with the consistent success Thomas showed at VT and now the absolute absurdity he's accomplishing with better recruits at Oregon Nike should fire Rowland and offer Thomas the spot. OTC is supposed to be Nike's flagship team and Rowland has turned it into a black hole for pro runners.
Five guys at VT just broke four in one race, so VT is doing fine without him. He's doing great at Oregon but this is with very high caliber talent.
I think there needs to be more discernment for who gets feed into the groups. Mark isn’t a bad coach as illustrated by Nick Simmonds, Hassan Mead, Ben Blankenship.
But those are also pretty fiercely independent guys who could disappear for a month and go off and coach themself.
I think a lot of the European athletes are more geared towards that, so Mark started to cater to that. Plenty of top tier track athletes while being disciplined hard working individuals, don’t necessarily have strong opinions about who they are, or what they want, and I don’t think those people mesh well with Marks coaching style.
And Nike/Mark probably needs a little more discretion in knowing what athletes to recruit based upon his style.
A soggy dishrag shouldreplace Rowland.
Mead, Symmonds, and Blankenship would have identical results.
Ben Thomas is clearly a great coach based on the recent success of Oregon and Virginia Tech's success in the prior 5-6 years.
One thing I've wondered about though - why was Virginia Tech so bad in the 2000's? He was there for 17 years before coming to Oregon and the first 10 of those they were terrible and not a factor in the ACC at all. It takes time to build up a program and get your own recruits in, but that's usually 3-4 years and not 10+ to get decent.