizations that run the field events could just be turned loose and let us folks give money to each individual field athlete with a scannable QR code or something I would be all in. They need to let the fans get involved more and just not be so damn concerned with football and basketball.
You have some ideas that should be STRONGLY DISCUSSED by the NCAA
bro how do we get this in action bro. im C'o 27 and i need ncaa track to survive and thrive atleast until i get there and make my impact
Season records for other sports are only used to give teams seeds, thats the same reason you gave for all the meets leading up to conference meets. The only difference is you can watch the standings of teams in other sports and see where they rank vs for track and field its harder to see that and its not written out which teams are projected to win.
I believe a solution for this would be to calculate the results of conference meets every week, similar to what the xctf coaches association does for cross country nationals, giving teams rankings based on the times their athletes run or distances they jump/throw each week. Its not hard to assign a program to go through tfrrs and calculate where teams would stand at the end of each week.
The only issue I can see with this is if an athlete is ranked in multiple events, ex: 100, 200, 400, 4x100, etc. and they obviously wouldn't run all of them. Coaches could be asked each week to give a pre declaration for big meets like conference and nationals to iron out the rankings and give fans an idea where their teams stand. This could also make it interesting to see if coaches play mind games or it could help them see what athletes would be better in different events.
I'm not sure as to how this concept would be completed or where it would be shown to reach fans, but I believe the concept could help the sport and its competitiveness.
These are genius ideas right here, the ncaa track and field committee should watch this video and take notes. The sport of track and field is at risk and something has to be done to save it.
Wish I had more confidence in the NCAA... Lots of great ideas here hopefully someone is listening and looking for options that matter.
I think if NCAA Cross Country closest to Track and Field can have more of a team dynamic, then so can NCAA Track & Field can where it is not just individuals competing at the top level but force more of a team dynamic for the sport. Indoor Track & Field has this team dynamic for the NCAA finals so why not use that model for the Outdoor season that normally gets more views anyhow.
Will eventually need to be tiered to a group of top athletes/teams that can bring in any revenue then everyone else.
Needs to be more events available in the big glittery meets, not less, to give the most access. Limit on # events per athlete (1 indiv + 1 relay leg maybe). Make the teams really think how to deploy not just overload the top guys like they do at conference meets or I did in high school.
To survive the sport for the masses in all seriousness...the 2nd tier athletes like I was can do it on free gear and shoes plus whatever meets were accessible in a couple hrs by stinky 25 year old vans. There are plenty of athletes willing to be on teams and compete without the $ at the college level. The cost to stage a XC or track meet is very small.
This sounds like our high school section formula and i think it will work and add spice and parody. Team team team
Unc is low-key media coverage for College athletes cos I didn’t know how big the American Uni Athletics. I didn’t even know that it was this big and produced so many pro-athletes and how so many kids over the world go there to elevate their athletics career or see it as a next step. I knew some South African students transfer that but thought it was just that. Them getting sponsorships and academic opportunities,only to find out that some of them are even in Olympics
I like your idea. Definitely could be done. However, just 3 athletes? May need more. You need subs in case an athlete is injured during an event. Your format also could establish school rankings like the other NCAA sports (e.g. #1 Alabama, #2 Ohio State, etc.).
Where is the petition to sign?
Just some tiny percent of football revenue would fund all these sports, but we are past this point and they are going to let the smaller sports fail or be majorly downsized.
Best part of this plan is that the NCAA can implement immediately. Conference winners are already awarded. Only problem I see is that there are about 38 conferences. That’s a lot of automatic qualifiers
There’s about 30 conferences. But some champions would have been automatic bids anyway…. But those rules apply to ncaa champs for all other d1 sports with a bracket model
@ then there are major conferences like the MAC that unfortunately only field 5 men’s teams. There would need to be minimum teams to have an auto bid. Maybe a super conference meet
What network has the contract to air NCAA Track and Field? Maybe that contract needs to be addressed.
Penn Relays is a way to get TV coverage if promoted correctly. Another way to get eyeballs is to follow the old USA vs the USSR dual meet model. How about best college athletes against countries for meets. USA college stars versus Russia for example. I do like your team system with XC scoring. In fact, you might not even have 2 per team in some events. 8 teams, 8 lanes on the track. Simple. Track meets that last 14 hours aren't even good for the super fans and clearly don't work with casual fans and TV. To make fans care, I do think the meets need to include natural rivals. Michigan fans don't care if Michigan is in a track meet and they beat Baylor, Washington and Ucla. They want to have bragging rights over Ohio State. More relays is brilliant too. Everyone likes to watch a relay and it gives more athletes a shot at making a contribution to their team performance.
