Shifter,
It is probably quickest to point you to some of my previous posts of detail on page 4 and page 9 of this thread.
The absolutely crazy times (the competition was absolutely nuts) were due to a bit of perfect storm. Weather was excellent (particularly the first race and half). It was even more excellent at the Southern Showcase in September that you are referring to because the temps and humidity were similar, but even more overcast to hide the sun. A good point of comparison is some of the 2019 events, which were quite a bit warmer. In particular the college races in 2019 were a good bit hotter and more humid to their 2020 counterparts (which were the morning of Southern Showcase this time around). The individual differences between those two college meets are quite telling. As anyone from hot/humid environments knows (and here that means 75F with 100% relative humidity before sunup as a typical summer day), the difference over 3 to 5 miles is significant.
A good illustrator of what field depth on a nice course with a hot pace does are the results from the CIF State XC meet in 2010 (where it was actually a tad drizzly), which were historically deep for Woodward Park. If you merged the D1, 2, and 3 races they possibly would have gotten more wild (slowest winner was 15:00 between those 3). Multiply that 5 fold and that resembles the caliber of the field from the Boys Championship race this past weekend. Similar to what happens at Arcadia in the 3200. Perfect storms are few and far between, but occasionally occur. This past weekend was a fortuitous combination of weather, depth of field, style of race (they got out hot...but not too hot), and energy at the venue.
Lastly, it is important to note that this facility is intended to evolve to the level of prestige of a LaVern Gibson, or an Apalachee Regional Park, or a Wisconsin Zimmer. Hence no expense, no measurement, no feature has been spared. Of course people question the level of insanity from a time perspective at the event in question. Had I not been present, I would have asked "where did they move the starting line to?" based alone on the magnitude of the result (Spoiler alert: start, finish, and turns were in the proper place). But hopefully I have been able to shed some additional detail on the discussion.