The set of totally geodesic representatives of a homotopy class of maps from a compact Riemannian manifold $M$ with nonnegative Ricci curvature into a complete Riemannian manifold $N$ with no focal points is path-connected and, when nonempty, equal to the set of energy-minimizing maps in that class. When $N$ is compact, each map from a product $W \times M$ into $N$ is homotopic to a map that's totally geodesic on each $M$-fiber. These results may be used to extend to the case of no focal points a number of splitting theorems of Cao-Cheeger-Rong about manifolds with nonpositive sectional curvature and, in turn, to generalize a non-collapsing theorem of Heintze-Margulis. In contrast with previous approaches, they are proved using neither a geometric flow nor the Bochner identity for harmonic maps.

16 pages; added an outline of the paper to the introduction; moved forward the subsection on heat flow methods