Pierce Murphy has had a fabulous career at CU. He has improved greatly under Mark Wetmore's coaching and what they have done is extremely impressive. However, he ran 9:14 in high school. He ran in the highly elite Arcadia Invite. Don't people know we can easily look this stuff up on the internet?
That is not blue collar/walk-on type of guy. That is better than 99.9% of all high school runners could ever dream of running and it takes significant talent to run 9:14. It is also at a level that all 300 DIII programs, all DII programs and 120 out of the 150 D1 programs would actively recruit if they thought they could get him. It is a level that all DII programs would off scholarship money to and about 100 out of the 150 D1 programs would offer at least some scholarship money to. This is not a walkon/blue collar type of athlete. We are not stupid