Rank Every NCAA D1 Conference (Cross Country/Distance Track) (Top 12)

Pac 12 missing Oregon. SEC missing Arkansas.

Pac12 missing Oregon State.

UConn is now in the Big East

<ol>
<li>Pac-12</li>
<li>ACC</li>
<li>Big 10</li>
<li>SEC</li>
<li>West Coast Conference</li>
<li>Big 12</li>
<li>Big Sky</li>
<li>Ivy League</li>
<li>Mountain West</li>
<li>American</li>
<li>Big East</li>
<li>Atlantic-10</li>
</ol>

Best schools for education: Ivy League

Best school for track: SEC

Seems like this could be solved objectively. Just define your constraints.

Is depth from top to bottom the most important?

Is depth through the top ~4-5 teams the most important?

Is this something that could be scored using the national meet using an all star team from each conference?

Patriot league should be in there not the Atlantic10, do they even have a single sub-4 miler?

You got the top 10 right, but there is nothing consistently distinguishing about the A10. I think, by virtue of of some strong teams I would say MAC, MAAC, Patriot League, CUSA and maybe even Summit League, Atlantic Sun, SoCon and Sun Belt are all better than A10...it would depend on criteria. Some of those conferences I think are deeper and some have better top end teams (some are both).

I will give you American, but with Cincinnati leaving and I think Temple probably taking a step back over the next few years, the American is going to resemble what CUSA currently is. CUSA is soon to be a 1 team dominant conference if UTEP and WKU do not start producing consistently vs. MTSU.

I’m a huge ACC homer, but they should not be above the Pac-12, Big 12 or B10.

Historically, there are some great programs in there, especially when you include past Syracuse and Notre Dame teams. Recently, they have been great, but not best conference of the moment.

If you score the 2021 NCAA XC Meet as an... XC meet, with teams competing for their conference and scoring the top three finishers, here are the results:

Men

1. Big 12 - 19

2. Pac 12 - 26

3. ACC - 37

4. SEC - 46

5. WCC - 49

6. BigTen - 57

Women

1. ACC - 20

2. Pac 12 - 21

3. SEC - 33

4. BigTen - 35

5. Big 12 - 43

6. MW - 48

7. Big East - 71

Mountain West is better than the Ivy League. Especially for women and longer distances. You also forgot Colorado State.

*Lists UCLA with top Pac-12 schools*

Calls all SEC schools that beat UCLA head to head "junk schools"

UK, UT, Arkansas, Mizzou

All I know is that Auburn is one of the junk schools in the SEC

why would you only score the top three finishers. i would be interested in this same analysis but with five scorers. maybe even ten scorers too just to see depth

Calling some of the decent SEC schools trash while leaving out the schools in the conference that aren't that good. Someone didn't do their homework

Big Ten is missing Indiana

Did actual research on the quality of each conference at the Division 1 level based on 2021 Cross Country results I took the top 5 scorers from each conference.

*If the conference is not listed, they did not have enough scorers in the top 125 finishers*

An "*" besides the points means they had more than 10 finishers in the top 125

1. ACC- 83 Points*

2. BIG SKY- 84 Points*

3. PAC 12- 98 Points*

4. BIG 12- 101 Points*

5. SEC- 133 Points*

6. WCC- 151 Points

7. BIG 10- 242 Points

8. AAC- 271 Points

9. BIG EAST 294 Points

I think you gotta score deeper than five to get a real sense of the conferences. What if you scored 10? Would it change much?

More than likely wouldn’t change much, outside of the top 6-7 schools there isn’t enough depth for most of the conferences past 7 runners (unless you are just looking at individual teams.

This list was compiled with the top 125 finishers at NCAAs. Past those numbers it’s primarily the back end of the qualified teams.