About this episode

Cory Leslie discusses his transition from professional coaching to college athletics at Ole Miss, addressing roster limits and recruiting philosophies.

He built a world-class pro group in Baltimore. Then he left it for a college roster of 30. Five years after his first appearance on the show, Cory Leslie returns as Ole Miss's new associate head cross country and assistant track & field coach, fresh off nearly five years building Under Armour's Mission Run Baltimore into a group that produced Olympians and World XC medalists from a city nobody expected it from. He walks Dominic through how fast it all happened: a casual conversation with Connie Price-Smith at USATFs in New York, a formal interview an hour before his Uber to the airport for the Commonwealth Games, and an offer thirty minutes later. Then a scramble to Oxford weeks before the season opener. The conversation gets into why he's moving toward college athletics while other coaches are heading for the exit—the impact he thinks he can have on thirty athletes instead of a handful, and his conviction that plenty of American talent will fall through the cracks under roster limits. He's blunt about what that means in recruiting: if you don't have Olympic dreams, the SEC probably isn't for you. Also covered: what he's telling a team that's had three coaches in one summer…

People in this episode

Host: Dominic Schlueter

Guest: Cory Leslie

Topics covered

• college athletics
• coaching transition
• recruiting strategies
• Olympic dreams
• SEC track and field
• team dynamics

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Ole Miss, Under Armour, USATFs

Places: Baltimore, Oxford, Memphis, Ohio State

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