Dual Meet Hall of Fame: Jesse Owens

As part of the kickoff to the new season of dual meet team rankings, I am adding to the Dual Meet Hall of Fame that I created last May. There will be two groups of inductions each year, one in January (concentrating on the Northeast and Midwest regions, where indoor track has a longer history) and one in May (concentrating on the South and West). Since we are thinking “track star” and “history” and “midwest”, there can be only one.

Today’s athlete honoree is probably the single-most famous collegiate athlete of all time. Click on over to check out his career stats.

Owens regularly competed in four events in dual meets and won all but two of his outings. His career could have been even more extensive; freshmen were not eligible in his day, and he lost the indoor season of his junior year to academic ineligibility. Worst of all, he got totally screwed over by the AAU right after the 1936 Olympics, was declared a professional, and lost his senior season. Still, those ten dual meets are about as amazing a record as there is.

He was also primarily responsible for the single-most unbreakable record in collegiate dual meet history. What record is that?