My thoughts on the proposal:
The primary effect of the proposal will be an increase in competitiveness during the "regular" season. The reason for this increase will be a much higher consequence for not performing well during the regular season: a poor regular season will ELIMINATE most team's / individual's of qualifying for nationals (the only work-around will be to win the conference meet). Whereas, in the current system, any team / individual can show up and have a good performance at regionals.
The result will be that teams / individuals will have to race all out more often. Teams will be required to seek out and try to beat better competition more often. Not doing so could result in elimination from making it to preliminaries. This won't impact the best or worst teams so much, but it will have a HUGE impact on schools that typically finish ~4th-10th in their region. Only 40 schools will be at-large regional selections (32 will be conference winners)...and qualifying for preliminaries will become a really big deal for good-but-not-great squads.
The proposal will also have a huge impact on good individuals on mediocre teams. Only 40 people will get chosen for preliminaries across the whole country...so if you're on a bad team, you'll need to run really well at some point during the season to just make it preliminaries. (Albeit, your primary pool of competition will be other good individuals on bad teams). The selection process for individuals feels like it might get complicated...and it could be hard for people coming back from injury late in the season.
Now, whether you are in favor or against this proposal should really come down to your school of thought on cross country competition.
You will hate the proposal if:
- You believe it is not beneficial for athletes to have to race a lot
- You believe that a team / individual should be judged by their body of work across the entire fall, not just performance while they are peaking
- You believe that great athletes should be allowed to show up during championship season and qualify...even if they have been held out / injured all year
You will like the proposal if:
- You want the regular season to be more competitive
- You'd like to see the top teams and individuals race hard against one another more often
- You think that early season results should factor into selection as much as later season results
My personal view is that I prefer the current system. I think it's consistent with the nature of cross country (i.e. peaking for championships, risks of racing too often), not to put so much emphasis on the regular season. I think the regular season carries an appropriate amount of weight today.