Bumping. Obstructing. A whole baton-striking incident—the relay races this indoor season have been nothing short of chaotic. Each time an incident has happened, rules have been questioned, and eyebrows have been raised about the athletes’ sportsmanship. Unfortunately, day 2 of the 2025 NCAA Indoor Championships was no exception. A 4x400m relay team felt that they were wronged. But instead of keeping quiet, they fought back. Did anything good come out of it?

Well, we’re talking about none other than the Arkansas Razorbacks. Their boys had stepped out for the 4x400m relay heats at the NCAA Indoor Championships, hoping to make a mark. But it looked like an opponent team deliberately wrecked their plan. What next? The Razorbacks pleaded for a second chance. But rules are rules. So did they get one? No! But after that, what went down…

As per an X post by Travis Miller, the NBC Sports Director of Social Media, Section 3 of the men’s 4x400m relay finals at the NCAA Indoor Championships recorded some serious lapses. The first lapse: Shortly after the gun went off, Auhmad Robinson, the first leg runner from Texas A&M running in lane 5, tried cutting to the innermost lane at a turn, just 23 seconds into the relay. But as he took a sharp turn to cut to the left corner, Robinson bumped into the Arkansas Razorback runner, who lost balance and veered into the infield. Result? The Razorbacks stopped and couldn’t complete the race.

What next? Arkansas appealed. “We’ll run it again, I don’t care.” They asked for a solo re-run of the relay race. After all, they had the fastest qualifying time into the finals and would have liked to have a fair shot to win the national title. However, after a long review delay, it turned out that the officials turned down their appeal and denied them the re-run. But they did hold the culprits accountable. No wonder Texas A&M got disqualified from the NCAA Indoor Championships men’s 4x400m relay for flagrantly impeding Arkansas and knocking them off the track.

But wait. If you think this is all that went down at the NCAA Indoor Championships men’s 4x400m relay, you’re wrong. In the same Section (3), a lot more chaos awaited during the transition from the third leg to the anchor one. Exactly 2 minutes and 17 seconds into the 4x400m relay race, it was time for the anchor legs to start. But as the runners of the third leg reached the handover zone, they saw that none of the anchor runners from USC and Florida, except for the Texas A&M one, were standing in position to take the baton. Surprised?

Yes, because the anchors were actually being held up by the officials for the exchange in the final section of the 4x400m. Now is that fair? Nonetheless, due to the hold-up, the runners had to sprint past the officials at the last second and get the batons on the run. The commentators were stunned too. “They weren’t even on the track,” said one. As they saw their teammates coming off in the last 50 meters, the anchors had to run in from off the track. Now that is confusion at its peak. Had the runners not ignored the officials and gotten on the track, it could have been really embarrassing for the teams. Also, the NCAA!

With all these lapses duly discussed in the review, the final standings of the NCAA Indoor Championships men’s 4x400m relay race looked something like this. Texas A&M got a DQ, which dropped them from 6th to the last 10th position in team scores. Next, Arkansas finished 11th in their section and did not get the re-run, while USC finished 4th in the 4×4 section. Coming to the team titles, USC took the national champion title for the 4x400m relay with the highest 36 points. This is followed by Georgia in second place with 33 points.

But as for the Arkansas Razorbacks, they lost their winning chance and finished 4th in the overall charts. And here’s how they are feeling about it. Also, we can’t help but notice the increase in the number of relay incidents these days, and it’s affecting the athletes.

NCAA Indoor Championships relay goof-up leaves Arkansas distraught

After the Section 3 mess-up, the Arkansas Razorbacks men’s 4x400m relay team was seen warming up on the track, in anticipation that they might get the go-ahead for the re-run. But unfortunately, when the ruling came in against that, they still respected the officials’ decision. They had to make do with a fourth finish in this NCAA Indoor Championships relay. No wonder the coach was seen speaking to the rather upset runners off the track after that. His words were filled with encouragement for the relay boys.

“We gotta congratulate USC and the other teams, and we gotta move on to the outdoor season,” said the Arkansas coach. He also said, “We’ll respect the officials, understand that we’re on the podium, and we gotta move on to the outdoor season.” Calling everyone for a fist bump, the coach showed great sportsmanship, saying, “Bring it in. We’re gonna get our fourth-place trophy and we’re gonna congratulate those guys.”

The coach even appreciated the Arkansas sprinters, saying, “But hey, it was a great fight. You gave it your best shot.” He mentioned, “It was an unfortunate situation. The peak was right there with us, I mean, it was gonna happen. We had a great shot at it. But didn’t happen. Didn’t come to fruition.” Do you think the Arkansas team should’ve been given a re-run? And was all this fair to them? Let us know below!