Has Nike's NXN ruined Footlocker National?

Possibly the worst pro-footlocker argument I have ever heard. You're really going to make the argument people in SoCal care more about track than people in Oregon? Or Jamaica or Ethiopia for that matter? You realize that California has over 10 times the population of Oregon right?

So Cal does not have 10x the people of Oregon. Kinney chose So Cal decades ago because it's where the center of sports, media, entertainment, etc. not only for the U.S. but for the entire world. No matter what happens to the FL company itself, the meet will survive and continue for many decades to come.

Part of the reason of Footlocker's resistance to a team competition is that they didn't want to run afoul of state associations with their own "post season" competition rules. When NXN started (and might still be the case, I'm not sure) Michigan teams were not allowed to enter, even if they form "club" teams. Individuals were allowed to compete a Footlocker, however, because they did so independently of their school. Footlocker was nice because it was totally separated from the high school season. That's how you had people like McDougal and Spence competing; until this year home-schoolers were persona non-grata at NXN.

NXN also dilutes something that was once special. As of a few years ago, there were only 32 athletes at Footlocker. It was an elite event. You knew you were one of the top runners in the nation. Now at NXN there are twenty-some teams, plus a bunch of individual runners. Plus the open races. Now you're one of hundreds of individuals; it's no longer special. But I guess that's par for the course in today's "everyone's a winner" atmosphere.

The basic rule of advertising is to spend money where you get the biggest bang for the buck. San Diego / Los Angeles is where the most money is spent on running and sports, is the most active sports market anywhere in the world, and is the trendsetter for style, fashion, media, motion pictures, active wear, etc.

First, high school XC is about team and individuals. This idea that it's about individuals more than team couldn't be further from the truth. High schools are not all on the same playing field, but neither are colleges. Do you really think that the University of Oregon and University of Montana are equals in terms of XC potential? Stanford vs. the University of Wyoming?

Second, another myth is this idea that NXN is f*ckin' the individuals and making them choose between FL and team. It was FL that made the decision to not allow the top individuals from the West region to go from NXN to FL in 2007, thus motivating Nike to go ahead with their vision of a national championship for teams and individuals.

Third, how does having a team competition (a very big part of XC) turn it into an "everyone's a winner" mentality? Should the NCAA get rid of the team competition and just bring in the top individuals? The NCAA has 31 teams compete at Nationals - that doesn't sound very "elite."

Fourth, Nike has done much more to work within state association guidelines in 5 years than FL has done within 30 years. FL has no clue about how many times they've violated state association rules when giving gear to the qualifiers from certain states.

Fifth, World Cross has been run in some extreme conditions weather-wise, yet rarely has the best runner not won. This idea that the best high school XC runner won't win in Portland is another crock of sh*t.

It's too bad that both events can't co-exist as they had prior to 2007, but FL has no one but themselves to blame. For those thinking that FL will continue to be the premier event, I'm afraid you are mistaken. In just the first year of adding individuals, NXN diluted the FL competition much more than anyone expected. Don't be surprised when most of the top individuals choose NXN next year.

People just need to relax and realize that these December HS cross meets are for the kids and not for the adults. It's like the football bow games and BCS, not a part of a real sports league, but sports nonetheless. Both should remain. They are advertisements for their companies and not athletic events per se and expecting kids to endure harsh conditions is interesting but normally reserved for true leagues. Footlocker should expand to a team championships to give the high schools that want it the validity and grandeur that the Footlocker name has. There are enough high schools in the U.S. and Kenya to fill both meets. Just enjoy.

I agree. NXN has made FL totally irrelevant. I also heard that the Tournament of Roses Parade will not be held in Pasadena this year and has permanently moved to Portland, Oregon. The Rose Bowl football game has moved to the stadium at Mt. Hood Community College. USC and Penn State football teams will be staying at the Motel 6 in front of the historic Portland Meadows race track, the site of the world famous Nike Cross Nationals.

I agree wrote:

I agree. NXN has made FL totally irrelevant. I also heard that the Tournament of Roses Parade will not be held in Pasadena this year and has permanently moved to Portland, Oregon. The Rose Bowl football game has moved to the stadium at Mt. Hood Community College. USC and Penn State football teams will be staying at the Motel 6 in front of the historic Portland Meadows race track, the site of the world famous Nike Cross Nationals.

