As is typical with letsrun, most of this thread is completely absurd. The title of the thread for one. If anyone thinks Jerry is a bad coach then you are simply clueless. Jerry's results throughout his career are VERY strong. Is he the best coach for Oregon? Not sure but I would bet that the next two years will look very different from what we have seen so far. Is he the best coach for everyone? Nope. No coach is great for everyone. That is part of the puzzle. You find a coach that works for you from a personality perspective as well as training, and certainly for Jerry someone that is fine not racing as much.
The thought that the NCAA is not great for development is nearly as crazy. First of all, there are literally 1000's of varying philosophies. You cannot say the NCAA and think everyone does things the same. Every program is different. Just like any profession, there are some very good coaches in the NCAA but there are some very bad ones too. In my opinion, learning to race is critical. No system teaches you to race and the toughness and skill to advance through rounds like the NCAA. The WORST system is one where everything is a time trial. That does not teach how to line up and race.
More and more NCAA coaches train their athletes very intelligently. I do know that many European coaches hate their athletes coming to the NCAA but that is more a testament to their control issues and wanting to not lose the ability to coach their top athletes.
The reality is that in any system the higher level you go the more athletes you lose. Not everyone is prepared physiologically to make the jump to college running and worse yet, many are not prepared psychologically for the high levels of competition.