I would love to see it happen for the men’s side but I doubt it will ever happen. There’s this thing called title ix.

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The Olympics help...but I don't see the NCAA recognizing new Men's Sports anytime soon due to Title IX restrictions on their members.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Collegiate club coach here. No it won't. Here's why.
1. Title IX
2. Rec university sports and ncaa sports are run by two totally different divisions in the University. Two that often don't exactly getting along. Here's why.
a. Sharing facilities. Facilities are built, like tracks, fields, volleyball courts, weight rooms, etc and used by both, but there are negotiations involved in how much each gets access to them and how much each pays. This often leads to small rivalries and little squabbles.
b. Rec athletes will be "stolen" away from the clubs by the new incoming ncaa program. Those athletes then will no longer be paying the rec sports department to be involved in the clubs.
c. Coaching - I'm a club coach. If my school went ncaa and didn't hire me as the coach, I would be very upset. All my athletes would be taken away and sent into the ncaa program, but the university would still have to keep me. You can't just fire the rec coach if a new sport in a given school goes ncaa. On the other hand, if they did hire me, they'd have to pay me way more to do both jobs.
3. The major schools are doing fantastic under the current system.
The schools that you think of when you think collegiate triathlon have no incentives to go ncaa, largely outlined above. Boulder, Arizona, Berkeley, UCLA, UCSB, Cal Poly, Navy, Air Force, etc etc all have well funded, well run and well coached club teams. I think USAT made a big mistake in thinking these schools and others like them would come aboard.
4. Amateurism
The best collegiate athletes are racing pro, some on my team are. Triathlon is expensive and if we go by the letter of the law it's almost impossible for an incoming collegiate who raced at a high level in high school triathlon not to have gotten some bike or gear or travel discount or outside help that wouldn't make him ineligible to race anyway. And because of title ix, there will never be scholarships on tap for men except maybe at small schools without a football program. Which then alludes to the problem above of not being able to get name brand schools involved.

In fact, not does male triathlon not need ncaa regulation, if usat went away it would run just fine. The consistently high placing teams are all run by coaches, other schools come and go based upon a few passionate students who eventually graduate. USAT really doesn't do anything but put on collegiate nationals, and another race would gladly step up to claim that and make some $$

I wish there were more opportunities for draft legal at the collegiate level, but overall as one of those club athletes i agree with this

This is all interesting.
Thanks folks!
My (freshman in high school) son is very interested in joining a college team and this is helpful info. to pass along.
Junior daughter also potentially persuing.
-Proud Papa

Great to hear of high-school aged triathletes interested in the collegiate scene. I jumped into triathlon during my Junior year of high school and I am now finishing up my fourth year racing for the University of Colorado.

The collegiate club racing is definitely legitimate with a lot of the top college-age amateurs and pros competing at the collegiate conference and regional events along with Nationals. USAT has recently started pairing High School Nationals with the Collegiate Club Nationals. I never raced the event in high school as it is new in recent years, but I'd imagine it would be a great way to get a feel for the club racing scene.

I won't dive into the NCAA stuff as there are others far more knowledge on here that can speak to it, but happy to answer any questions your son or daughter may have on the club side of things. I'd also be more than happy to connect you/them with our coaches here at CU. We have quite a few athletes come join the team for a workout or two while visiting the school.

Our team varies in size across years, but we are typically around 100 members with 60+ competing in our conference events.

Awesome.
Will definitely keep ahold of this thread and reach out if any further questions.
Thanks for the reply!
Best of luck.

I would point out that schools with a Football program are irrelevant to the discussion. Football does not count against Title IX.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

This is completely false. There is no “football exception” to Title IX. Football, with its huge teams and 85 full scholarships (at the FBS level) absolutely count.

There are many reasons that men’s triathlon probably won’t be a varsity sport governed by the NCAA but pointing at TItle IX in general shades toward blaming women and suggesting that women get the better end of a deal.

As a general trend women are still underrepresented in terms of participation numbers, scholarship allocation, etc.

Should men ever be the underrepresented gender they could sue under Title IX law, as the law protects both genders from discrimination.

Yeah, interesting that I was under the assumption that it was.

However, football is still irrelevant to the discussion. If a college doesn't have a football program it will always be way more likely to add Scholarship Football as an NCAA sport than it will ever add men's triathlon.

Title IX protects both genders? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah...not in practicality.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Stro, it absolutely does count against title ix, and is a big reason why many smaller men's sports have become non-existent. It has killed gymnastics, wrestling, and is killing swimming and baseball. Football is the enemy to the small sports, not title ix.

