State of Pac-12 Men's Cross Country

Folks that go to Cal, UCLA (and so forth) realize that if they go all-in on their STEM degrees, intern at a tech company, they can make $200k right when they graduate. They get their running fix post-collegiately living in the Bay Area and competing in one of the numerous club teams.

Biggest cop out ever. If you think for one second that Portland State, Cal State Fullerton, Idaho, UC Santa Barbra all "care more" about XC than Cal Berkeley then you are just playing the blame game.

Cal has two full time dedicated distance coaches, a budget to travel anywhere in the country (prenats this year in Fl!) a historic track stadium, a top 1-2 public school education in the country, the allure of the bay area, P5 Pac12 competition, backing from big time donors, and more. sub 9 guys used to take book scholarships to run there

The facts are the Pac12 is no longer the power it once was and it has nothing to do with how much an admin cares.

ASSTCOACH wrote:

Biggest cop out ever. If you think for one second that Portland State, Cal State Fullerton, Idaho, UC Santa Barbra all "care more" about XC than Cal Berkeley then you are just playing the blame game.

Cal has two full time dedicated distance coaches, a budget to travel anywhere in the country (prenats this year in Fl!) a historic track stadium, a top 1-2 public school education in the country, the allure of the bay area, P5 Pac12 competition, backing from big time donors, and more. sub 9 guys used to take book scholarships to run there

The facts are the Pac12 is no longer the power it once was and it has nothing to do with how much an admin cares.

This all checks out.

Fair points, but Portland State has only distance runners….so 100% of their focus is on XC. They scored 2 points at their conference meet in track & Field. I wouldn’t criticize NAU, they still win Conference Track & Field titles. What should really happen is if you have athletes compete at nationals in Track & Field, you should be required to have a conference track & Field championships. WCC is lame. Also cross country should shouldn’t be allowed more than….6.25 men’s scholarships and 9 women’s on a roster. Problem is these teams using 12-18 scholarships in women’s side in cross and 9-12.5 on men’s side. Those numbers were not intended for XC, it was for a comprehensive track & field/cross country program.

ASSTCOACH wrote:

Biggest cop out ever. If you think for one second that Portland State, Cal State Fullerton, Idaho, UC Santa Barbra all "care more" about XC than Cal Berkeley then you are just playing the blame game.

Cal has two full time dedicated distance coaches, a budget to travel anywhere in the country (prenats this year in Fl!) a historic track stadium, a top 1-2 public school education in the country, the allure of the bay area, P5 Pac12 competition, backing from big time donors, and more. sub 9 guys used to take book scholarships to run there

The facts are the Pac12 is no longer the power it once was and it has nothing to do with how much an admin cares.

For decades, Sandoval did a horrible job, based on all the blue chippers that went there. In the 90s and 00s he used to tell his distance runners (men) that xc was not important and the emphasis was on track. Great way to build a distance program. He retired a few years back. Not sure how good his replacement is, but someone will have to dig out of a 25 year hole. A great coach could have a top 25 team every year at Cal. No different from Stanford. It’s all tradition and coaching.

nomassback wrote:

For decades, Sandoval did a horrible job, based on all the blue chippers that went there. In the 90s and 00s he used to tell his distance runners (men) that xc was not important and the emphasis was on track. Great way to build a distance program. He retired a few years back. Not sure how good his replacement is, but someone will have to dig out of a 25 year hole. A great coach could have a top 25 team every year at Cal. No different from Stanford. It’s all tradition and coaching.

You do realize that in year 3 of the new coaching staff, the distance squad is performing far worse than they ever did in Sandoval’s last several years right? Say what you want about Tony (which I’m sure much is deserved), but the results still undeniably bear this out. I just assumed this must be because they were loading up in T&F. But..CAL’s men DFL’d at the most recent PAC12 meet & their women only beat the distance only schools. Same things turns out to be true at UCLA. They fired their last staff 4-5 years ago now…& the results only nosedived in both XC & track. At least they were regulars at NCAA championships with at least one gender and a olid conference mid-packers at the height of the PAC12’s distance and T&F depth in both sports, just like CAL. But not anymore.

come on guy wrote:

I’m not that impressed with schools that only field distance runners, if that’s your only focus then you better be decent at XC. Arizona State, Cal, etc. at least they field complete track and field teams.

