Breaking Ties in X/C

My question is how does a tie work into the 'points' calculation for NCAA at-large qualifying?

I suppose that conferences may do what they please--they could even score four or six, rather than five, if they wanted!--and they can certainly adopt their own tiebreaking procedure.

But if they followed NCAA rules, there would be no tiebreaker. For the NCAA, a cross-country tie is a tie (and teams have tied for national titles--both were declared champions), with only one exception: the procedure for breaking a tie, to determine who *advances* to the national championship.

That tiebreak procedure: compare team A's first finisher to team B's; second finisher to second finisher; etc. Whichever team wins a majority of those five matchups wins the tiebreaker and goes to Nationals.

FWIW I much prefer the NCAA's tiebreak rule to any rule that uses a single runner's performance to break the tie. If you're the first runner for your team, or the sixth, you've already had your chance to determine the team's finish--why should you, alone, get a second chance to do so? XC is supposed to be a team sport; use the teams' performances (vis-à-vis each other) to break the tie.

And I would hope/assume that this is what the NCAA will use in terms of breaking the tie for ranking/points purposes--if breaking the tie is necessary...

F.Y.I. wrote:

FWIW I much prefer the NCAA's tiebreak rule to any rule that uses a single runner's performance to break the tie. If you're the first runner for your team, or the sixth, you've already had your chance to determine the team's finish--why should you, alone, get a second chance to do so? XC is supposed to be a team sport; use the teams' performances (vis-à-vis each other) to break the tie.

And I would hope/assume that this is what the NCAA will use in terms of breaking the tie for ranking/points purposes--if breaking the tie is necessary...

I think just the opposite. The first five guys have been scored already and it ended up in a tie. Why not give the win to the team with greater depth, i.e. the better 6th man. By doing the 1 vs 1, 2 vs 2, etc. you are just doing a different way to figure out the score with the 5 guys that already tied. It is redundant. I think most high school associations go with the 6th runner as the tie breaker. You even said xc is a team sport, why not let the better 6th runner determine the win, i.e, the TEAM with greater depth.

In the UK it is usually the position of the last scorer that counts in a tie. So if you closed your team first (i.e. got all your scoring runners home), you win.

Counting the 6th man in a 5 to score race is, if you think about it, a bit odd. If you need 5 men for a team then it should be possible to win with only 5 finishers in all possible scenarios. Theoretically, if both teams only had five finishers then you couldn't split them.

TimW wrote:

In the UK it is usually the position of the last scorer that counts in a tie. So if you closed your team first (i.e. got all your scoring runners home), you win.

Counting the 6th man in a 5 to score race is, if you think about it, a bit odd. If you need 5 men for a team then it should be possible to win with only 5 finishers in all possible scenarios. Theoretically, if both teams only had five finishers then you couldn't split them.

Right--hadn't been thinking of that, but the possibility of only five finishers makes the sixth-man thing a bit of a nullity!

My point stands: the sixth finisher for a team ALREADY had his opportunity to affect the scoring: though he wasn't fast enough to count in his own team's score, he might have affected others'. The team ALREADY had a chance to exploit the depth provided by the sixth man (and the seventh). Why should any individual--but in particular, that one--get a second bite of the apple? Pull all the other teams out of the scoring and just compare the two that are tied.

That's if you absolutely HAVE TO break the tie (because a limited number of teams can advance). My *main* point is that usually you don't have to break the tie, and I don't think you should. The two teams are equally good at defeating opposing runners; they deserve to share a place in the team standings.

[FWIW I coached under the sixth-finisher rule for many years, and won with it multiple times; but I still didn't like it.]

Cross country is a team sport with 7 runners on a team. If the score is tied after the race, it is equivalent to the score being tied in basketall. Now it is overtime. Maybe only five guys scored the entire game in basketball, but the 6th man can certainly score in over time. Yes, he had his chance to score in regulation and didn't, but now he can positively affect his team. The same with the 6th runner, the race is over, it is tied and now in overtime it is the 6th runner that can determine the outcome.

I do see both of your points and everyone will have a different opinion on this. I just think the score was tied after regulation so why just score those same five scoring guys again in a different way. As one of you said, you both showed you are equal teams with your five runners, now the team that has more depth and a stronger 6th runner gets the win.

Your point about 7 runners being in the team might be why we come to a different answer here. For several years now, in virtually all championship or league races in the UK there's been no limit on how many runners you can have on the start line. Once you introduce the concept of a limited number of team members, I can see why you might go down to man 6 if you can't separate the score after the first 5.

For what it's worth though I still think our system is best - not only do you always get a result but also if five is a team then the result is decided by those five. And scoring the same race a different way is conceptually no different from countback in HJ.