Why in the name of anything does a sport need 85 scholarships when the pros play with 53? It's because #54-85 keep the good academic standing and they're future donors, and have family that are future donors because football "sells".

Sad reality of college athletics is that it's not about the student-athlete and hasn't been since the FBS cartel made football the center of the NCAA universe. Triathlon has little to no chance of ever being a sponsored men's sport. If it ever does it would be another gymnastics and be a niche at a superminority of schools.

Yeah, see my post just above regarding my acknowledgement. For some reason I was under the assumption football was excempt.

The will Men's Triathlon ever be an NCAA sport is like asking if Men's Rugby will ever be an NCAA sport...the answer is never. And the NCAA has Women's Triathlon and Rugby.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Yeah.. the majority of my post was just a football vent. Title IX applied letter of the law is just stupid, because it doesn't take into account "intent to play".. it just says, oh you're 51% female then boom.. offer athletics accordingly. And that's BS. But football is the big elephant in the room and every greedy ass president and AD at football schools that hide behind Title IX are flat lying through their teeth. They could easily free up 32 men's scholarships and that pretty much would fully fund baseball, swimming, and triathlon.

Agreed.

I also agree that “in practicality” Title IX doesn’t protect men but in reality that’s because men don’t need protection. They continue to receive more than their fair share in sports.

In the cases that men have sued when their team was cut, they’ve generally failed because even after the cut the men were still over represented (largely due to football).

And all 85 scholarships are full rides. Then you have swimming where a full ride on the men's side is rather rare and there is only 9.9 men's scholarships to go around (assuming fully funded) on a team of ~25-30.

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The triathlon team will not put 100,000 fans in the stands 6 or 7 weekends a year and sell millions of dollars of merchandise every year. It is a sad state of affairs on so many levels, but that is what we are dealing with. Club sports are kind of cool as they are , but you won't get a lot of the Varsity perks playing them.

c. Coaching - I'm a club coach. If my school went ncaa and didn't hire me as the coach, I would be very upset. All my athletes would be taken away and sent into the ncaa program, but the university would still have to keep me. You can't just fire the rec coach if a new sport in a given school goes ncaa. On the other hand, if they did hire me, they'd have to pay me way more to do both jobs.
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This is why I tell successful club program coaches who are finishing top 5 in the club scene to be careful what they wish for when they are seeking NCAA route. Because especially if your a power 5 ncaa school, you being the club coach is of no consequence to the AD. At a power 5 school, you aren't even an consideration, your just a nice "pat on the head" sport/club/participation number. If your talking lower level D2/D3, sure that's a good foot in the door, but if your a club coach at a power 5 school (Pac 12 school, ACC school, Big10 etc), you being the club coach imo may or may not even get you an interview. And I'm saying this as a power 5 school club coach- NC State that has sat down with some AD's to discuss things on the pathway of all of this. Some D1 school(s) have had very high qualifying standards for their head coach (ASU- needed to coach an olympian), while some other D1 schools basically went the "cheap" route and hired local and/or low wage thus the top coaches didn't even apply.

I dont' know what school you coach at, I'm assuming west coast school just from the info your putting out. I have to laugh at the Univ of San Francisco women's NCAA gig being started as "part time" hire by the university....for a university in the most expensive city in the country....yeah that's going to work out really well for them. Like this is how ncaa women's tri is going to fail. They get zero traction when stuff like that happens. Now it'll be interesting to see how the Hampton University hire goes, a "historical black university" that is doing a lot to transition into more of a big time streamlined university (not so much pushing HBCU anymore). Do they hire part time/low wage or do they go out with a $70-80k pay wage, etc. and get a "real" coach. I say "real" because some of the hires many of the universities are getting are sorta backfiring on them and some USAT sponsored schools have already left the NCAA pipeline already, and we are only in what year 4 or 5 of it. But when you hire low wage, unproven coaches who have very little experience beyond just "swim-bike-run", you have some rough patches. That's the part that many of these new hires are struggling with because "coaching" is the easy part, going out and recruiting is the hard part that imo many of these coaches are failing miserably at.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I also think the best for men's programs will be to "piggy back" off the few NCAA programs that allow an "funded" men's program. Now of course they won't be full funded like the women's side, but if they can become men's DTE's, you'll have some good and imo the only successful route for olympic success.