These distance only focused schools are a joke.

I don't think it's a terrible misallocation of resources to try for a cross-country title.

I'm guessing that an athletic department feels like one championship-caliber team is as good as another.

In track, you're going to get clobbered by the SEC, Fla State or Oregon anyway.

If you're a team like Northern Arizona, BYU (which does have track), Syracuse and you can get a few distance runners, why not put your eggs in that basket? I'm sure Oklahoma State which likely does have sprinters and throwers and middle distance and jumpers probably is not regretting all the podium finishes and titles they're gettting by investing in distance.

I think cross country is similar to college basketball. Mostly dominated by powerhouses with traditionally strong programs that can recruit on their name, but a sport where small schools can excel if they focus on it and if they have a great coach. Just like a basketball team, you only need a few great athletes and about the same amount of solid backups to compete successfully. Both are very coachable sports. The big schools who suck either have coaches who suck, or the coaches are good but intentionally not training their athletes for cross country in favor of track, or the entire program has focused on sprinting or jumping.

There are a lot of good points here, but it still doesn't excuse just how bad some of these teams are, especially with some of the potential recruiting advantages a school like Cal has. Sure, ASU puts all of it's money into sprints and throws, and maybe if they have that 800 guy who can score at conference and nationals, but after that, they don't allocate anything in that area (unless they get some interested recruit that can score a boatload of points at conference/nationals). So you're mostly working with walk-ons, which are probably in state kids from Arizona ... who could get some money and other financial aid to GCU, go the JUCO route at PV or Central Arizona or Mesa, or go out of state and get a lot more paid for.

But a California school - geesh. Cross Country kids, especially on the women's side usually can get a decent amount of academic aid because they're good students. Therefore you can throw something like books at them, and they get to attend while not paying a steep amount, AND get the D1 experience with all the supposed perks. And you're going to some of the top 30 schools in the country. So yeah ... no real excuse for them not to at least be remotely competitive given that some will choose those schools for the entire package rather than just how much focus is on the distance program. Sweatshirt schools always start with a huge advantage over the mid-majors, non P5 schools with a few exceptions (NAU and the like).

But there is an inherent flaw with our sport given how schools mostly divide into distance only or speed/power only schools. It's kind of funny to listen to sprints/throws coaches bemoan distance only programs because they aren't a complete team, but then don't seem to care that outside of one or two distance runners (if that), the rest of the cross country/distance events suck and are only there just to fill a roster out. And the same can be said for distance coaches who complain about programs that ignore distance, but would probably go all in on distance if they were the director of a cross country/track and field program. And for those winning at distance only, and those winning with only speed/power event groups, there is little to no incentive for them to change things.

rhimby wrote:

It's a good question about Cal and UCLA. Are they not allowed to recruit or something? How hard is it to throw some cash at one of the hundreds of 9:10 or faster 3200m runners in California?

A good friend of mine (Cal Alumni athlete/coach) tipped me off of a rumor that the Director of T & F/X-C and Bobby Lockhart snubbed an experienced well-accomplished runner candidate for the assistant distance job that was open this past summer and instead picked Kayla Farron as a "diversity" hiring (young, blonde, female with very little experience). Not sure if the candidate was a woman or a man. They figured that when Trevor Dunbar left after 1 year they should go with a young female (for the women?). I think Bobby L coaches both men and women. Also rumored is that the director of the program, Robin Johnson who is a former triple jumper has no interest in the distance program, and wants to build the track program through jumps and sprints. Bobby L seems to be an experienced coach and maybe is being handcuffed by Johnson and her diversity first and performance second agenda. Sounds like UCLA can't figure out what they want and need new leadership. Maybe they have the same problem. It's pretty sad that a P-5 program in California can't recruit and develop talent from their own backyard, let alone the entire country.

Being a coach on the east coast I would LOVE to have the talent pool that Cali has in my own backyard. Oh Well.

SCU guys are hilarious. that video had me rolling along with their mustache profile pics. funny and fast =)

As a former runner at one of the UCs, I have followed Pac 8/10/12 XC and distance for years. My impression certainly is that as some of the long-time XC coaches have retired, their ADs have looked at the XC/distance coaching positions as the place to check the diversity box for their coaching staffs. This definitely is not to say that there aren't some excellent young "diverse" coaches out there, but it doesn't seem that the Pac12 ADs, who pick their hiring committees, try very hard to find them once some non-male/ethnic minority applies for a position.

