why no NCAA 'true' team track regional/national?

My high school won a state championship with 2 standouts several years ago, so it's not just the collegiate level where track is an individual sport. I think that's why a lot of runners (atleast on my teams) like cross a lot more, because there was a greater focus on the team than just your top 1 or 2 runners.

bump?

If everybody on a team from say a Conference Championship team was allowed to compete at a Regionals. or so forth from regionals to nationals, it would not be a competition of who has the greatest athletes, but who has the most good athletes.

Do we want to emphasize the 6th/7th/8th place points or the top few in each event?

Its all how you look at it.

And what do you do with a really great athlete on a really bad team? Do you only accept a few of them like Cross Country? Do we give more to the good athlete on a huge team or a great athlete on a small team?

I like how it is now. Gives smaller schools a chance against Texas', and Stanford's, and Oregon's.

It's not just the small schools. Face reality here: Track is about top peformances. Nobody cares who finished 8th in the Olympics. In this year's D1 NCCA's, USC got 30 of 33 points from just 3 people. Similiar situations at Arkansas, where Tyson Gay and Wallace Spearmon were responsible for almost half of their 60 points, and also at BYU.

That's simply the way you win nationally. You need those 8 and 10 point scores if you intend to be in the top 10. Look at Oregon this year: They won the Pac-10 "championship," but only 3rd in the conference at nationals.

well, I was assuming there would be two separate national meets--one for individuals and one for teams, like in high school.

and I always saw a good track team as one that could do well in multiple event-types. it's not just about who can have the most 5th-8th place scorers, but who can field the most events with quality athletes.

to win a national championship with just a couple sprinters or something seems dumb to me...track & field is supposed to be about the whole athletic "picture", not just one or two event-types.

track nats wrote:

well, I was assuming there would be two separate national meets--one for individuals and one for teams, like in high school.

Yes, let's add more races to the schedule so athletes can be more burned out for big (non NCAA) meets.

Coach Mac would love this idea - he already hates regionals and your talking about adding 2-3 more meets? Do you expect 10k guys and decathletes to be able to do their best if they have to go 5-6 times a year? Come on now. This is the worst idea ever.

it would only be one extra race...the current regional meet is only for division I, and even so, it could be eliminated under this system. similarly, people could skip out of other meets since this would represent another opportunity to qualify.