What does this even mean? Seriously, are you trying to make a point here, or are you just being a dick?

NXN has made FL irrelevant because it has replaced an individuals only championship with a true championship. At every level of XC (except for open XC races), everyone in the race is running both as an individual and as part of a team. Footlocker never contested half of the sport. NXN does. Simple as that, Footlocker is dead in the water and I doubt it will see the next olympics, much to the chagrin of Anti-Nike dolts everywhere.

old face andre wrote:

NXN also dilutes something that was once special. As of a few years ago, there were only 32 athletes at Footlocker. It was an elite event. You knew you were one of the top runners in the nation. Now at NXN there are twenty-some teams, plus a bunch of individual runners. Plus the open races. Now you're one of hundreds of individuals; it's no longer special. But I guess that's par for the course in today's "everyone's a winner" atmosphere.

I might get lucky some year--perhaps next year--and get the opportunity to coach a great, talented individual who could run at FLN. That would be pretty cool.

However, it absolutely busted my balls to coach a team to NTN in 2007. I worked on that thing for 3 years in order to get all the elements together in one place at one time-it involved juggling a lot of balls at once. I also had a guy who gave up a pretty solid shot at a FLN spot (He was a 9:04/4:13 guy.) in order to go for the team. Winning our qualifying meet was probably the most intensely satisfying thing of my athletic career for all those reasons. I cannot imagine a more difficult and "special" thing than to have been part of a team that accomplished that. We were pretty fickin' elite as a team.

Then we got to Oregon and saw some TRULY elite teams. I am still amazed at how good NV, LA, and AA were up close, not to mention the FM girls.

I'm not knocking a talented individual who works hard for years to accomplish a difficult thing like FLN--I know three guys in this year's field and know they had to bust it to get there. But don't tell me that taking a team to NXN is any less "elite" or challenging.

I agree. NXN has made FL totally irrelevant. I also heard that the U.S. Navy is moving it's fleet from San Diego to Portland because of the great running conditions in the area. The U.S. Marines are leaving Camp Pendleton and Miramar and relocating to a yet undisclosded area to the east of Portland. The United States government is negotiating with Mexico, China and Japan for the sale of San Diego and Imperial Counties to pay off a portion of the trillions of dollars of notes we owe them. Nike, America needs you. Thank you Nike.

First off, it doesn't make much sense to me for people in the running community to hate Nike like some do. Every shoe company out there makes a pretty nice profit on every pair of spikes and trainers they sell. Running shoes are a major cash cow for Nike, Brooks, Asics, Adidas, and Mizuno. Nike foots the bill for a national championship race. The others?

Now, facts about the races...

FL still had better individual talent this year, but that gap is rapidly closing. Zivec ran both, Shields ran both, Sulkin ran both, Sveinsson ran both, Flanagan ran both, Decker ran both. NXN had Andrews, Fulton, Winslow, Connor, Osoro, and Rosa to themselves. Edge FL, but not a huge edge. If Nike can financially afford to continue NXN, it will become the one championship of HS cross country. If it got this much of the talent in the first year of individual invitations, it's only a matter of time. FL will be about as relevant as USATF JOs in just a few years.

NXN regionals are already less expensive, on a per-person basis, to get to than FL. It's already been noted what FL travel is like for an athlete from MT, CO, or TX. NXN regionals also happen to fall on a much better travel weekend (at least most of them) than FL regionals. Old habits won out for a lot of individuals this year, but as money becomes tighter and fewer people have the already-established old habit of going to FL, guess where more and more individuals are going?

FL does have a proud tradition on its side, but as fewer and fewer of the athletes have a history of traveling to FL regionals, that tradition will erode.

If you don't like where this is heading, write to the FL folks and ask why they refused to change. That refusal is what set this situation in motion. They were told they needed more regional races. They were told they needed a team element. They said, "No, thanks." More than once. Sometimes tradition sticks its head in the sand.

All that said, NXN faces some challenges, too. Huge among those is the challenge to keep teams coming to their regional races. It's one thing to get teams to come to regional meets when the meets are held one or two weeks after their state meets. It's quite another to get teams to come when you're expecting them to extend their seasons by three or four weeks, and that without knowing whether they made the championship race until the week of the NXN regional meet. Nike needs to fix this situation or the regional meets will be in danger of shriveling and dying.

