THE NCAA SCENE has changed dramatically in recent years, as old-school athletics and modern-day money have battled in the courts, and earthshaking verdicts have given us a college landscape that would be nearly unrecognizable to a time traveler from a generation ago. Now there’s big-time NIL money, super conferences, recruiting services, and, you just may have noticed, more foreign athletes than ever.
It doesn’t take much digging to see how much the picture has changed in just the last 10 years. At the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) cross country Regionals in ’15, 30% of the men’s top 10 finishers were internationals, and 21.1% of the women were. In the qualifying races this year, the numbers jumped to 60% for men and 62.2% for women. At Nationals, the top 40 individuals get All-America recognition. In ’15, 30% of those men were foreign, and 32.5% of the women. This fall, those numbers exploded to 72.5% for men (29 of the 40) and 62.5% for women (25).
The many changes within the NCAA ecosphere are responsible, says Rita Gary, the head women’s coach at Furman. “It’s really just opened up a floodgate of allowing athletes into the NCAA that in history would not have qualified by the limit of age or by the parameters of education.”
The other force is the ever-present mandate for top programs to win. “People want to keep their jobs,” said one of several coaches we talked to who did not want to be named. “You’re looking for a higher-level athlete and if you can’t get the best American kid, you’ve got to get one [internationally].”
“It’s a real-life thing that’s happening,” says Oklahoma head James Thomas. “People are adapting to the new times. There’s haves and have-nots when it comes to who has NIL money, who has potential revenue sharing, who has other outside types of things. And right now, it’s hard to get in a battle for some of the top kids in the U.S. unless you are employed at a really high-end, top institution with a reputation academically and athletically… So battling for the international athletes is just a way for a lot of programs to stay afloat.
“There’s a whole lot of schools and programs that are still being expected to win and perform well. [International recruiting] is becoming something I feel like almost every program is leaning on a little bit.”
“Foreign influence” is by no stretch a new phenomenon. At the first NCAA Track & Field Championships in 1921, Dartmouth’s Earl Thomson, Olympic high hurdles gold medalist for Canada the previous year, won his event.
Fans have long been used to seeing certain track/XC programs that have traditionally had top-notch foreign talent on their rosters. One thing that has marked the current influx is that programs that in the past have predominately recruited Americans are now pulling in surprising numbers of international athletes, some competing at a very high level.
“Oh my gosh, yes,” agrees one coach who has won national titles on the strength of his foreign imports over the years. Now he faces more competition than ever for those recruits.
Says another, “There’s a lot more people that are hopping on board and saying, ’You know what, let me give this a go now, too.’”
Read Full Article on TrackandFieldNews.com
Jeff Hollobaugh is a writer and stat geek who has been associated with T&FN in various capacities since 1987. He is the author of How To Race The Mile. He lives in Michigan where he can often be found announcing track meets in bad weather.
