So painful. And SO RoJo/Gault in that it took an idea that they were fired up about to the extreme, wholly ignoring the legitimate points made in opposition to it in this fairly thoughtful thread.
Point One: I and others who have followed UP for 20 years (have you Gault?) have pointed out that Conner has NEVER prioritized WCCs, and has developed a system that has worked for him that has focused on Regionals. In the past, when his team didnt AQ, he has needed those points at Regionals that other teams can get at their conference meets. BYU only joined the WCC a few years ago, and since then he has ran some of his bigger guys with more frequency, but it has never been a priority. Conner said as much in the Wisco interview, that he wasn't a conference guy. There is a legitimate reason for this that Gault simply does not address.
Point Two: Gault tries to compare winning the WCC to winning Heps or Pac12s, saying that winning a conference should mean something. Others have said this on the thread but it bears repeating: those are apples to oranges comparisons. Heps has tradition that the WCC does not. Pac12s or Big10s are Power5 conference titles for schools with a big time athletic department. If Gonzaga or SFU won WCCs I'm sure they would be thrilled, but Portland and the rest of the schools in the WCC have entirely different goals and expectations of success for the season comparatively. (Also, BYU only joined in the last few years, and is a totally different school and athletic program than the rest of the schools in the WCC. Maybe if Tyson gets Gonzaga good enough, Conner may change, but I bet he and the other WCC athletic departments view losing to a football-funded program at BYU a little differently than losing to Saint Mary's.) The better comparison is looking at William and Mary in the late 90s and 2000s. They were consistently a top 15/20 program but could walk through the CAA meet, just like Portland always could. Or look at Iona. How much do conference titles matter to schools where (1) the conference is small and has little by way of tradition and (2) the school has much bigger fish to fry than the other schools in the conference? Probably not as much as Gault would like the one time he pays attention to the WCC meet and Portland's approach to it.
By way of example, I won a CAA conference title in rowing. It's a cool thing to tell people but those people are always WAY more impressed than they should be. I know that that race wasnt that big of a deal and that the competition wasnt nearly as great as races that our boat didnt medal in or didnt make the finals in or didnt qualify for. That race was on our calendar and we raced it and won it, but it wasnt one of the races that really meant something as a test of our boat or something that would enshrine our boat in annals of the conference's history. It was something we did and we trained through. I imagine thats the approach Conner and Gibby and Mick took towards conferences now and back in the day.
Now that this one time Portland and BYU are both ranked in the top 5 Conner should be expected to change his approach (that he has had for decades generally AND that he has been putting into place and executing for this season specifically)? Yes it might make for a more fun Friday afternoon for those of us watching online, this one time. But next year, if both teams are ranked in the 20s, are we going to get this same editorial? Conner has a system that works for his kids and the parameters and expectations of his program. It's been successful for 20+ years and he's arguably the best coach in the country, all things considered. And what really is going to make cross country gain in popularity, anyway, is these teams going after it the Monday before Thanksgiving, at full strength, ready to go, however their coaches feel is best to get them there.