Dating is not easy. In the early stages of getting to know someone, it’s important to be on the lookout for potential red flags—something they do or say that gives a glimpse into who that person really is. Well ladies, if a guy ever tries to pass off his converted 1500m time as a full mile… RUN!

If you want to break four minutes in the mile, you have to break four minutes in the mile. And the only bigger faux pas than estimating one’s ability to keep going for an additional 109 meters might be using an online calculator to make an altitude conversion. While running a 4:04 mile at altitude might indicate the ability to break four minutes at sea level… it’s not a sub-four minute mile.

But the NCAA is not in the business of statistics, it’s in the business of selecting the top 16 athletes every indoor season to compete at the NCAA Championships. Since 1981, citing supportive scientific studies, the NCAA has implemented a standardized conversion formula to adjust marks to account for competitions held at different altitudes. And since 2013, the length and bank of the track has also been factored into the selection equation. (Anyone who has ever tried sprinting on the turns of a flat 200m track understands why.)

Relying on altitude conversions has been the path to qualification for several NCAA mile champions, including Josh Kerr, Anthony Rotich, and Geordie Beamish. Historical results demonstrate that athletes who get into the quota because of adjusted times generally prove that they belong. And even if they don’t, it makes sense that the NCAA would want to take a chance on the possibility that a Montana State guy who didn’t make it out of Bozeman may have more upside than a runner who finished 11th in heat 2 of three different 3000m races held in Boston.

That’s all about to change.

The NCAA Division I Men’s & Women’s Track and Field and Cross Country Oversight Committee has voted in favor of removing the altitude and track-size calculations as procedural for the selection of NCAA qualifying marks. That means running 14:00 for 5000m at the Sky Dome in Flagstaff would have been worth 13:22 last year, but next season it will be worth 14:00.

As you might imagine, the comment section about this news had a mixed bag of opinions.

Oregon athlete Connor Burns had strong thoughts: “If you have the ability to qualify to NCAAs you will get to race at sea level I promise no coach is letting that opportunity pass.” Which is certainly true for many, if not most, top athletes. But let’s look at who else is and is not qualifying for NCAAs.

At the 2026 NCAA Indoor meet, 527 of the 625 competing athletes represent a school in one of the Power Four conferences, or about 84% of attendees. And that’s not including the 14 athletes backed by Princeton’s $34 billion endowment, or the 18 additional athletes from historical powerhouses Villanova and Northern Arizona. There are only 68 teams in the P4 conferences, but there are 365 Division I schools.

For small-school, at-altitude or altitude-adjacent athletes, getting to NCAAs is more dependent on their coach having the money to get them to sea level than their talent. The divide between the haves and have-nots in the collegiate system is a gap that continues to widen. And that’s not getting into the four-figure sums programs now have to drop to run everyone in a 5000m at BU. By eliminating altitude and track conversions, the NCAA is effectively adding another layer between the fully-funded and barely-scraping-by—that’s the problem here.

College coaches gaming the system to bring their athletes to altitude to unfairly qualify for the NCAA Championships is a made-up problem. This past year, across the 800m, mile, 3000m, 5000m, and DMR on both the men’s and women’s side, there were only 12 spots filled by conversion. Meanwhile, 14 of the 16 top times in the men’s 3000m were run at Boston University.

Getting rid of altitude and flat track conversions won’t significantly change who qualifies for an NCAA meet, but it may give more ammo to athletic directors looking for a good reason to cut roster spots and save on budget. That small DI school in the mountains may not fly their best athletes to Boston if they don’t have a chance of qualifying, but now they’ll appear much less competitive nationally and in recruiting.

The NCAA made a huge step towards professionalizing the collegiate system when it became acceptable to pay student athletes. Unfortunately, however, the House v. NCAA ruling did not go far enough. Whether it’s the MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL, EPL, or virtually every professional sport in the world, the healthiest leagues maintain a level of revenue-sharing so that the prosperity of big market teams is spread to smaller markets.

It’s already being done in college sports, but the $1.03 billion doled out among the SEC schools doesn’t spread beyond those 16 institutions. There’s a complicated component of the legislation moving through Congress that would work to spread the wealth, literally, but long story short: that’s not going anywhere any time soon.

NCAA track will never achieve true parity. There will always be big schools with big budgets who can send more athletes to more places in pursuit of qualifying marks. But it’s also an individual sport, and the opportunities that follow collegiate track and field can be life-changing, both career-wise and financially. So it’s a shame that this particular rule change flattens and narrows the path to long-term success, because it will almost certainly lead to an All-American talent sitting at home, trying to borrow an ESPN login to watch a race they could’ve won.

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