Oregon State Men Eligible for NCAAs/Pac-10s

[mvtweet]

The university released a statement today that said the NCAA and Pac-10 Conference has granted the Beavers’ appeal to permit qualifying athletes to compete in the 2010 Division I Indoor and Outdoor championships, and the Pac-10 Championships.

http://trckfc.us/c7ryok

[gm]

Re: Oregon State Men Eligible for NCAAs/Pac-10s

Sooooo... OrSt can get all the fun and benefits of going to nationals, without fielding a real team or funding the program at required levels? Must be nice.

[Bruce Kritzler]

Re: Oregon State Men Eligible for NCAAs/Pac-10s

Sooooo... OrSt can get all the fun and benefits of going to nationals, without fielding a real team or funding the program at required levels? Must be nice.

I have mixed feelings about this, as I sympathize with schools that have to hustle to find 4 indoor meets and field 14 athletes/meet. No indoor tracks in GA, AL, MS, and U of FL did not host any indoor meets this year.

[polevaultpower]

Re: Oregon State Men Eligible for NCAAs/Pac-10s

Sooooo... OrSt can get all the fun and benefits of going to nationals, without fielding a real team or funding the program at required levels? Must be nice.

Is there a minimum scholarship level at Division I? Plenty of smaller DI programs are not fully funded in terms of scholarships. Plenty of DI programs have little to no field events.

[Dave]

Re: Oregon State Men Eligible for NCAAs/Pac-10s

I am missing the problem here. OSU is fielding a team of student athletes, some of whom are on football scholarship. If we were talking about HS, no one would begrudge having football players run track. I hope this becomes a trend with more and more football players running track.

[gm]

Re: Oregon State Men Eligible for NCAAs/Pac-10s

Dave, Bruce touched on it with his reference to the number of athletes and meets required to claim T&F as a sponsored sport (OrSt does not appear on either the indoor or outdoor list on the NCAA's sports sponsorship database). You normally have to have a minimum of 14 athletes compete at a minimum of 12 indoor & outdoor contests (min. of 4 either indoor or outdoor).

To just waive people in because they have some nifty gridders seems like a slap in the face to those schools who have made a real commitment.

Of course, accuracy in OrSt media releases might help
""(James) Rodgers was Texas’ highest scoring athlete at the 2007 state meet..."
Really???

[westcoasttiger]

Re: Oregon State Men Eligible for NCAAs/Pac-10s

The key to the OSU exemption here is that ALL of these athletes are scholarship counters in another sport (football) and the school doesn't need the sport to meet its minimum NCAA participation. IF OSU had a walk-on athlete that wanted to participate he could not.

While I understand some objections the good thing with this effort is that it is being done with the hopes that in a couple years it leads to a full fledged return of men's track. That move will require increased funding this move certainly helps bring more interested parties to the table to donate and we all should appreciate this sort of effort.

[26mi235]

Re: Oregon State Men Eligible for NCAAs/Pac-10s

I think that this should also be looked at as pushing the school into reversing its poorly conceived 1988 decision. As I understand it (I was teaching at Oregon State at the time, but left in August), the assistant or associate athletic director planned this out without knowing what she should have known. She thought that she was cutting a couple of sports. It turns out she was cutting six -- and OSU would have to drop out of the Pac-10 and DI. They quickly scrambled to added a couple of teams to meet the minimum. I cannot verify if this was the case, but that was my understanding.