What about the really talented athletes that don’t want to go to one of the best track schools? Wouldn’t this create a concentration of the best athletes all going to the same few schools, leading to more programs getting cut. I think you also need to add at large bids to all the meets, making it more like nxn for hs XC. I agree that something has to change but this would just result in too many top athletes being left out.
Need a video on your bold predictions of 2025
Still waiting to see a bit more, but certainly will in due time.
Excellent Ideas
Coach is right.
In April, EVERYONE is going to Penn Relays to see BULLIS vs Jamaica. Thats the draw. One relay team vs the other. That stadium is going to be full.
Now imagine, if it was ONLY Bullis vs Jamaica and they competed vs each
Other in the 4x1, 4X2, 4x4, 4x8, smr and dmr.
That will only be the length of a ncaa basketball or football game and its a team sport and it would pack the stadium and tv.
In college, imagine Florida vs Florida State or Penn State vs Notre Dame or as they do already Army vs Navy.
Team sport is the way.
This is actually W.
So the “A” and “B” schedule is rotating weekly? Wouldn’t the whole set up water down performances and create a bigger divide between professional track and college track? This set up will also limit the amount of track and field athletes on each team. If I can only race up to 3 athletes per event, it wouldn’t make sense to have more than 3 athletes that can compete in that event. This would turn into a team full of “multis” with maybe a few athletes that specialize. If there are less athletes on the team, schools will believe that less coaches are needed and now there are less athletes and coaches on college track teams.
Also, the way that XC runs works for XC because everyone is running the same race. It’s too many events to make that work in track, even with you getting rid of a few events and having meets only offer half of the events.
Lastly, how does this help athletes? I get needing to make chances to be more profitable but it shouldn’t be at the expense of half of track and field athletes.
NCAA wants all sports gone including NCAA Basketball because they are not the semi pro Football that brings in The. This is just sad and I bet a bunch of schools drop down to the D1 for NCAA football becuse of what is going on right now with these leages outside of the big 3 SEC, Big 10 and somehow the southern ACC still together (one North Carolina is in) maybe Big 12 and Pac 10 and a few that were second tier like Mountain West or Mountain East will be the next level but I doubt it for these smaller FBC schools going fully down to D1.
Calling college track a series of weekly time trials is unfortunately accurate. I don’t understand how you would calculate a team record after a season of 12 team meets? Average place?
Average place and best finish are what gymnastics uses to track team standings. That could be tracked both inside and outside the conference.
But another way to do it involves a lot more math, essentially running a dual meet calculator across all the teams in a meet. So on that day you technically get a win or a loss against each team present. 10 teams in the meet would suggest best case scenario you get 9 points or 9 wins and 0 losses. Worst case scenario you get zero points for losing in each mathematical faceoff.
In the second example your “points” which is an (adjusted win loss record) become your standings in and out the conference. In the second example Strength of schedule is easy to calculate because every team you faced has a record. The more teams you beat with high W/L point values, the better you must be as a team yourself.
@ I like the idea of a team going 11-0 or 7-4 for the meet. That’s a score for the weekend you can tell someone when they ask “how did the meet go?” It also preserves your rivalry meets like Lehigh / Lafayette or a Penn Relay and a team can still get 50+ head to head scores
Bro cooked
I like this.
No, no, no...we dont need to focus on rankings or conference standings. Just show the big invitationals, the big conference championships, and the national championships for D1. For DII and DIII, shows the national championships. And dont turn the meets into anything like the Diamond League meets with a limited number of events that vary. Again, no tournament-style nonsense, please.
EDIT - I knew it before you even got there - DO NOT CUT THE MEET DOWN BY RUNNING ONLY HALF THE EVENTS. This isnt the Diamond League.
EDIT 2 - No XC scoring, either. Just as a regular sports fan, the fewest number of points doesnt resonate. Just score it as we do the events already.
So you seem to think things are fine the way they are? I respect that opinion. Unfortunately the present model doesn’t generate revenue and is threatening to cut programs as a result…
@@SCATrackandField No, I dont think things are "fine". The problem is not "revenue generation", it is fiscally irresponsible colleges and universities that prefer to fund, for example, hundreds of DEI positions that rob potential students of academic scholarship and student-athletes of athletic scholarships or prefer to fund humanities program that are nothing more than grievance studies programs that misallocate institutional dollars or to fund absurd "scientific research" to study chimps throwing feces or gambling pigeons.
College athletic programs like gymnastics, swimming, wrestling, etc., also do not generate revenue. At most universities, football does generate revenue and onyl at a few does it generate a sufficient amount of revenue to actually fully fund the rest of the athletic department.
I dont think we should treat track and field like college football or basketball not only because the sport doesnt lend itself in comparable competitive ways, i.e., team vs team, but doing so has completely ruptured college football what with the transfer portal, NIL deals, and mega conferences that are leaving most D1 programs behind.
