NCAA T&F Problems

[Treble]

@fogelson

Well, if you want to see something that works for all, you are going to likely sacrifice many of the elites. The Bulgarian Olympic lifting program was based upon simply taking the few survivors of the program and having them be WR holders. You can see the same thing in the former GDR women’s sprint and swimming programs and more recently with the Chinese Olympic lifting programs.

I think people are vastly underrating aspects of the NCAA. Not every problem is from the coaches or the training programs and much of the great work they do is written off to genetics. Face it, athletes like Richard Thompson, Michael Leblanc, Lolo Jones, and numerous others have been developed quite well by their coaches. Not to say that in a system where there are literally hundreds of coaches and training programs that everything will be perfect–it never is–but there are a lot of coaches doing as well as they could that are being lost for one reason or another. Part of the “problem” with NCAA T&F is not even simply due to coaching or the sports system, but the culture of college drinking/partying/etc. People see a kid get worse when he gets to college and assume it is the training, only to find out the athlete is spending more time at the bar or local frat house than at the track and weight room.

While I agree that there will never be a “perfect system” and the coaches won’t always get out of the athletes what we always expect, from my personal experience, as well as coach/athlete tesitimony, there is a very big discrepency in the knowledge that “most” of the coaches on the NCAA level have and the positions that they hold. And it’s a very fine line that I have to fight with for the reasons you’ve just stated. It’s NOT always the coaches fault. It just so happens however, that in 95% of the situations i’ve been made aware of, it was their fault.

While it’s typically stereotypical to assume that the best coaches(any sport) are on the D1 level, I will say for that reason the descrepency in competence is even higher. I don’t think the problem is neccessarily the coaching education classes, or the system. They can be a valuable resource and stepping stone even though I don’t see them as “qualification”. I think that a large majority of the coaches are simply too lazy, prideful, or egotistical to realize they need to learn a little more than what they know.

I don’t even buy the genetics argument for the most part because D1 & D2 coaches have the whole country at their disposal. There’s no way that if given access to recruit athletes from across a country(let alone world)that I wouldn’t be able to field a top notch program year after year.

The one defense I will give to the coaches is that the pressure to win/score points/etc is often the mostivation factor behind the decisions made coaching and otherwise. If I decided to develop a program from scratch, we will most likely not win any big meet for a season or two. That may be too long for some athletic directors and head coaches.