FAYETTEVILLE -- As the SEC Outdoor Track and Field championships commence Thursday in Starkville, Miss., it seems the league's distance running tradition of iron men and iron women now rusts like old battleships.
No more Daniel Lincoln or David Welsh running the open 10,000, and 5,000 and sandwiching a steeple in three days like they did for former coach John McDonnell's Razorbacks men and Scott McPherson did for current coach Chris Bucknam.
Arkansas Coach Lance Harter asks none of his athletes on the nation's No. 1-ranked women's team to steeple plus run the two longest races like Laura Jakosky did for Harter on past teams or run the 10,000, the 1,500 (with its prelim heat, too) and 5,000 like Amy Yoder did for his last team to complete a SEC triple crown.
If they succeed this weekend in Starkville, Harter's Razorbacks will join two teams previous Arkansas women's teams that have won SEC triple crowns. The Razorbacks crave this triple crown as badly as the previous teams that won it.
Both coaches have tough Razorbacks willing to carry on Arkansas' iron men and iron women past, but their schedule just doesn't permit it. The formerly four-day SEC Outdoor is a three-day meet now. And while the NCAA Outdoor technically runs June 10-13 in Eugene, Ore., it's really a made-for-TV two-day meet. Only men will compete June 10 and June 12. Only women compete on June 11 and 13.
Add the NCAA Regionals -- which Bucknam and Harter detest -- looming May 27-30 in Austin, Texas, with quality performances required there to advance to Eugene, and there are just too many irons in the fire for even the most ironclad Razorbacks in Starkville.
"Tightening up the schedule not only at the SEC meet but the NCAA meet, now that changes everything for sprinters as well as distance runners," Harter said.
Omar McLeod, Bucknam's NCAA Indoor 60-meter hurdles champion and current NCAA Outdoor 110-meter hurdles leader as well as a mainstay on Arkansas' 400 and 1,600 relays, is a great 400-meter hurdler, too, Bucknam said, but he won't run it in Starkville.
"Everything is getting condensed," Bucknam said. "It changes everything, how we double our guys and what we can do."
Erasing regionals would immensely help the SEC meet, Bucknam and Harter believe.
The new NCAA Outdoor Championships format, Bucknam applauds.
"Everybody is starting to understand it needs to be a 2 1/2- hour show," Bucknam said. "That means smaller meets and more intense meets, and that means better TV. That's the thought process, and I am for it."
Women's coaches are apprehensive that the women-only days in Eugene will suffer attendance deficit disorder compared to the men.
However both sports should command complete media attention in Eugene their respective two days rather than four days diffused by each other.
"You don't watch a women's half of basketball and then a men's half of basketball," Bucknam said.
Sports on 05/13/2015