It's time to have ONE national championship.

if NY state can have two hs xc championships, so can the USA.

Republicans won NXN, but Obama won Footlocker. There, it's settled.

jay walter weatherman wrote:

No, that is why Wilmot/Anderson should run Footlocker, not why Fiscscscher should run both. THEY CAN TOO!

As another poster pointed out, you CANNOT say definitively that Wilmot's race was comparably faster, though you continue to try. That 27 guys have run about the same time on both is nowhere near enough proof to say that the courses should run relatively equal in similar conditions, so, no, it's not a certainty that "his NXN race was better" before even getting to which athlete was better.

Please tell me how Anderson can run both?

XC should have a single championship with individual and teams. I don't care if it's Footlocker letting in teams or Footlocker having to die off. XC is about both the team and the individual. However, knowing that Footlocker was approached, before NTN, about adding in teams and declined, that leaves one option for the future of high school cross country.

People, please stop the argument about the history of the course and whatnot. It's a moot point. A new history starts in Portland. There have been some phenomenal runners at NXN so far, and this new course should help the course be more similar each year. Besides, XC is about seeing who is best each year. Yes it is fun to compare past runners, but even xc records cannot change people's minds. If someone breaks Virgins marks, people will still say Virgin would have beaten that person if they raced. Same is true if anyone beats Ritz's marks.

A new era of high school cross country started when NTN became NXN. Any true fan of XC knows that the team component of XC is just as important as the individual that battle up front. If you say you cannot name champions at NXN/FLN then that is your lack of observation of both meets. It means you have focused on one or the other. You can watch them both.

There used to be one national championship, before Nike tried to hijack things.

dsrunner wrote:

NXN is just stupid, doesn't matter how much money Nike throws around.

If you are going to hold the meet, at least move it around the country.

Team XC races are decided at the state level, no real reason for a national championship.

Footlocker Regionals should be eliminated and qualifying for nationals individual championship based on individual finishing place at state meets, say top 5 best times from each state meet. Of those, a portion would of course choose not to run Footlocker at all.

As a contingency allow HS athletes with

So the idea of an individual AND team championship (like every state, the NCAA, USATF club nationals, and the World Championships) is a "stupid" idea?!

So FL has used two locations (San Diego and Orlando) over its long history, but NXN should move around each year?

With your logic, we should end the NCAA team format at the regional level and just make nationals about the top 40 individuals. Who needs the team race?

Would you really hate the concept of a team national championship if it wasn't Nike sponsoring the event?

wuzthere wrote:

There used to be one national championship, before Nike tried to hijack things.

Yes and that's the way it should stay. The individual format of Footlocker put the attention on the very best runners in the nation.

Which is all the media cares about. Who won the race.

Not what the best team in the nation is.

The sport of high school cross country is not enhanced by a national team competition that forces national class runners on powerful teams to have to choose one over the other.

George Atlas wrote:

Yes and that's the way it should stay. The individual format of Footlocker put the attention on the very best runners in the nation.

Which is all the media cares about. Who won the race.

Not what the best team in the nation is.

The sport of high school cross country is not enhanced by a national team competition that forces national class runners on powerful teams to have to choose one over the other.

Do you feel the same way about NCAA cross country? Why do we care who wins the team title? Maybe because XC is an individual AND team sport!

stripes of a zebra wrote:

Sarcasm is the argument of the weak. Footlocker is the individual championship. It will once again have the runners wishing to vie for that title. If runners feel like they need to choose not to run for the individual championship, that is no fault of FLN.

My writing was satire, not sarcasm, and is a useful tool to point out the failings of bad arguments, like the myopic insistence that FLN has somehow maintained its prestige in the wake of NXN.

The NCAA format is a joke too with all the provisional qualifiers and with 40 teams now making it.

Yeah a high school team championship is great too. Have the top teams have a shot to compete against each other. With easy research 5 people could get together and pick the top 10 teams in the country that would be selected after their season to make a legitimate national championship team race. It could fit in after the State meets and before the Footlocker individual race if they held it one week later.

I don't understand why now 40 teams qualify for NCAA nationals when only 28 used to 25 years ago.

So teams can build their programs by placing 18th at national's?

I think the difference is that the NCAA is very, very different from high school. Take college football, for example. People care an insane amount about how their alma mater or favorite team does, and the individuals on the team are cared about as well. But high school football? No one cares about what team is the best. They might care about which individual is going to be a hit in college.

High school football's answer to NXN and Footlocker is the Army game, which takes something like 80 of the best players around the country, from probably 80 different teams, and putting them on separate "teams." That format is almost exactly like Footlocker. They aren't taking the 16 best teams and doing a tournament. In college, the best teams matter most; in high school, it is the best athletes that anyone cares about. It's the same principle for cross country.

And as to your last point, yes, a great number of people hate Nike, especially given the USATF influence. That's not why l don't like NXN, but I'm sure it is for some.

No, there was nothing "useful" in your post - you just tried to misrepresent the argument that history matters, in an uncreative way. I don't need to defend the national championship, especially not against satire.

stripes of a zebra wrote:

I don't need to defend the national championship, especially not against satire.

That's good, cause you'd have to recognize it first.