In today's world, BYU's Kenneth Rooks or James Corrigan might never have gotten the chance to compete in track and cross-country beyond high school. They might never have gotten the chance to set collegiate records in the steeplechase and qualify for last summer's Paris Olympic Games and, in Rooks' case, win the silver medal .
Thanks to a landmark, revenue-sharing settlement, dramatic changes are coming to college athletics that will have an especially profound effect on athletes in the non-revenue "Olympic" sports. Football and basketball players will share in millions of dollars in direct payments from their schools, but for other athletes the settlement will mark the end of their athletic careers due to a severe reduction in roster spots.
BYU has been a model for producing a successful, broad-based athletic program in which the Olympic sports have thrived. None has excelled more than the track and field/cross-country programs. Seven current and former BYU distance runners qualified for the Paris Olympics — the most of any school in the nation — and in November both the men's and women's teams won the NCAA cross-country championships.
But even those teams are being forced to reduce the size of their rosters. Ed Eyestone , the coach/director of BYU's powerhouse track and cross-country programs, met with his athletes last week to tell them how the NCAA settlement would impact them and the program.
Some 15-18 roster spots on the men's and women's track teams will be eliminated, effective for the 2025-26 school year. For some athletes, this could be the last year of their collegiate careers.
"There will be some attrition with graduation losses, but at the end of the day rosters will be reduced next year," said Eyestone.
Those cuts are actually generous. Out of respect for the immense success of the distance-running program, BYU granted the team the maximum number of roster spots allowed under the new NCAA rules (explanation to follow).
In 2020, Grant House, a swimmer at Arizona State, was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the NCAA arguing that NCAA rules prevented athletes from profiting from their own name, image and likeness (NIL). The NCAA, finally reading the room after years of ignorance and stubborn naivete, settled the case.
Among other things, the settlement means schools will make annual payments of more than $20 million directly to athletes. To help meet such a financial obligation, the NCAA cut the size of rosters. Take track and field, for example. The NCAA can no longer restrict the number of scholarships a school can offer, so it ran an end-around and limited the roster size to 45. One caveat: It has been left to the schools to decide if they want to fund fewer than 45 athletes and 45 scholarships, but they can't exceed those numbers. Most schools likely will choose fewer.
Eyestone's message to his team last week was good news and bad news. The good news: BYU will fund the max roster size of 45 and maintain the status quo of 12.6 scholarships for men and 18 for women ("We were bracing for 35 or 30 rosters," says a clearly relieved Eyestone); the bad news: The size of the rosters will be reduced significantly.
"The meeting went better than anticipated," says Eyestone. "People were prepared for worse news. We'll have to cut about 15 from the men's side and 18 from the women's side — 28% of the team."
More specifically, for both the men's and women's teams Eyestone will allot just over half of the roster spots to distance and middle-distance runners, with the remainder being divided among sprinter/hurdlers, throwers and jumpers/multis.
"We are going to focus on our strengths," says Eyestone.
The rosters are heavily tilted toward distance runners because of their immense success (the school will also allow the max limit of 17 for cross-country rosters, which are part of the 45 in track).
The women have finished among the top two at the NCAA cross-country championships four times in the last seven years, winning twice. The men have placed in the top three at the NCAA championships six times in eight years, also winning twice.
The school's former athletes also have brought the school considerable attention. Conner Mantz and Clayton Young are the top two marathoners in the U.S., and Mantz set the U.S. half-marathon record this winter. Whittni Morgan has won two races against world-class competition this winter, beating Olympians and an Olympic silver medalist.
The biggest shame of all the changes is that they will, for all practical purposes, eliminate the walk-on in collegiate sports and those willing to compete for small, partial scholarships; in other words, still-developing prospects who might have unrealized potential (it also will eliminate those who merely want to participate, for nothing — Rudy would not be Rudy for Notre Dame in the new era). Few schools have had more success with those athletes than BYU.
For decades, BYU has attracted athletes who were willing to compete for little or no scholarship money, and those teams have benefitted greatly from it. Some have even passed up scholarship offers from other schools to walk-on at BYU because of the affordable tuition, the culture, the low cost of living, the facilities and the excellence of the teams. That's how the school has been able to field strong teams across all events on the NCAA limit of 12.6 scholarships for 21 events. Now such athletes will be turned away for the most part.
"Yes, we will always find a spot for someone who shows up out of nowhere and can beat a bunch of guys on our roster, but we will be much more careful with who has a spot on the roster," says Eyestone. "The days of taking a flier on a kid who might have potential with some work are done. They need to already be developed … We're going to see less development, less opportunity for development of athletes.
"In the past we could take a flier on a Kenneth Rooks or a James Corrigan. They maybe wouldn't have made the 45 cut by today's standards. I like to think my eye would have recognized a future silver medalist, though (referring to Rooks).
" … At BYU, we would rather have more on the roster than more scholarships. BYU's strength is that the administration has allowed us to have one of the bigger rosters in the country. We've been in the mid-60s for the last 10 years and sometimes 70."
The changes are all driven by NIL and the new challenges of paying athletes in the money-making sports of football and basketball. "We know who pays the bills," says Eyestone. "We want them to (succeed). There are no hard feelings."
BYU steeplechasers and Olympics-bound Kenneth Rooks and James Corrigan work out in Provo on Thursday, July 11, 2024. | Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