In men's ITU you can't go to D1 single sport and then come into ITU and be successful to win or contend for a medal. You just lose far too much development time that you have to be an ITU athlete at the age of 18/19 and in triathlon. You have to be swimming every single day and getting the run ability or else you'll never get a medal contender. But for the women, ITU just isn't as deep and thus USA can cherry pick these athletes who make it through the filters and can dominant, but it's why we've never seen that success in the men's side- because men's sport is about 1.5 Olympic cycles ahead of the women. The men finally figured out how to make every segment hurt and count whereas the women just now are realizing how important to make the bike leg count once you have a great swim. But it's becoming a more full on triathlon, just not up to the depth or talent that the men's require *yet*.

Several NCAA schools are atleast developing an men's program Univ of Colorado- Mesa and Queen's University in Charlotte. Liberty Triathlon (they aren't NCAA women's) was doing that but once Parker Spence left that school to take over the newly formed "podium project" DTE in Tempe, it lost a lot of it's athletes/desire to do that. Several of the collegiate club programs have had strong grad level athletes who come into their programs post grad and usually are in the ITU pathway or recently successful 70.3 guys.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I don't know a ton about the liberty program, but it seems so backwards to leave that for another probably short lived attempt by by usat at a "development" group.

It doesn't take much research to know that these usat groups aren't producing, and never have, save for a few exceptional talented junior that we all knew about by the time they were 15. Go get on board w/ paulo or an international group. Our local ones just seem like an opportunity for young people to but off getting a job or going to grad school right after undergrad.

Queen's is a very interesting school when it comes to their athletics choices. Their Rugby programs aren't even two years old and when the AD set in to build the programs they stated both would be on equal footing and both would be "varsity". Both are club sports within the Athletic Department. The Women's Rugby program was supposed to go NCAA this fall but for some reason did not and is not longer on the pathway. Unlike USAT, USA Rugby has no money to provide college-programs and three year grant program to get off the ground. Their women's rugby results showed up overnight on their schedule as they're in a DTE with a full time coach. The level of play at Women's D2 or NSCRO really isn't that high right now. (D2 Men's also isn't that high either on aggregate, but the tops are well coached). It took a year, but the Men's program went to the Semi-Finals in D2, which shows what a brand new Rugby program can do when properly resourced.

I'm guessing that philosophy is similar to what they're doing with their Men's and Women's triathlon programs. They're a tiny school with a pretty nice endowment and no Football program.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

That’s interesting cus that’s how the tri route went. They took USAT money and sat out of ncaa route until last minute and this year was their 1st official ncaa year (even though they’ve raced and won every ncaa D2 ncaa champ).

Their men’s team is absolutely loaded and I don’t see how they’ll lose USAT collegiate club, unless they do stupid shit like DQ for going wrong way etc which is what they did at our conf champs and still won in oct. Women’s club team isn’t as strong but it’s kinda their 2nd team behind the ncaa team so it’s not even surprise.

I private coached a girls soccer Player in the summers years ago to get her into shape while in Raleigh and I didn’t put the 2 schools together until starting facing them at every race the past few seasons. But they seem to get succeeds in many sports. So yeah they see all the athlete success as a money maker/marketing etc so it seems to breed pretty good programs overall.

But the

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Let's just say that the move to the USAT squad HC job was probaly the best move for all with how some things were being "restructured" by the university.

The thing with the podium project- it shouldn't be needed to produce results for years. They need to go into the cave, work their asses off and then be judged in 2021/2022 etc. But because it's an federation funded sport it likely will have far too many people judging/getting in the way then needs to be. But this is the 1st DTE that is actually trying to build up 18/19 year old ITU studs instead of 22/23 year old single sport studs turned ITU athletes. And that just is going to take time, so while I agree with your assessment, I agree with your assessment because most people aren't patient enough to simply let it play out.

And our men's issue isn't a quick fix. It's a 5-6-8 year project because it needs time to develop, it needs time to fail and improve, fail and get really good. So I've thought they just need to go sit in Tempe, train like crazy and then come out ready to roll. I was a bit surprised they raced that quickly into the program, but they probaly did it more as a carrot, but I dont even know if these athletes are the ones to pay attention to for "podium" success even though it does have the likes of a Jr. world champion in Austin Hindman in the stable.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

As for how sports are added within the NCAA.

Women's sports (emerging) have 10 years to reach the 40 school minimum to be considered a championship sport. For men to add they NCAA requires 40 teams in year 1. So there's a possibility of this happening but not anytime soon.