This is what college athletics has come to: There’s a company that’s marketing Kenyan distance runners to collegiate coaches in the U.S. The Kenyan gets a U.S. education and NIL money, albeit indirectly through a third party; the company receives a fee; the coach gets an Instant National-Class Runner (just add water and stir); and U.S. athletes lose out.
“You partner with them and then you pay them a big fee,” says Ed Eyestone, the longtime BYU coach who received an email from the company.
The company — Scholarbook Premier — calls it opportunity; others call it exploitation; still others consider it harmful for U.S. athletes, whose opportunities were already shrinking.
“Take your program to the next level!” the email promises in bold print. “We’re onboarding new and exciting talent every day — athletes hungry to compete and succeed in the U.S. collegiate system. If you’re ready to strengthen your program with world-class runners, contact us today.”
Scholarbook Premier is the next step in a wave of foreign track and cross country athletes who have been coming to America in recent years to get a cut of the NIL money that has become modus operandi of collegiate sports. It’s a trend that costs opportunities for aspiring young U.S. athletes in their own country’s collegiate system.
Of the 21 male athletes (seven per team) who represent No. 1 Oklahoma State, No. 2 Iowa State and No. 3 New Mexico, 18 are foreigners (all but one from Africa). So are the No. 1 runners for No. 6 Colorado, No. 7 Oregon and No. 9 Alabama. Let’s Run broke down the numbers for Saturday’s NCAA cross country championships: Of the 261 runners in the men’s field, 112 (43%) are foreigners. Only eight teams are composed entirely of Americans.
Nine of the top 10 women’s teams have foreign runners — five of the teams with four to seven foreign runners — or 31 of 63 athletes. According to the Let’s Run research, of the 262 runners in the women’s field, 99 (38%) are foreign athletes. Only four teams are composed entirely of Americans.
(BYU’s No. 10-ranked men’s team and No. 1-ranked women’s team are the only teams in the top 10 that are composed entirely of Americans.)
At the 2024 NCAA cross country championships, foreigners took the first four places in the women’s race and three of the top five places in the men’s race.
“All the races look like the world cross country championships,” says Eyestone.
It’s the same story on the track. At last spring’s NCAA track and field championships, foreign athletes won 11 of the 20 track races, including most of the distance and middle-distance events — the women’s 1,500, 3,000 steeplechase, 5,000 and 10,000, and the men’s 5,000 and 10,000. They would have won the men’s steeplechase, too, if not for BYU’s James Corrigan.
At least some of these foreign athletes are considerably older than their American counterparts. Kenya’s Solomon Kipchoge became the flashpoint for this issue last season when he joined the Texas Tech team as a 28-year-old freshman despite having competed in professional races. He had a faster half-marathon time than the American record at the time. Kipchoge has since transferred to Washington State.
“It doesn’t help the U.S. developmental effort. It doesn’t encourage young American talent; it discourages them.”
— BYU track coach Ed Eyestone
Foreign distance runners dominated the U.S. collegiate scene in the 1970s and ’80s, but their dominance seemed to wane — until it began to surge again a few years ago.
“They’re coming because of NIL,” says Eyestone.
It’s reached a point in which the NCAA track and cross country championships are more competitive than the U.S. championships because of the presence of foreign athletes.
Paul Pilkington, the former Weber State cross country coach who retired a few months ago, clarified the situation this way:
“The NCAA now allows potential student-athletes and current student-athletes to have agent,” Pilkington says. “The current NIL rules do not allow NIL money to go to foreign athletes in the USA. They can receive it in their home country.
“The schools with the larger budgets are paying the agents or recruiting service companies who then pay the student-athlete. (The athletes) don’t get paid NIL money but the school is paying either the recruiting service or the agent and it gets passed on to the student-athlete. The agents get their cut and, because of the transfer portal, start looking for a better deal for next year for the athlete.”
This, in turn, is pushing some of America’s next generation of athletes aside. As Eyestone says, “It doesn’t help the U.S. developmental effort. It doesn’t encourage young American talent; it discourages them. (Foreigners) take scholarships and roster spots and the limelight.”
