Team Boss does a workout in Boulder, Colorado about three weeks out from the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials.*The Workout:*2x1600, 2x800, 2x1600, 2x800 (1:30 rest)3...
Rumor is Wetmore/Burroughs to be let go at CU? Who get this gig?
nobody. dropping CC/TF for budgetary reasons
Not sure they can do that. NCAA requires a minimum number of sports for D1 and CU does not offer a lot. Plus the athletic department is going better financially thanks to Prime.
Taken down by a couple disgruntled runners. Not sure how much longer they intended to stay anyway as CU was getting out recruited on a regular basis - so maybe it was time for a change.
I was under the impression that body composition analysis was a better alternative to caliper tests? Now they can't even do that without worrying who will be negatively impacted by the results.
Brosnan will now need to decide whether he wants to coach at FSU or CU.
Yeah, college administrators take such allegations seriously and also investigate them too.
Let's face it, it might well have been time for a change.
There are already posts saying that he did nothing wrong (regarding the body composition testing) and that high-level distance running success depends on having a low body fat, and posts saying that it probably went well beyond that (how did he influence athletes to be thin?).
The report is public and can be accessed here, so people can actually read it and not speculate. (I admit I have not read it, so I choose not to speculate.)
I read the executive summary. First almost half the women reported issues with the body comp testing. That is more than a "few". Second, having probably done more body comps on elite athletes than almost anyone else, the use of that as described is inappropriate. To begin with there is no single "ideal" sum of seven value (the sums of the seven measures are put into a formula that gives an estimate of body fat %). Any coach who thinks that really needs to be evaluated for how well they understand this. One person can run well at 14% and crappy at 12% (leaving out the error in the measurement issues). So lower is not always better.
Also, rather than a focus on improving times, the shift seemed to be changing eating or training to reach some mythological figure for sum of seven. Again, isn't the outcome you want faster times or better placing and not a score on a lab test? (As a guy who once loved lab testing athletes this is still a little hard to write.)
Some of the other things such as pitting athletes against one another is dicey since that happens in sports. You have 7 runners you can enter in a meet so a few people are competing for those final spots. I think there are ways to develop all your runners and reduce that sensation, but some of that is inherent.
Also, sharing the body comp results with other athletes is not ethical. (Athletes are free to share, but staff should never share individual data.)
Also, technically they did not fire him. Not renewing a contract (from a legal perspective) is very different from firing a person.
Let's also face that the last national title came in 2018. Incoming freshman runners for the fall of 2024 were not in high school yet. Many might not even have been running as their primary sport.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
Did anyone else see the Daily Camera (local Boulder newspaper) article tweeted out this morning (and then soon after deleted) titled: "CU Boulder alum, Dathan Ritzenhein, set to take over the men and women's cross country and track and field programs following Mark Wetmore's departure"?
Did anyone else see the Daily Camera (local Boulder newspaper) article tweeted out this morning (and then soon after deleted) titled: "CU Boulder alum, Dathan Ritzenhein, set to take over the men and women's cross country and track and field programs following Mark Wetmore's departure"?
Would be surprising since that job is way more of a pain than his current gig. Probably pays more, though.
Honestly I think the report is just the excuse to let Wetmore go. He's been there forever and is stale. The school wants a change and this is the perfect reason to go ahead with it.
Also, it costs them nothing since they did not fire him. They did not renew his contract.
I called this back in May. He should have been let go back when CU went to the PAC 12.
Burroughs is the real deal and should get her own program. The throws coach should have been let go a long time ago. The guy has been at CU for 20 years and has one NCAA All-American. Look at his multi at the Olympic trials, 30 meters in the jav, 11 meters in the shot, not good.
Maybe Colorado will go out and get a real coach who knows more than the steeple chase.
God I hate feeding trolls, but CU men won 3 pac 12 titles in a row. You think that's when wetmore should have been let go?
The men won in 2021 and 2019. CU had a great run that ended in 2016 (That is a very long time ago in college athletics where the incoming frosh were 10 years old.) Women won in 2022 and 2021.
Did anyone else see the Daily Camera (local Boulder newspaper) article tweeted out this morning (and then soon after deleted) titled: "CU Boulder alum, Dathan Ritzenhein, set to take over the men and women's cross country and track and field programs following Mark Wetmore's departure"?
Would be surprising since that job is way more of a pain than his current gig. Probably pays more, though.
Coaching post-college athletes seems in many ways a way better gig than being a college coach. Maybe not the stable income, but also coaches get fired...
CU is CU due to Merk Wetmore!!! He built that program into a National Power Period! He deserves better than this BS Crap! He should have been able to leave on his own accord when he wanted, and thrown a Huge Retirement Party by CU!! He is VERY respected by the Peers that he cares about though. He doesn't give two craps what this young weak soft generation thinks of him. He will retire in style and know that he built a LEGEND! Congrats Mark! Kick back and laugh
Not sure they can do that. NCAA requires a minimum number of sports for D1 and CU does not offer a lot. Plus the athletic department is going better financially thanks to Prime.
This rule is ripe for being changed. With all the changes coming to the NCAA the minimum sports requirement seems like it's living on borrowed time. Whether it will require a lawsuit or the SEC and Big10 leaving the NCAA all together, I think the vast majority of us agree that non-revenue men's sports are in big trouble:
If college presidents and their allies continue to claim that the NCAA Division I 14-sport minimum rule is the reason why they cannot invest more into intramurual sports or pay their commerical athletes, it is time to bring a...
Did anyone else see the Daily Camera (local Boulder newspaper) article tweeted out this morning (and then soon after deleted) titled: "CU Boulder alum, Dathan Ritzenhein, set to take over the men and women's cross country and track and field programs following Mark Wetmore's departure"?
Would be surprising since that job is way more of a pain than his current gig. Probably pays more, though.
Hey maybe CU would at least start getting Niwot athletes.
CU is CU due to Merk Wetmore!!! He built that program into a National Power Period! He deserves better than this BS Crap! He should have been able to leave on his own accord when he wanted, and thrown a Huge Retirement Party by CU!! He is VERY respected by the Peers that he cares about though. He doesn't give two craps what this young weak soft generation thinks of him. He will retire in style and know that he built a LEGEND! Congrats Mark! Kick back and laugh
CU is CU because of 1) Boulder and 2) altitude. Boulder has always been a running mecca. In the 80s and 90s you couldn’t throw a rock and not hit a professional runner. Wetmore had a successful tenure, but the idea that nobody else could have taken a program that is located in one of the most popular places to be a serious runner on the planet and turn it into a national power is silly. Of course, many people could have screwed it up. He deserves some of the credit, but location, location, location deserves some of the credit as well.