Talk:List of United States collegiate records in track and field

Tyson Gay
Hello, The record for this page for men's 100 m is listed as 9.82. I don't understand that. This NCAA page lists the record as 9.77, set in 2008 by Tyson Gay. Would someone please clarify?

NCAA Division I Championships, 2017
 * According to the University of Arkansas’s list of track and field school records here, Tyson Gay's best time while in college was 10.01 seconds (wind-aided) for the 100 meters in 2004. Jeff in CA (talk) 04:55, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

1000 m indoor, men
A 1000 m race is 9% longer than a 1000-yard race. Therefore, I question extrapolating the time from the yard race in order to "convert" to the meter race. I think it’s a bit too much to assume that a runner, after targeting to be the fastest to 1000 yards, has the necessary stamina to go 11 more seconds at the same pace, which a linear extrapolation implies. So I think the conversion from a 1000-yard time to a 1000 m time makes no sense. I don’t know why the USTFCCCA even lists them together. Besides, the collegiate records for the 1000-yard race were set in the 1970s.

Also, the converted record time for Don Paige from the 1979 Millrose Games is faster than the actual record over 1000 meters, which was set this year (2024). Note that the USTFCCCA list shows a time for Don Paige from March 1979, but it’s a slower time than the collegiate record he set at the Millrose Games a month earlier. Paige, by appearing on the list, appears to be the current 1000-yard record holder.

I propose that we remove the 1000-yard time from the 1000 m race in the table. Maybe we could show the 1000-yard race as a separate entry in the table. Jeff in CA (talk) 20:08, 1 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I made this change. Jeff in CA (talk) 05:43, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

4x1600 m indoor, men
The USTFCCCA list for the fastest 4x1600 m indoor races contains times only for small schools, and those times appear to be considerably slower than times one might expect from larger schools. This unusual race length appears not to be contested in meets among large schools.

The 4-mile relay is very close in distance to the metric counterpart. The 4-mile relay is rarely contested nowadays. But in its time, large schools did compete in this event. Conversion times from these historical races (from the USFTCCCA list, the 4-mile relay world record appears to have been set in 1976, following records set in 1971 and 1974) are always faster than what the small schools have achieved at the metric distance.

Why don’t we then just show the table entry as being for the 4 x mile relay rather than the 4 x 1600 m event? Jeff in CA (talk) 20:08, 1 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I made this change. Jeff in CA (talk) 21:23, 4 July 2024 (UTC)