At-Large Appeal

Why not just change it to 1 auto per regional (similar to the college basketball system)? The rest of the teams could be decided by the committee.

What about the regional race being in early October? Doesn't this screw up peaking? There are a lot of teams that run great early in the season but can't sustain it; there are also a lot of teams that come on late in the year, as is proper. Doesn't this hurt those teams? What about the cost to teams? Now they have to travel to regional, conference, super-regional, and many will want to race on the NCAA course. XC/track budgets aren't that high and this seems to add to the burden.

This is the same stuff you hear at the NCAA II, III and NAIA levels of Cross Country, even though they are using different qualifying systems. It is also the same thing you hear every year after the 64 teams are chosen for the NCAA Basketball tournament. You would hear the same thing in football if there weren't 8000000000 bowl games out there. I'm sure other sports have the same types of complaints. And it is always the bubble teams and fans of those bubble teams that are complaining. It's too bad your team didn't get in, but instead of complaining about it, get better. If you are a great team and perform like a great team, there is no problem. If you are not or don't, then you risk being left out. There is no perfect system. The only perfect system is to win your region or do whatever it takes to get your automatic qualifier. If you don't do that and your fate is left in someone elses hands, you can't complain about it. That is life. Feel bad, but get over it and figure out how to not be in that situation next time.

Maybe the NCAA should just invite Duke, Kentucky, Connecticut and Michigan State to a one weekend Final Four too. Your comment makes no sense and the quote you are using is from a different era when there was only a handfull of good men's teams in the country.

There is unanimous agreement among the coaches in the Mountain region that super-regionals would not be good. Super-regionals would exacerbate the problem of sending more teams from highly populated but weak regions. One of the previous posts summarized it nicely... the super-region with Mountain and West regions would be a bloodbath, while the GL would be paired with regions that in some years do not deserve both autoqualifiers.

Is the current system perfect? No. Nothing other than head to head racing will ever be perfect.

Is the current system more fair than the proposed super-regions? Yes. Super-regionals moves farther in the direction of pre-setting slots for nationals, rather than earning them out on the course. If we had super-regions this year, at least one team even weaker than VA (#39) would be in, and at least one more team ranked in the 20s would be out.

Also think of the disparities we'd get for individual qualifiers. A good example of the current disparity, which would only get worse with super-regionals: Branden Fuller of EWU finished 19th in the Big Sky Conference meet. He then ran in the West region instead of the Mountain and got an individual auto-qualifier!

Seeding super regional makes great sense, and it has already been shown that with a few adjustments most schools would not have to travel that far out of region.

Why I say that it's dead for now is that it was brought forward last year with a good amount of momentum and was shot down. Nothing has happened this year that would cause the type of upheaval it often takes to get a major rule change. The coaches already voted for it, but it was turned down by the next level up: that's the problem

For the record, I am very much in favor of super regional and seeding super regional.

The ultimate answer is this:

Have a quad meet with Butler, Notre Dame, Oregon, and Portland to see who is the crappiest of the good NCAA teams. Who ever finsishes 1-2 can say they got screwed but are only allowed to complain to 3-4. This way the rest of us don't have to waste our time on this pathetic BS.

Kevin,

Sorry but on both sides the Super Regionals are bad. The seeding idea will have smaller schools not being able to afford traveling half way around the country to attend a Super Regional. I provided the last two years results to show that the West/Mountain/South Central Super Region would be a mistake. The Great Lakes is not the greatest region every year. Things change, that is why it is bad to set a precedent. On the women's side, look at the far east, you are going to put UNC, NC State, Providence, Columbia, Wake Forest, Duke, Georgetown, Villanova, Darthmouth, Yale, Boston College, William and Mary, James Madison, Brown, and I am missing some great schools all together. The Great Lakes is average at best on the Womens side. Then you will pair them with the Midwest --- Nebraska won but where were they at B12's? -- and the South -- sucks.

how about we do consecutive 8k potato sac races every week for the entire season (on sundays)... have a point system for that. The top ten winners get the wild card spot. simple easy and totally absurd.

... here is what happens. we have a system, nothing is perfect and no system will ever be perfect. however, if we got the system in place to begin with... enough people had to agree with it.

so everyone who made it, kuddos to them. everyone who didnt go home and start building your base, next year come out and win regionals so you dont have to complain.

if you make a system, make it easier, teams get screwed all the time in basketball. if your on the bubble and run shitty at regionals... you are out. goodbye. if you didnt make it, JUST DEAL WITH IT.

This move is typical of Franklin at Butler. People on the inside know this all too well. Joe, quit crying and go out and buy a better team...

