Hog Calls

If the NCAA would just end Prelims ...

Chris Bucknam has guided Arkansas to three straight SEC titles outdoors.
Chris Bucknam has guided Arkansas to three straight SEC titles outdoors.

FAYETTEVILLE -- The unseasonably cool, rainy weather throughout Arkansas would be great preparation for Coach Chris Bucknam's Razorbacks men and Coach Lance Harter's Razorbacks women if they were heading directly to Eugene, Ore. for the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, where cool, rainy weather is the norm.

Unfortunately they don't head directly to Eugene.

First they must weather the NCAA Outdoor West Preliminary, the meet that Bucknam and Harter both detest as unnecessary, redundant and designed to promote quantity over quality even though they hosted it last year.

This week's West Prelim, scheduled to be held Thursday at the University of Texas in Austin where the May heat can be as unseasonably sultry as Eugene can be 50-degree cool and wet.

Arkansas and the West multitude well north of Austin may catch a break.

The cool, rainy weather Arkansas has experienced stretches all the way to Austin, unfortunately with some damaging winds in Austin last Saturday night.

Presently, the Thursday through Saturday Austin forecast is low to mid 80s by day and low 70s at night with rain.

That would be cool with distance runners over the 100-degree alternative, especially for the three Arkansas athletes contemplating a qualifying double --Stanley Kebenei (3,000 steeplechase, 5,000 meters), Kemoy Campbell (5,000, 10,000) and two-time Arkansas NCAA Indoor Women's champion Dominique Scott (5,000-10,000).

Both Arkansas coaches -- Harter and Bucknam -- crave maximizing their quests for national team championships and have the athletes to do it.

Harter's women are led by Scott and pole vaulter Sandi Morris, the NCAA Indoor champion and current NCAA Outdoor record holder. Bucknam's men are led by two-time NCAA Indoor hurdles champion Omar McLeod, two-time NCAA Indoor champion pole vaulter Andrew Irwin, NCAA Indoor long jump champion Jarrion Lawson, Kebenei and Campbell.

The West and East Preliminary meets, originally part of four directional meets called regionals when voted in by mostly smaller schools over the unheeded objections of many power conference track coaches, may see their days numbered with ESPN and Nike commandeering the NCAA Outdoor Championships.

Phil Knight, the Nike founder and unofficial owner of the University of Oregon that has become permanent host of the NCAA Outdoor Championships, isn't interested in mediocrity.

Neither is ESPN, so in charge it turns the NCAA Outdoor into a strictly made-for-TV meet. Instead of the always 4-day competition for men and women, ESPN condenses it into two days strictly men, June 10 and 12, and two days strictly women, June 11 and 13.

The format guarantees ESPN featuring stories on the most celebrated event rivals.

Those stories won't be told fully if too many of the best of the best don't make it to Eugene because of a slip in Austin or at the East Prelim in Jacksonville, Fla.

That might suffice for ESPN and Nike to snap their fingers and make the Prelim meets disappear.

Sports on 05/25/2015

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