Nike and FL hold the races for advertising and marketing purposes. They are for-profit companies. No sense taking sides in any us-against-them pissing contest when it doen't mean a thing to any of us runners. Both are supremely relevant. I was at both. Portland was in 20s the night before. San Diego was in the 40s. Both meets are going strong and should continue. It's not a zero sum game for the kids, nor for the parents, nor for the coaches.

a few facts wrote:

Nike invented what they are marketing as a national championship race. The others?

runner Z wrote:

Nike and FL hold the races for advertising and marketing purposes. They are for-profit companies.

Agreed, but it is a nice thing when a company's marketing efforts actually end up doing something nice for someone. A little community support goes a long way. Both Nike and Foot Locker score here, but--honestly--Nike is a whole lot more relevant to the high school running community than Foot Locker. Thus, Nike gets a far better return on its marketing efforts for these races than FL does.

After having seen first-hand how much Nike spends on NXN (didn't look at the books, of course, but was there for the weekend), I'm a little skeptical that Nike breaks even on NXN, though--at least not in any kind of short term analysis. Yes, they build some good will, but it would take a lot of additional unit sales of shoes to pay the bill for that weekend!

nxn is held at a piss poor venue in a dead town with cold weather in december. the treatment of the media was unprofessional. many writers and cameramen have complained to me that there were no risers at the finish line for camera positions, no positions perpendicular to the finish line to get head on finish tape video, many prime positions were vacant yet not made available to the media by nike's gestapo-attituded finish area volunteers.

fl is held at a great venue in a world class city with warm weather in december. i heard no complaints about the camera positions nor of any unprofessional treatment towards the media.

I was at NXN and have been to Footlocker West many times. I believe the future is NXN. Footlocker had been good for the very best 32, now 40 top runners. What about the other young runners that gained positive exposure at NTN? There are a couple of hundred runners going back home after NTN after having an amazing experience and are going to train harder to go back and inspire up and coming teammates to work hard to get back. Several hundred runners that just missed making it will be training hard to beat the others. With Footlocker there are also runners trying to qualify but way less. We need MORE runners fighting to get to an event like NXN. I rode back from the race with Alan Webb and he felt the NXN was a better event than when he went to Footlocker. Plus Nike brings in athletes like Lagat, Webb, Flanigan, Ritz, Tegenkamp, Abdi and Gouchers to be part of the event and inspirations to the kids. All the talk about Nike making $$ is crap. Every company will benefit if teams and individuals get better and bring more attention to the sport.

Based on the website hits, video ratings, and other metrics FL is still way ahead. I would advise NXN to move the race to the Los Angeles or San Francisco markets.

If Portland is hurting NXN, then FL desperately needs to move the Midwest regional out of Wisconsin. There is no place in Wisconsin, ever, that is a reasonably place to race on the last weekend before December. By comparison, Portland is positively tropical.

the curves of a greek statue wrote:

stringer bell wrote:

I don't think national team championships have a place in high school athletics. Of course, Nike would say that there are no high school teams at NXN, only club teams (wink wink).

I agree, team championships should not matter. High school is all about the individual...then those individuals go on to college where team DOES matter.

By saying this you blatantly show you don't get cross on the high school level at all...

Don't compare Portland v. San Diego because the athletes don't get to experience either city. You can compare weather, and that does play a part, but comparing the cities is a stupid things to compare the events because the kids don't ever get to just wander around the cities soaking in what they have to offer.

The problem with Foot Locker is that they aren't changing anything. They said they redid their website this year, but it is awful. The webcast was awful. The uniforms were awful. The meets marketing is awful and the event is simply coasting on their 30 years of existence. Just because an event has been around for 30 years doesn't mean it should stay around if something better comes around.

Foot Locker is going to lose out unless they revamp how they do things. Image is everything these days and NXN's is way cooler than Foot Locker. We can sit on here and debate the issues about one event over the other, but NXN has a way cooler image, which means nearly everything to high school kids (especially in mass). Nike has invested way more money into the event than Foot Locker has the past five years, as well as creative and social energy.

Foot Locker was a great event, and it can be still, but the powers that be with that event don't seem to be changing much. They need to re-up what they've been doing. Until that happens NXN will continue to gain momentum. Foot Locker has 30 years of history, NXN has five, but NXN is moving fast and Nike hates to lose at anything.