First off, it doesn't make much sense to me for people in the running community to hate Nike like some do. Every shoe company out there makes a pretty nice profit on every pair of spikes and trainers they sell. Running shoes are a major cash cow for Nike, Brooks, Asics, Adidas, and Mizuno. Nike foots the bill for a national championship race. The others?
Now, facts about the races...
FL still had better individual talent this year, but that gap is rapidly closing. Zivec ran both, Shields ran both, Sulkin ran both, Sveinsson ran both, Flanagan ran both, Decker ran both. NXN had Andrews, Fulton, Winslow, Connor, Osoro, and Rosa to themselves. Edge FL, but not a huge edge. If Nike can financially afford to continue NXN, it will become the one championship of HS cross country. If it got this much of the talent in the first year of individual invitations, it's only a matter of time. FL will be about as relevant as USATF JOs in just a few years.
NXN regionals are already less expensive, on a per-person basis, to get to than FL. It's already been noted what FL travel is like for an athlete from MT, CO, or TX. NXN regionals also happen to fall on a much better travel weekend (at least most of them) than FL regionals. Old habits won out for a lot of individuals this year, but as money becomes tighter and fewer people have the already-established old habit of going to FL, guess where more and more individuals are going?
FL does have a proud tradition on its side, but as fewer and fewer of the athletes have a history of traveling to FL regionals, that tradition will erode.
If you don't like where this is heading, write to the FL folks and ask why they refused to change. That refusal is what set this situation in motion. They were told they needed more regional races. They were told they needed a team element. They said, "No, thanks." More than once. Sometimes tradition sticks its head in the sand.
All that said, NXN faces some challenges, too. Huge among those is the challenge to keep teams coming to their regional races. It's one thing to get teams to come to regional meets when the meets are held one or two weeks after their state meets. It's quite another to get teams to come when you're expecting them to extend their seasons by three or four weeks, and that without knowing whether they made the championship race until the week of the NXN regional meet. Nike needs to fix this situation or the regional meets will be in danger of shriveling and dying.