The NCAA is Determined to DESTROY College Track?! And THIS is the ONLY way to SAVE it?!

#ncaatrackandfield is under siege according to the CEO of USTFCCCA. The only way to keep some #collegetrackandfield teams from shutting down for good, is to fix the entire sport of #trackandfield in college.

0:00 Division 1 track and field is Under Siege!
4:07 How BAD is College Track doing right now?
8:31 How to make College Track and Field TV ready
15:15 How to make College Track more competitive
19:09 How to FIX the NCAA Track and Field Champs

Prod. by Desirez

[edabakah]

That CEO needs to be on a Zoom with Coach Rob right now ironing out the details. This brings understanding, intrigue and urgency to what is being watched which is the most important part to a sports product.

[Jahsper]

This is the greatest thing I have ever heard. To have REAL Team Championships and then an All-American meet for the top ranked athletes is a genius idea. I absolutely love that.

[faulypi]

Great ideas. This aligns with what I have been saying.
The meet can take all day as long as you keep the finals within the three hour window. There is nothing wrong with preliminaries and semifinals and finals.

[estrome]

You've convinced me. I've watched your other videos as well. So, who needs to buy into a proposal such as yours? The CEO? The college presidents? The athletic directors? The college athletes? All of the above?

[chris]

Nice! I like this. The scoring makes sense and helps people to really care about the performance of the entire team. People will be complaining about strength of conferences for an automatic bid but i like that regular season meets will count towards the tournament as well

[jeremiahmurphy]

Coach Rob-thanks for your thinking on college track. I like it. To be clear, I agree with you that a track meet now is not a television-ready event. But it could be, as you say.

[erichill]

I like that you put work into trying to fix track so it can survive and thrive going forward.

[mstallion]

Love your proposal. You have got to get the media involved and they are not going to do anything over three hours. Back in the day ABC’s Wide World of Sports covered a lot of track and field and much of it included college meets. It is one of the things that helped me get interested in track. They gave a lot of lesser known sports exposure. Now you rarely see track and field. Certainly the system you propose will change the sport and hopefully get it more visibility.

[Nope-qk]

this was amazing coach Rob very well thought out and marketable

[chris]

the win/loss column could just be scored the same as the meets and then ranked. at the end of the season there could be a commitee who goes back and ranks the meets based off of performances and then adds or takes away points due to the performance score of the meet

[Philobiblion]

Brilliant, as usual Coach, except more so. Watching this I do kinda feel like a hopeful math major walking into calculus 201 after just getting by Calculus 101. In other words, I need to get in a study group or watch this three more times. The first thing that pops into my mind is what the impact will be on recruiting, considering that, by and large, the most successful/ illustrious programs do, already, tend to attract the best recruits. You're not going to change that, and it might even get worse, especially if there are cutbacks in scholarships and (maybe even more important) program support from coaches, dietitians, trainers, medical staff and psychologists.

Another issue, and I'm not being negative, is how do you convince the Arkansas, the Floridas, the LSUs, the Alabamas, etc., who win again and again, that it's in their interest to change the rules? There is a parable in economics, I think, called the Tragedy of the Commons. That's where everybody's animals get to graze the common fields, but the richest farmers with the most animals have no reason to voluntarily limit the size of their herd in everybody else's interest. That's because the amount of grass seems unlimited; until one day, there's no more grass for anybody's herd to eat.That's what seems to me to be happening right now. When I lived in Texas many years ago it was called Big dog eat little dog. 

I wish you luck Coach. This all makes good sense, to the extent I understand it. Using the XC scoring model, which we all understand, is very useful, because it works. And the cross weekly team rankings during the season are understandable, although not entirely predictive (example: Wolfpack ranked 13th, finished 8th). But that system gives you a somewhat realistic picture of the outcome that could be transferrable to athletics at large, to construct a national championship bracket.

Anyhow, that's my two cents, even if I don't really know what I'm talking about. Keep thinking creatively, and especially on how to get the Big Dogs to go along, and also that they need to run with the little dogs, not eat them. And also, the impact on D2 and D3, or if it even matters. Happy New Year by the way! PJT

[MrNRMurray]

Netflix should take a page from what Peacock (USA) did with their Olympic coverage abc look into streaming Track & Field since their Christmas football streaming coverage was such a success.

[kevinwoods]

You have some ideas that should be STRONGLY DISCUSSED by the NCAA

[RomanAndBillyTV]

A solid way would be putting the regionals and Championships in Major cities like LA, NYC, Chicago, or Austin where there’s plenty of money for fans to attend and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg like flying out to Eugene

[yoladee]

Can't find local college track and field meet locations online. Live in Philadelphia.

[gmoneyto]

You can still do a win loss record. Everytime at the meet has a head to head and you either win or lose. It also allows you to be able to have an overall winner

[lmferrari]

It has always blown my mind that track isn't like any other type of racing where points are awarded for winning in the season to produce a championship race.

[topherv]

Season records for other sports are only used to give teams seeds, thats the same reason you gave for all the meets leading up to conference meets. The only difference is you can watch the standings of teams in other sports and see where they rank vs for track and field its harder to see that and its not written out which teams are projected to win.

I believe a solution for this would be to calculate the results of conference meets every week, similar to what the xctf coaches association does for cross country nationals, giving teams rankings based on the times their athletes run or distances they jump/throw each week. Its not hard to assign a program to go through tfrrs and calculate where teams would stand at the end of each week.


The only issue I can see with this is if an athlete is ranked in multiple events, ex: 100, 200, 400, 4x100, etc. and they obviously wouldn't run all of them. Coaches could be asked each week to give a pre declaration for big meets like conference and nationals to iron out the rankings and give fans an idea where their teams stand. This could also make it interesting to see if coaches play mind games or it could help them see what athletes would be better in different events.

I'm not sure as to how this concept would be completed or where it would be shown to reach fans, but I believe the concept could help the sport and its competitiveness.

[sohoarnaud]

These are genius ideas right here, the ncaa track and field committee should watch this video and take notes. The sport of track and field is at risk and something has to be done to save it.

[aaronhirth]

Wish I had more confidence in the NCAA... Lots of great ideas here hopefully someone is listening and looking for options that matter.