It wouldn't be unusual on a large T&F team to have sprinters or distance runners who don't know each other and who don't even know who some of their field eventers are, have never met them, and couldn't pick them out of a police line-up. Which is fair enough, because they're doing completely different sports.
Having a score for a track meet just seems so random. It's like, if you're scoring a dual T&F meet, and the two schools involved also happen to be having a soccer game or football game against each other that day, why not include that in the score too?
I disagree with having the 4 x 400 be used as a tiebreaker. If you must break a tie, then pick one representative from each team from a hat, and have them compete against each other in a free-throw-shooting contest.
I respectfully disagree. The same point about sprinters, distance runners, and field eventers can be made about offenses, defenses, and special teams in football. Those units each have their own specialty and their own coaches, and they’re never on the football field during a game at the same time, yet at the end of the day they are one team with the shared goal of winning a team championship. Just as football goes to overtime when needed to crown a champion, there’s no reason track&field can’t find a way to crown one true champion.
I love the creativity of the super relay idea proposed in this thread. A duel like that for the championship would be so exciting! I think many people could also get behind the simpler and perhaps more practical solutions proposed in this thread such as using 9th place finishes or head to head scoring to break a tie. The only idea I don’t support is the brojo recommendation of arbitrarily privileging the 4x4 as a tiebreaker. Sounds like many of us agree that is *not* the way to go.
I would think most athletes and coaches on the teams in contention for a title would find it more meaningful to have just one team champion rather than co-champions.
The difference is that football really is a team sport, track and field is not. The kicker doesn't just kick because if somebody doesn't snap and hold it the ball isn't even there. If you're running in race you don't give a damn how the pole vaulter does.
NCAA conference meets should score more than top eight. They should score the top 20 and limit each team to three entries per event. That would make it closer to a true team format and would increase the excitement of each event, with more people striving to gain points.