With new NCAA limits on roster sizes already cutting opportunities for aspiring high school athletes, the arrival of foreign athletes has exacerbated the situation. The collegiate ranks are realistically the only path for prep runners to develop, serving as the minor leagues for the U.S. Olympic effort. Some coaches are taking the easy route, filling their rosters with proven, mature foreign talent they don’t have to develop.
According to Eyestone, one reason that his star senior, Casey Clinger, gave up his collegiate eligibility in the middle of the 2024 outdoor track season was due to the presence of African distance runners.
“Casey said the NCAA had better talent than (professional road racing), so why not go pro, get a contract and race guys on the roads professionally that are not as good as the 25-year-old freshman at a university,” the coach explained.
“The young African distance runners used to go pro either on the track or roads,” says Pilkington. “Now they are coming to the NCAA because they get school paid for, housing, medical, coaching and now they get paid. Plus with no age limits or requirements about being a pro runner, pro distance runners are coming into the NCAA.”
At the recent Big 12 conference cross country championships earlier this month, BYU freshman Tayvon Kitchen, who set the national high school record for 3,000 meters last year, was the second American to cross the finish line — but only 15th overall.
Foreign athletes took 13 of the first 14 spots — 12 from Africa (11 from Kenya). They included a 25-year-old sophomore, a 23-year-old freshman, a 23-year-old sophomore, a 22-year-old sophomore and three athletes whose birthdates are unknown.
“If you make a stink about it, someone will say you’re racist,” says Eyestone. “But I’d take a Kenyan (recruit) if he was born in the U.S. Actually, we’re currently recruiting one. Some coaches have decided to take a shortcut by taking foreign talent. Many are older and developed. I always felt I’d be embarrassed to have seven foreigners on the team. The NCAA is definitely the way we develop talent in this country.”
Along with the age differences, there is another disturbing trend to make someone look askance at the influx of African runners onto the U.S. collegiate scene. According to Athletics Illustrated, more than 300 Kenyans have been suspended for doping violations since the 2016 Rio Olympics, 26 since June 2024. This does not include the three-year doping ban handed to marathon world record holder Ruth Chepng’etich last month. The temptations are obvious — the money that can be won in professional running is life-changing for Kenyans.
A March 1 opinion piece in Athletics Illustrated stated: “In 2023, the Kenyan government, while quite embarrassed, approved $5 million per year to fight doping in its country. After 1½ years, the government reneged on the deal. Why? Kenya reneged on the deal because doping in Kenya is a cesspool, a dumpster fire, a pandemic, and the results have just made the embarrassment run deeper. As soon as the funding dried up, the rate of doping suspensions ebbed.
“It is time for race events, be it cross country and track meets or college programs and road races, to cease inviting Kenyan athletes. A by proxy-like ban needs to take place.”
Eyestone concedes that he doesn’t know what can be done to address the situation, if not an outright ban. He does note that some professional sports — the Canadian Football League and most of the European professional basketball leagues — limit the number of Americans a team can have.
NCAA rules have always placed a clock on eligibility and checked professionalism at the door, but such restrictions are largely ignored now.
“Technically, pro runners are not supposed to be eligible unless they give the money back, but now it’s such a gray area with NIL,” says Eyestone. “There are runners out there making $100,000 (in NIL pay). I’m still scratching my head about Solomon (Kipchoge), who came in as a 28-year-old after having run a lot of (pro) races.”
“I retired at the end of June because I did not want to deal with this crap,” says Pilkington. “ ... The NCAA has screwed this up. A coach can’t contact a student-athlete on another team but an agent can. I was at the Mountain Region champiomships (last Friday) and spent some time talking to my former boss, the athletic director, and he told me that agents are contacting athletes all of the time trying to get them to transfer for more money.”
The situation is ironic for Eyestone. As a distance runner at BYU in the early ’80s, he had to compete against older, more experienced Africans — usually from UTEP — but ultimately prevailed, winning four individual NCAA championships. “Now it seems ridiculous,” he says. “It’s getting so it’s not so fun anymore.”
