In a race against the clock, a thousandth of a second can count for a lot — toward and against you.
A thousandth of a second cost Texas Christian the 2001 NCAA men’s track and field title Saturday in more ways than one. Tennessee won the championship by one-point, 50-49, over TCU.
Oregon relinquished its three-day lead early Saturday, but still finished in ninth-place overall with 27 points. The top-10 finish and point totals are the Ducks’ highest since 1992.
An epic battle between two sprinting powers — Tennessee and TCU — played out to its fullest as the two teams sat atop the team standings with one sprinting event to go, the 200 meters.
Each school had two runners in the 200-meter final with TCU having a slight edge in the team standings (43-36). Tennessee freshman sensation Justin Gatlin sat in lane five. Next to him, in lane six, sat TCU Olympian Kim Collins.
Gatlin had surprised the crowd of 5,936 45 minutes earlier by winning the 100 meters in 10.08 seconds, edging the favored Collins by five-hundredths of a second. Collins wowed the same crowd on Friday by exploding past Gatlin on the anchor leg of the 4×100 relay for the win.
The third battle between Gatlin and Collins never happened, though, as the TCU senior’s anticipation got the best of him, and he flinched a fraction of a second before the starting gun, and was disqualified.
“I guess [Collins] was a little edgy,” Gatlin said. “It could have happened to anybody. I think he was over-anxious to get out over everybody.”
Gatlin went on to win with a wind-aided time of 20.11 seconds to complete the sprinting sweep. Volunteers teammate Leonard Scott followed Gatlin to the tape in sixth-place, both scoring 13 points to tie the Horned Frogs.
“I felt real confident coming into the finals,” said Gatlin, who broke the meet and field record in the 200 in the preliminaries on Wednesday with a time of 19.86. “I thought, ‘I might as well go for the double.’”
The 200 was the final event for TCU, while Tennessee had the 4×400 relay yet to come, meaning all the Volunteers needed to do to win their third NCAA title was finish the relay without any disqualifications.
Tennessee did just that, placing last in their heat at a conservative pace with careful hand-offs.
“It was the worst mile relay I’ve ever seen us do but it was enough,” Tennessee sprints coach Vince Anderson said jokingly.
“We had adversity and we stepped it up,” said Volunteer head coach Bill Webb. “We got hurt in the 4×100 and people thought we were done. Nothing ever goes perfect in track.”
The short-falling wasn’t the first at an NCAA meet for Texas Christian, who was favored to win the meet by 11 points coming in. A dropped baton in the 4×100 relay at this March’s NCAA Indoor championships cost the Horned Frogs the national title. The same dropped baton cost Texas Christian a top-four finish at last year’s outdoor championships.
“I’m really proud of our team and the way they competed,” Frogs head coach Monte Stratton said. “We competed hard and with class. I know Kim will be remembered for the false start, but we would not have won the relay without him on the anchor leg and he picked up eight points for us in the 100. He’s a tremendous person and a tremendous athlete. I just wish he had another year of eligibility.”

With the entire Tennessee sprinting corps returning, and two of them being freshmen, expect the Volunteers to be a national power for years to come.
“We will be a factor in this meet for the next few years,” Webb said. “Our relay team’s average age was 20.0. They’re young but seasoned. Sometimes you can be too young to be intimidated, and that’s what happened today.”
Several teams made late runs into the top five following setbacks on the first two days of competition.
Stanford’s Jonathon Riley won a gutsy 5,000 meters in a time of 13 minutes, 42 seconds two days after fading to a disappointing 10th in the 10,000 meters.
“I came into the 5,000 with no expectation,” Riley said. “I was really disappointed [after the 10,000 meters]. This totally erases it.”
Olympian Gabe Jennings led a 2-4-5 Cardinal finish in the 1,500 meters to complete the Cardinal comeback. Jennings also faltered on Wednesday, failing to qualify for the 800 meter final. Stanford senior Michael Stember took Jennings’ place and placed fourth in both the 800 and 1,500 meters.
“It was a quality field,” Stember said. “I’m proud of both my teammates. I’m happy that I was able to get some points for my team.”
Baylor placed fourth off strong showings in the 400 meter races. Bayano Kimani and Michael Smith went 1-2 in the 400 hurdles for the Bears and had finalists in the 400 meters and in the 4×400 relay.
Louisiana State also came back on Saturday, placing fifth off a win by an injured Walter Davis in the triple jump and a third-place finish in the 4×400 relay.
“My hamstring hurt real bad so I put in a jump and then passed until someone passed me,” said Davis, who leapt 54 feet, four inches. “Then [Texas’ Chris] Hercules passed me so I put one together.”
The most record breaking performance came inside the oval on Saturday. Southern Methodists’ Janus Robberts tossed the second-farthest shot put in collegiate history en route to a national title. Robberts threw the shot 72-1 to outdistance second place Joachim Olsen of Idaho by over five feet.
Many of the athletes competing at the NCAA Championships will return to Hayward Field in three weeks for the U.S.A. Outdoor National Championships, the qualifying meet for the IAAF World Championships in Edmonton, Canada.