How many indoor dual meets?

[BillVol]

Texas A&M just had a great event with dual meets with the two UTs.

I don't think I've ever heard of an indoor dual meet. Have there been others recently, at the major college level?

This is a great thing, and it appears the the fans have responded. Pat Henry really cares about our sport. He knows the value of a dual meet, of a short meet, of a great facility...

[polevaultpower]

It's not as feasible indoors. I don't think there are too many (any?) indoor tracks in the US that only get used for track. So setting up for a track meet is a lot more work than your average outdoor meet and costs more money to run. More teams = more entry fees.

[Mighty Favog]

True duals between DI schools so far this year:
Tennessee at Texas A&M (women)
Texas at Texas A&M (women)
Kent State at Akron
Missouri at Kansas
Illinois State at Indiana State (in combination with a D-III quad meet)
Ohio State at Michigan (men)
Eastern Washington at Montana
Maine at New Hampshire

plus a significant number of double/triple duals, tris and quads.

Obviously you haven't been keeping up.

As for track-only indoor facilities, there isn't a shortage around here. There are five within an hour's drive of Bowling Green and at least another seven within two hours.

[polevaultpower]

As for track-only indoor facilities, there isn't a shortage around here. There are five within an hour's drive of Bowling Green and at least another seven within two hours.

No other sports use them ever?

[Mighty Favog]

At Michigan, Findlay and Ohio Northern, it's used by track and no one else. At Eastern, the fieldhouse used to be the basketball arena and an indoor practice facility for football but other facilities have been build for those and the fieldhouse is now used by track only. At Bowling Green the fieldhouse has two "rooms" and one is track-only while the other is multi-sport use but track gets it when track wants it. Ohio State's indoor facility is track-only, and if memory serves me they don't think it's good enough and they've got a new one planned.

I'm not as familiar with the other facilties (Kent, Akron, Purdue, Oberlin, Notre Dame, Mich State), but I believe the "default settings" for those facilities are track & field.

Football, baseball and softball use many of these facilities, but at off-peak hours. At BG, the fieldhouse is blocked out for T&F practice from 3:30-6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and is rented out to the U. of Toledo's team from 6-8 p.m. a few days a week.

The shortage of indoor dual meets around here is because there are more teams that want to compete than there are indoor facilities, and coaches don't tend to turn away interested teams that are willing to pay. But the number of duals, tris and quads is on the rise as the number of indoor tracks also rises.

[BillVol]

True duals between DI schools so far this year:
Tennessee at Texas A&M (women)
Texas at Texas A&M (women)
Kent State at Akron
Missouri at Kansas
Illinois State at Indiana State (in combination with a D-III quad meet)
Ohio State at Michigan (men)
Eastern Washington at Montana
Maine at New Hampshire

plus a significant number of double/triple duals, tris and quads.

Obviously you haven't been keeping up.

As for track-only indoor facilities, there isn't a shortage around here. There are five within an hour's drive of Bowling Green and at least another seven within two hours.

Thanks, Mighty. I don't look at that site enough.

By the way, what is up with those dual rankings? They make no sense to me.

[Mighty Favog]

From the very first edition of the rankings:

"Only meets with four or fewer teams count, and to be ranked a team has to have beaten another D-I team in such a meet sometime during the season. While rankings are based on a combined indoor-outdoor season, outdoor meets are considered more important than indoor meets. Rankings are a function of both who a team has beaten (and lost to) and how good they are perceived to be. "

I'll be happy to defend my rankings with respect to these rules.

[BillVol]

Mighty, I didn't know you were the person on TS doing these rankings. Are your rankings a composite of indoor and outdoor? Will these rankings change based on outdoor results?

[Mighty Favog]

It's a combined indoor/outdoor season, as I think the separation between the two is artificial and stupid. The rankings change weekly as results change.

Michigan's women are #1 because a) the top opponent they've beaten in a quad meet (Akron) is roughly equal in dual-meet strength to the one Texas A&M beat (Tennessee), and b) on paper they'd beat the Aggies in a dual meet (79-71). Tennessee would be about #3 or #4 but they haven't beaten anyone in a dual/tri/quad and the rules say you can't be ranked unless you do.

If, as the season progresses, it becomes apparent that either Tennessee is significantly better than Akron, or that TAMU would be able to beat UM in a dual (the texture of which changes by adding the outdoor events), then TAMU overtakes the top spot. Of course, both could be overtaken by some other team that will compete in a dual/tri/quad but hasn't yet.

So far as I know, last week's TAMU-UT meet was the only time this whole season an SEC team will appear in a dual, tri or quad. Nine of the Pac-10, eight of the Big Ten, and the majority of the Big XII will compete in them. Only the SEC and ACC are systematically skipping small scored meets these days.

[BillVol]

Well, as I've said before, I don't know track like most of the posters here. But to me, indoor and outdoor are very different sports, for reasons most obvious. But you aren't the first person to lump indoor and outdoor together. The Gainesville Sun now awards the SEC All-Sports award since the SEC office discontinuned the award. In their formula, indoor, outdoor and cross are lumped together. I think this was done to help out their hometown Gators in the rankings. Even the NCAA Directors Cup counts either indoor our outdoor, but not both. But IMO, indoor and outdoor are very different.