To say all of this isnt to say that "everything is fine". It is to say that professionalizing college track and field, imo, isnt the right approach.
@@SCATrackandField Silly reply to suggest that I must think everything is fine. If the only metric is that somehting isnt revenue-generating, well, absent a relatively small number of D1 institutions, then theres a problem acroiss the board. But revenue isnt a problem or the problem. The real problem is fiscally irresponsible college administrators and bureaucrats that misallocate and improperly spend public dollars. See these colleges spending millions of worthless DEIA nonsense that rob students of academic scholarships and student-athletes of athletic scholarships and see how they waste federal dollars and there own matching dollars on wasteful research like gambling pigeons and chimps throwing feces (turns out most chimps are right-handed).
Besides, absent a few major D1 schools,, athletic departments are not generally generating sufficient revenue to cover their own programs, let alone the entire athletic program. Gymnastics, swimming, track, wrestling, among others have been cut by a variety of institutions, this is not a unique problem to track and field.
I appreciate the coaches association's perspective on this and I respect your opinion on this...I just happen to disagree. But, Id prefer not to see XC and track be professionalized like college football which is causing adverse disruption across the board with megaconferences, transfer portal, and paying athletes now. The public is not imposing fiscal discipline on these institutions...which they should be, but dont have the time or interest to do so. College administrators, padding their own wallet and creating their own little bureaucratic fiefdoms are the problem. They need to be held in check from their prolific spending problems. Professionalizing XC and track like football doesnt do that. And upending the sport of track to create mini-meets and extending the seasons wont, either.
Huh, this reply didnt appaear for quite a while, my apologies for the double response.
Why so negative. I made the team in 1984, when athletes could not openly accept payment/moneys from participating in the sport. Since the seventies, we have tried to create a profession around track and field, it didn’t work. If you are concerned about scholarships, D2 has shown to work on limited budgets. I know, I had a scholarship from one of them. Secondly, NJCAA has provided scholarships to many Olympic athletes. Notably Fred Kerly and Vernon Norwood. We gonna be alright. Frankly, many of the scholarships given out by D1 schools go to non-American athletes.🤷🏾♂️. D1 needs to evolve to emulate D2.
Never gonna happen
People have to care. If you don't have stars no one will care. NIL has made the line in the sand. No longer can all of coligent sports ride the wave of football. It's over for track.
I'm not mad at your suggestions coach, but I still think it's gonna take significant leadership who actually know what they are doing and cares about the sport to advocate - especially for TV rights because I agree - that is the biggest issue. Some of these suggestions aren't just college issues though, it'll completely change the landscape of the sport. Scheduling especially regular meets can be easy - when I was a club coach, one year all of us area coaches got together and decided we were no longer doing all day meets - we limited events each meet until championship so I'm not mad at that. Some of the other changes tweaks things completely and will be a big challenge. I don't think the biggest issue is needing to completely change the landscape but for more exposure and that could even be done with a few minor tweaks including the limiting teams and events at each meet. I would say that would be a good starting point before completely blowing things up. We have to continue the conversation - this is good stuff!
bubble.
So the “A” and “B” schedule is rotating weekly? Wouldn’t the whole set up water down performances and create a bigger divide between professional track and college track? This set up will also limit the amount of track and field athletes on each team. If I can only race up to 3 athletes per event, it wouldn’t make sense to have more than 3 athletes that can compete in that event. This would turn into a team full of “multis” with maybe a few athletes that specialize. If there are less athletes on the team, schools will believe that less coaches are needed and now there are less athletes and coaches on college track teams.
Also, the way that XC runs works for XC because everyone is running the same race. It’s too many events to make that work in track, even with you getting rid of a few events and having meets only offer half of the events.
Lastly, how does this help athletes? I get needing to make chances to be more profitable but it shouldn’t be at the expense of half of track and field athletes.
I respect your objections. However roster cuts are the only definite. Teams will have 45 but perhaps even 35 athletes on the men’s side next year for D1. So the teams will be severely limited no matter what.
The concept of limiting athlete participation simply matches how other sports are formatted. Reserves don’t play unless the coach subs them in. Theoretically a 4th or 5th 100m sprinter would have to get put on the line by the coach.
Admittedly the “integrity” of running all the events Olympic style is sacrificed in this model to make a tv ready product. I respect all new ideas. But if regular season and championship meets can’t be cut down to fit a tv window, none of the other changes made will matter. The lack of future revenue potential will be enough for Athletic Directors to justify cutting the team.
The current model treats T&F as an exception to the rules every other team on campus is held to. And the threat to eliminate programs is a result of colleges no longer having an interest in footing the bill for the track exception. The world we are headed to will either be a new model for college track (which will come with consequences I admit”, or mass program cuts over the next decade “which I believe is even worse”