The coach they passed up on is Carl Rose. He is the head coach for strawberry canyon and an alumni of the program. I’m Coming in with high intelligence that this was a huge missed opportunity for them. He is plugged into the local Running community, has actually coached campus kids to be faster than actual roster kids, he cares more than anyone involved in the program (runs their fb fan page) and is legit a decent good person.

That’s all I got for you people- pealoharm

Call Rose's campaigns for that job for years He's a club coach with strawberry canyon BFD,

Hard pass on the “they’d be better if they got the same funding as small school programs do” narrative. Cal is not the victim here. They have a track stadium, can offer recruits a world class education , a flagship UA deal with custom everything, and Pac 12 money. They thumb their noses at non-elite high school kids (some of which end up at the mid majors they lose to) and routinely have recruiting classes with at least one CIF state medalist. In every sense of the phrase, they do less with more. Cal and ASU losing to CSU Fullerton and CP Slo shouldn’t have happened, but losing to Idaho, Santa Clara, Saint Mary’s College? I’m just not sure I can excuse that.

SupremeTeam25 wrote:

Hard pass on the “they’d be better if they got the same funding as small school programs do” narrative. Cal is not the victim here. They have a track stadium, can offer recruits a world class education , a flagship UA deal with custom everything, and Pac 12 money. They thumb their noses at non-elite high school kids (some of which end up at the mid majors they lose to) and routinely have recruiting classes with at least one CIF state medalist. In every sense of the phrase, they do less with more. Cal and ASU losing to CSU Fullerton and CP Slo shouldn’t have happened, but losing to Idaho, Santa Clara, Saint Mary’s College? I’m just not sure I can excuse that.

What makes losing to Idaho, Santa Clara, and St Mary's worse? Aren't those bigger name schools than some cal states?

Schools like CP Slo and Fullerton are big schools in California, pretty high quality educations, have decent facilities/trail access, and are very inexpensive for CA kids even without a big scholarship of any kind. In theory at least, Cal could have wanted a kid that ends up at CP Slo because of other factors. But by and large, the California kids that end up at schools like the University of San Francisco, Saint Mary’s College, Santa Clara University and the University of Idaho are recruits that Cal would not have given the time of day to in high school. Not being able to seal the deal with the best runners in your backyard is one thing, but losing to a team featuring your programs rejects is different. In the state of Arizona, which features two flagship Pac 12 schools, we see the same thing. GCU and the local community college outperforming. The nation’s best program is a regional state school in Flagstaff.

Fullerton and quality education is hilarious. Most distance runners in California are good students, and good students refuse to go to a Cal State like their life depends on it. For the standard AP student, a Cal State is seen as being beneath even your "safety" UC school. I will say that Cal Poly SLO, Cal Poly Pomona, and San Diego State somehow escape this fate though. They are seen as the "good" Cal States. Maybe because of their branding? Having "Cal State ____" in front of your school is a death sentence for recruiting interest most of the time.

Speaking of that, all the top CA high school runners come from really affluent areas. A lot of bay area/silicon valley runners are great, as well as all the ones along the north/central coast. In southern California, the Orange County runners and north San Diego county runners are all super affluent. But, THAT is where these big schools miss out on. Load your roster up on people who would come for books. Their parents wouldn't mind paying some extra money if they get to tell all their friends where their kid goes to school at. Same thing with the NLI period. They get to sign a piece of paper and pretend its a full ride and their colleagues are none the wiser.

But really, maybe that is the issue isn't it? Maybe these top recruits get to a school like UCLA, CAL, USC, etc etc and just lose interest. I'd imagine the difficult thing about being at a school like that is making sure recruits are honest with you during the recruiting process and not just there to have "Student-Athlete at Cal" in their instagram bio. Now a recruit settling for a mid-major? They probably aren't there to brag about where they run for. The big advantage these schools have is that there is a higher chance for the student-athlete to have came for the team, training, coaches, or culture, and not for the brand. Those are the things that really matter when building a program.