25-26 Director's Cup Thread

[HookemTexas]

I don't think I've ever seen cross country compete for a national championship, is it because there aren't any scholarships there and most of the track and field scholarships go to indoor/outdoor T&F teams?

[HelloThere]

1 minute ago, HookemTexas said:

I don't think I've ever seen cross country compete for a national championship, is it because there aren't any scholarships there and most of the track and field scholarships go to indoor/outdoor T&F teams?

It is an extremely hard sport to recruit, but with all the changes in rosters and scholarship limits I can see Texas becoming competitive if they want to. Before, it was hard to have a great distance and sprint program.  XC is always just an extension of your distance program for track.  Now they can fully fund the program, again, if they want to. 

[HookemTexas]

3 minutes ago, HelloThere said:

It is an extremely hard sport to recruit, but with all the changes in rosters and scholarship limits I can see Texas becoming competitive if they want to. Before, it was hard to have a great distance and sprint program.  XC is always just an extension of your distance program for track.  Now they can fully fund the program, again, if they want to. 

Thanks, I'm really clueless when it comes to some of the "lesser" sports.  Like how tennis and golf scholarships work, I assume the top 4-5 ish are on scholarship and the others are walk ons.  Typically on the roster there seems to be a lot more than what we see play in the matches.

[HelloThere]

17 minutes ago, HookemTexas said:

Thanks, I'm really clueless when it comes to some of the "lesser" sports.  Like how tennis and golf scholarships work, I assume the top 4-5 ish are on scholarship and the others are walk ons.  Typically on the roster there seems to be a lot more than what we see play in the matches.

It will start to change soon, but before it was VERY rare if anyone on XC had a full scholarship, most would be small partial ones and hope to find some academic help as well.  In XC it was well known that you wanted to be fast and smart if you wanted any money for college.  Now some schools would use their assets on distance and that would be their chance at conference or their calling card.  Schools like Northern Arizona, Tulsa, BYU, etc.  There were some for sure.  But those schools would never have any strength in the speed disciplines.  You basically had to pick a lane.  

Tennis, golf, even baseball and softball were the same when it came to mostly partial scholarships if anything.  Way more walk ons than you would think.  

With the changes, teams with money and funding can now have full scholarships for anyone on the roster.  Of course, with the new roster limits in track, there will still have to be decisions made on if you want to use them on speed or distance, but there are also full XC scholarships available if a school wants to use them and try to win at distance only. Texas is not fully funding all of the new scholarships yet, no one is, but over time they expect to.  This is why I say we can become more competitive if we want. But it will also take spending big money overseas as well.  Schools like TTU are bringing over 27 year old, Olympic age "freshman" to compete in distance.  It is not illegal, even though I disagree with anyone over 25 competing in college sports, but that is what it is going to take.  You will need a roster with some international athletes to compete in distance. 

The hard part about distance recruiting is you can go get the best runner in America as a high school senior and they may not pan out.  Distance running is weird about that.  It takes years to truly develop and you have to be running all year long, some well over 100 miles a week in season, which can cause injury.  It is just a very tough sport to be consistently good at.