First off, were you there? I get it looks embarrassing on paper it's but if you're gonna act like it's rule breaking bad then this needs to be so clownishly bad you get the equivalent of a red card or auto racing black flag for doing it. I consider what they did poor for a D1 but not so bad you wave them off the course. I will address why further down.
Second, it looks to me like they deliberately ran the B or C team, a few guys with no XC meets in TFRRS at all, a couple with very few. Is the "tank" the selection or their effort?
Third, I half wonder if they had an issue with the coach as opposed to the meet. I am curious why a team given a chance to run a varsity XD XC meet runs in a line. I kind of doubt it's "contractual obligation." It might be more, "I signed up for fall practice to train for the 800m not be meet filler." Based on their spring TF events. It feels to me like the time my HS XC made a pair of us soccer players run a 10k for time with the team as a practice and we deliberately loafed it, knowing we had a meet that weekend plus select games on Sunday. He got angry but technically we ran his 10k.
Last, I would assume that at college level "honest effort" would be an objective standard you could apply to any meet on down to D3. Or at least to every athlete in D1. Not a subjective standard relative to that athlete. Otherwise you'd be advocating the absurdity of tossing a Princeton runner for what some kid at Rutgers-Camden on their XC team couldn't do on his best day, who you wouldn't "red card" for averaging 9 minute miles but trying his best.
I am pretty sure the rule is really meant for, say, a miler walking their race at an obvious slow pace, a hurdler who hops out of the blocks then either pushes or kicks over each hurdle slowly, or a "long jumper" who like stops on the board then does a three foot bunny hop. Truly "do not waste our time" stuff that could be the basis for banning them next week. A real "red card" performance.
Oh, I get why you are upset, and since there is no way this traditional meet is ended, the practical response is either gut it out with the "A" team, or send a sincere "B" effort instructed to compete or hang up their spikes/runners. But calling it like a rules violation, no. To me a rules violation has to be beneath any possible mascot "Rudy" that ever sees a meet, perhaps even worse than the slowest D3 jogger you ever saw, and this is not that.