Separately a previous poster makes a good point about the non-scorers (i.e. the deeper teams) already being able to affect the result by finishing ahead of scorers from other teams. I think that is a good thing. Several years ago I was 7th man home in a 6-to-score when my team won a regional championship race, and nearly killed myself to come home ahead of the 6th scorer from our main rivals. Didn't get a medal for my efforts but got a lot of pride.

One of the local leagues near me strips out non-scoring finishers from the team result. I think the idea is that the smaller clubs can have a more accurate head to head without the big teams clogging up the results, but I've always thought that was the wrong approach.

Contrary to what the article said, the tie breaker used at America East was to compare the respective finishes of first man in for one team to first man in for the other team, for the 1 through 5 runners, with the team who had the majority being given the nod.

In high school, most go by the sixth man finish versus the opponents sixth man finish.

We had a situation at our high school district championship meet (qualifier for the state championship meet) where the two second place teams tied with 43 points and neither had a sixth runner to determine the usual tie-breaker.

I've been coaching for 30 years and I have never seen this situation before. Thankfully, I was not the meet director so someone else had to deal with it.

Someone thought it was determined by the place of the 5th runners since there was no 6th runner. Fortunately, a NFHS rule book was found and it says that you score the top 4 finishers of the tied teams: Team A: 2-4-9-11 = 26 & Team B: 3-5-6-14 = 28.

You have used the placings of the top five, but not all of the 'information' about the top 5 (or 6/7, since they can also have affected the score). Thus, if you use total (or average) time of the top five, you get another element in -- that is, it matters how fast those runners are such that if you are tenth it matters (in a tie) where you were in the interval between 9 and 11.

pre841 wrote:

We had a situation at our high school district championship meet (qualifier for the state championship meet) where the two second place teams tied with 43 points and neither had a sixth runner to determine the usual tie-breaker.

I've been coaching for 30 years and I have never seen this situation before. Thankfully, I was not the meet director so someone else had to deal with it.

Someone thought it was determined by the place of the 5th runners since there was no 6th runner. Fortunately, a NFHS rule book was found and it says that you score the top 4 finishers of the tied teams: Team A: 2-4-9-11 = 26 & Team B: 3-5-6-14 = 28.

This is interesting since that system rewards the team with the WORSE 5th man.

I just saw results from New England's where PC and Brown tied with 72 points each as aggregate 1-5 runners equaled 72.

Surprised to see that it came down to the overall placing of the fifth man to determine winner? I had thought that in the U.S. College system that ties would be broken by the sixth man?

Since this doesn't seem to be the case, what is the purpose of running seven guys? Is this to still have a full scoring team should two guys get injured and fail to finish race?

The logic behind the NCAA's tiebreaking procedure is pretty simple: it's the only procedure that's guaranteed to break the tie in every single situation. 6th man doesn't work because a team might only have five finishers. (Theoretically under the 6th man tiebreaker, if a team was in a tight race but had sixth and seventh runners getting their asses kicked, they should tell #6 and #7 to deliberately not finish). Total time can also be a tie. Pitting the two teams' five runners against each other can never end in a tie because five is an odd number. It's also very quick and easy to do once you have official results, which is nice because teams are waiting to know if they've advanced or not.

F.Y.I. wrote:

FWIW I much prefer the NCAA's tiebreak rule to any rule that uses a single runner's performance to break the tie. If you're the first runner for your team, or the sixth, you've already had your chance to determine the team's finish--why should you, alone, get a second chance to do so? XC is supposed to be a team sport; use the teams' performances (vis-à-vis each other) to break the tie.

And I would hope/assume that this is what the NCAA will use in terms of breaking the tie for ranking/points purposes--if breaking the tie is necessary...

I agree with this.

113 wrote:

The logic behind the NCAA's tiebreaking procedure is pretty simple: it's the only procedure that's guaranteed to break the tie in every single situation. 6th man doesn't work because a team might only have five finishers. (Theoretically under the 6th man tiebreaker, if a team was in a tight race but had sixth and seventh runners getting their asses kicked, they should tell #6 and #7 to deliberately not finish). Total time can also be a tie. Pitting the two teams' five runners against each other can never end in a tie because five is an odd number. It's also very quick and easy to do once you have official results, which is nice because teams are waiting to know if they've advanced or not.

The NCAA tiebreaking procedure does not always produce a clear winner in a 3-way tie. Consider: Team A finishes 1, 6, 8, 10, 15; Team B finishes 2, 4, 9, 11, 14; Team C finishes 3, 5, 7, 12, 13. All teams have 40 points; A beats B in 3 positions (1, 3, 4); B beats C in 3 positions (1, 2, 4); C beats A in 3 positions (2, 3, 5).

When I raced XC in the 60's the final meet was public vs private school championships. By my private school rules they won (5th runner) by their rules (6th runner) we won. Instead we settled it by adding all five times. We won by about a minute (I think). But that was a great way very difficult to tie in total time. We also ran only five- all scored.