Higher education in America is not in a healthy place to begin with. As institutions inflate and commercialize, the cost of education continues to increase yet the quality of education is generally lower than ever. More and more people feel the cost of education isn’t worth the payoff.
Sports in higher ed has also inflated and commercialized, including non-revenue sports like running. Almost any kid can at least walk on to a program and expect the experience will be like being a pro athlete. Whether we acknowledge it or not, these people are usually “athlete-students” instead of “student-athletes”. Schools know students’ decisions often are because of athletics, and so programs are being relentlessly overinflated, even though most sports are not directly bringing in revenue for schools. This is not sustainable.
Issues relating to revenue sports like football are going to eventually kill the non-revenue sport ecosystem in higher ed, if higher Ed itself doesn’t fall apart before then. Most schools can barely afford their current budgets; theres no way they can pay their athlete-students as employees. It would be a shame if American collegiate running fell apart, too, because it’s an amazing system to develop talent, is organized decently, allows for team dynamics, has some testing infrastructure, etc. a decentralized system for running in the US would not be preferable in my book.