They are only talking about seeding some of the top teams which, if you look at it year-in and year-out, have the money to travel and it will not be that far. As I said before, we are talking about not looking at one year or one meet. It is not logical. You talk about the Great Lakes being, "...average", but then talk about Brown, JMU, Dartmouth, W&M, etc. being, "...great". You are not making a lot of sense and since you can't leave your real name your opinion holds about as much water as my underoos.

If you are that confident in your point of view, leave your name. If you are not that confident and are more concerned about your image, keep posting annonymously.

The fact of the matter is that the current system, as I have said before, if not, "That" bad. It is about as good of a system as we can have given the current dynamnics of how things are done. There are far more coaches in the country that really believe in the Super Region and its possibilities than don't. It is a work-in-progress in terms of exactly how to divide the Super Regions, but it can be done in such a way to have the best chance of getting the best 31 teams to the NCAA's.

My guess is you are a coach in a very weak region who likes the current system because you do not have to put together a great team to make it, just a good team. But, since you do not want to leave your name, I guess we will never know.

Just my opinion.

Some would argue that 15th in the nation is pretty good. You might not hear this from Stanford or Colorado, but the vast majority of teams would be pretty damn happy with 15th.

the ISSUE here is JUST STRAIGHTEN UP THE INTERPRETATIONS OF THE RULES IN PLACE. The precedence has been set the past few years since this system has been put in place, and according to that, Notre Dame and Butler deserve to be in NCAA's. I don't fault them for complaining about that, this is every team's goal to qualify, and even though perhaps they should not have put themselves in such a risky position, the fact of the matter is that what they DID run, qualifies them for nationals based on precedence. I give them props for this

Kevin,

The current Super Regional proposal is not fair. Now, a new version of it would be great. The problem lies in that the power shifts from one region to another every 2-3 years. Therefore, awarding 10 autos to a given Super Region is not the brightest move. But, what do you do? Give less autos?? Then we are in the same boat. The current Super Regional deal favors the Great Lakes, Midwest, and the South. They will all be together. It is hard to find 10 good Women's teams out of those three. Now that could change.

"Not that far"

So, traveling from Michigan to Florida is not far. Or from Portland to Baton Rouge. That would be a big impact on a small schools budget. In fact, if some small school finished 10th in their regional, would they travel to the Super Regional?? Do you think Texas A&M Corpus Christi, who finished 10th in the crappy South Central Region, is going to pay to go to Portland for the Super Region??

Using your method of just substituting times from one race to times from another race on the same course, I just found out that Stanford's 1999 squad (4th at natioinals) would have finished 8th in the 2003 West Regional with roughly 219 points. Check it out for yourself. Look at the times from the 1999 West Regional (at Blue Lake Park) and the times from the 2003 West Regional (at Blue Lake Park). Boy, there must be 8 teams from the west Region that could place in the top-4 @ nationals this year, huh.

Yes, I am saying that the CONCEPT of a Super Region is the way to go, in my opinion. I am not saying that that most recent exact proposal is the way to go. I am just saying that the concept of a Super Region is the way to go. I personally think that seeding the top 9 teams into three seperate regions and then taking the top-8 from each Super Region plus the next seven teams based on a variation of the current system would be the best way.

In terms of this year (and, again, I think to talk in terms of any particular year or meet is a mistake), I think you would see 8 solid teams from each of the three regionals (remember that the dynamics of a Super Regional is going to be different than a Regional). You will have eliminated a lot of the middle of the pack runners from not-so-good teams that help to inflate the team scores at the regional level because their teams will not make it on and, if they make it as an individual, they will not figure into the team score.

We are talking about the overall concept of a Super Region, not particularly the proposal that everyone keeps talking about. I have never seen a system in any sport where adding an additional qualifying round to eliminate bad teams was a step backwards. Look at Golf, Swimming, Baseball, Softball. A lot of sports have gone to this format and it eliminates the teams from weak regions or weak conferences.

Nobody said they "had" to go to the Super Region if they have no shot. If they are, "that" good, they are paying to go to Pre-NCAA's anyway and then paying to go to their own region anyway. You are just substituting a trip to the Pre-NCAA's with a trip to the Super Region and your Regional trip that you would have taken anyway just happens earlier.

The money issue is a weak arguement in my opinion. And, we are talking about only seeding the top teams which, year-in and year-out have the money to travel anyway.

I am done arguing with annonymous people. If anyone out there wants to share their point of view and not be afraid of leaving their real name, I would be happy to continue. Obviously you guys are coaches so why not lend some credibility to your opinion? If you feel as passionate about this as your posts sound, then leave your name so we can give your opinion some serious consideration!

Why should school size and budgets come into play? They don't in any other sport. We're the only sport that aims for an objective system, yet this year they failed to deliver. Maybe subjectivity isn't that bad afterall.

As for the quad meet, I love that idea. Not practical though.