The perennial elite athlete has helped Arkansas win the most Division I men’s track and field championships. With this success, we have built a historic relay team of some of the greatest Razorback men’s track and field athletes.
The NCAA Championships currently feature three relay events: the 4x100m relay, the 4x400m relay and the distance medley relay. But which one is the best fit for the best team in Arkansas history?
It’s hard to make a choice based solely on the results of the Arkansas Relays. Although the Razorbacks have won team titles in every decade since the 1980s, they have not had relative success in relays. Arkansas won just two titles each in the DMR: the 4×1 and the defunct 4×800-meter relay. The Razorbacks have won three indoor 4×4 championships, but have never won an outdoor 4×4 championship. With only nine medley relay championships completed, relay successes alone will not determine the distance of this historic relay.
Speaking of Arkansas’ individual success, it’s worth noting that since Arkansas’s last outdoor title in 2005 (which was later vacated), only six Razorbacks have won individual track titles in indoor or outdoor seasons. Of those six, Jarrion Lawson, Omar McLeod and Philip Lemonius led the Razorbacks to win the 200 meters, or less than half the championship distance (counting the title vacated by Tyson Gay). This makes 4×1 no longer a potential option.
With only DMR and 4×4 left to choose from, DMR is a smart choice. In theory, any runner competing in a 4×4 race could also run 400 meters on the DMR. In addition, 19 of Arkansas’ 28 track and field champions (68%) competed at events of 1,000 yards or more, making the historical DMR the best reflection of Arkansas history.
Niall Bruton will compete for this historic DMR team, as he did in 1994 at the inaugural NCAA DMR Championships in Arkansas. In 1994, Bruton led Arkansas to victory with a time of 9:30.07. That year, he also won his second NCAA mile title in as many years, helping the Razorbacks win their 11th straight men’s indoor team title.
Jarrion Lawson is certainly a controversial choice to make the all-time DMR team. Lawson had never competed in the 400m during his college career, so how did he make the team? How does Lawson pass Calvin Davis and Roddy Haley, the only Razorbacks to win an NCAA title in the 400 meters?
The reason is that Lawson is a great figure in the history of NCAA athletics and should do whatever it takes to have his greatness recognized, even if it means pushing the perceived limits of his greatness.
Yes, Lawson never ran the 400 meters in college, but he (according to his TFRRS) competed in 27 4×4 relays (indoor and outdoor) in college. This leads us to expect that if Lawson were given such a task, he would be more than capable of running the 400m as part of the historic DMR team.
Lawson was part of that historic relay that gave Arkansas’ only champion, Bowerman (2016), a spot on the roster. If Lawson can capture the Jesse Owens Triple Crown in 2016 by winning the 100m, 200m and long jump in the same year – a feat previously only achieved by track and field legend Jesse Owens – then there is no doubt that that Lawson already has this ability. Time required to travel 400 miles on this historic DMR.
After the second leg, the third will also feature a runner covering a distance he is not very good at, as Paul Donovan gets the nod here. Donovan defeated Arkansas’ only 800-meter NCAA champion here, Brandon Rock, as Donovan helped Arkansas win its first-ever NCAA relay title in 1986 in the 4×800 relay. Third stage of the race.
Donovan also represented Arkansas’ early days as an athletics superpower under legendary coach John McDonald. The Razorbacks won their first outdoor team championship in the 1985 season, winning both the indoor and outdoor events. That same year, Donovan won his first individual NCAA title in the indoor 1500 meters with a championship record time of 3 minutes, 43.48 seconds, a record that stands 38 years later in 2023. In 1986, Donovan won another championship in the indoor 3000 meters.
“Don’t do it, Joe” is a line fans of this historic Arkansas DMR team will likely hear from the announcers again as Joe Falcon will be chosen to headline the segment.
Falcon had a stellar career at Arkansas, winning six individual NCAA titles at four different distances. He became and remains the only person in NCAA Championships history to win national titles in the 1,500 and 10,000 meters during his career.
Although Falcon never led Arkansas to an NCAA relay title during his career, he made a splash as a core member of the Razorback DMR. At the 1989 Penn Relays, Falcon set the DMR world record with a time of 9:20:10. The world record stood from 1989 to 2006, and Falcon and his relay teammates were inducted into the Pennsylvania Relays Wall of Fame in 2003.
Two-time NCAA 400-meter champion Calvin Davis and 1995 outdoor 800-meter champion Brandon Rock did not make the all-time DMR team because, as mentioned above, given the latter’s history, Lawson and Donovan are better fits.
Seneca Lassister also missed the All Time Relay for the same reasons, as he did not have the NCAA DMR title held by Niall Bruton. Bruton was a member of Arkansas’ first-ever NCAA DMR Championship relay team, and although he was named to the all-time team, his starter Graham Hood failed to advance. Hood’s career accomplishments pale in comparison to Joe Falcon’s, so he was left off the list.
Alistair Cragg and Daniel Lincoln are another pair of teammates who lack that historical side. However, the couple missed out not because they didn’t deserve recognition, but because the DMR altitude was limited to 1,600 meters. The distance is only slightly behind the 3000m of Cragg and Lincoln, who won a total of 11 individual titles between 2001 and 2004.
Stan Becton joined NCAA.com in 2021 and has since worked as a reporter for FCS, track and field, cross country and HBCU games. He has covered numerous NCAA championships, including the FCS Championships, DI Track and Field Championships and the Men’s Snow Quad. In addition, he will cover the 2022 College Football Playoff Peach Bowl and HBCU sporting events such as the Celebration Bowl and Legacy Classic. Stan graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in writing and played football for five years as a writer. You can follow him on Twitter @stan_becton.
Post time: Feb-19-2024