The Future of the IC4A meet

[BillCarr]

Just perusing the results and wondered in what manner (in the presence of NCAA outdoor regionals) the IC4A's is going to continue. Obviously, it is not disappearing - but will it slowly fade away to just a last chance qualifier ?
Is there any point to taking it seriously unless you have a decent shot at winning the overall championship ? How much has the competition dropped ? Does anyone care about this anyway ?

[Realist]

Re: The Future of the IC4A meet

I haven't had a chance to take a deep look at the results yet. (With all the action of this past weekend I didn't have time for sensory overload, so I'll wait for the electronic track newsletter to come my way)

Has it really fallen off that much?

[tandfman]

Re: The Future of the IC4A meet

>Has it really fallen off that much?<

The answer is yes. The decline started before the NCAA Regionals became a reality last year, but that put the nail in the coffin. If you compare the meet today to what it was 20+ years ago (a meet taken very seriously by all of the East's top colleges), you'll see no resemblence. To get a sense of how bad it is, just take a top list of collegians from IC4A schools, especially in the running events, and see how many actually competed in the meet, you'll see what I mean.

[gh]

Re: The Future of the IC4A meet

And, of course, there was a time when the IC4A was a better meet than the NCAA; for about the first decade of the latter meet's existence (first meet 1921). There were years when a powerhouse like USC would skip the NCAA and do the IC4A instead.

[ilikeike]

Re: The Future of the IC4A meet

Maybe this isn't where you were going with this, but what does the drop in quality have to do with the NCAA regionals? Looking at the results from the Pac-10, SEC, Big 12, Big 10 there seems to be a raise in their competitive levels. May be the IC4A schools just aren't that good any more. Question their quality all you want, I just don't think linking it to the regionals is relevent. The regionals are the best thing the NCAA (through the USTCA) has done in years. I'll bet every American athlete came up in a high school system where they had to produce on a given day to get to their State Meet. This system is nothing new. Competition on the track or field is what matters most, not time-trials. The coaches of the "big time" programs seem to complain the most about this. If they really are the best college coaches, they should be able to figure out how to plan a season to get they athletes ready at the right time.

[Halfmiler2]

Re: The Future of the IC4A meet

Next year will be a true test because Penn Relays is later (April 30th instead of April 24th)reducing the available wekends by one. If IC4A's sticks to going two weeks before regionals, then Eastern colleges may have three big weekends in a row: Penn, league meet, IC4A. The IC4A may lose out if a coach thinks the athletes cannot do three tough weekends in a row.

I favor having regionals but IC4A's may be the odd meet out. Of course, it could move to April, or become an NIT meet between regionals and nationals. We shall see.

[gh]

Re: The Future of the IC4A meet

Unless NCAA changes rules, you can expect all Conferences to stay two weeks before Regionals because the Q-period ends two weeks before. Nobody wants to lose perhaps their best chance to get good marks and putting as many bodies in the meet as possible.

Not until 2008 will there be another May that has (like last year and this) 5 Saturdays.

[KevinM]

Re: The Future of the IC4A meet

ilikeike, you can't really compare IC4A/ECAC to Big 12, Big 10, etc.. The vast majority of the schools in IC4A also belong to a conference like Big East, Heps, ACC, etc. The "regular" conference meet is going to mean more to AD's, and therefore, to head coaches. It's tough to ask kids to run 2-3 events at conference, come back and do that at IC's a week later, then get primed for regionals in another week.

There was talk a year ago of making it the IC4A Invitational or something similar, eliminating heats and making it more streamlined and thus more attractive to a greater number of schools.

[Halfmiler2]

Re: The Future of the IC4A meet

The meet still got entries from over 70 teams, so I think it will survive in some fashion. Heck, it is the oldest meet in the country, so it has a history of being a survivor.

[Realist]

Re: The Future of the IC4A meet

OK, I got my electronic newsletter and while I have yet to be able to find the time to read it all cuz its a ton of results to try and absorb I do see that the IC's have fallen on hard times.

One need only look at Villanova's take on the meet to see how unimportant it has become to a school that used to be a major player. Moser and Parlapiano ran the last two legs on the Villy distance medley at Penn. On page 145 we see that Moser ran 1:48.54 in the heats but didn't run the final I assume because that gave him his regionals Q so who cared? On page 154 we see that Parlapiano ran 3:41.59, fast enough to win IC's by like six seconds, at Haverford instead. I assume in a rabbited race that was guaranteed to give him a Q.

[dl]

Re: The Future of the IC4A meet

There have been many instances this season of athletes recording a good mark in the heats and then not showing up for the final.

Tell me again why a fan should show up to one of these meets?