NAU wins coin flip to claim national championship. Excuse me for not being impressed

They won based on the rules provided to them.

Agree or disagree with it, but if you know that you may need to win a tie breaker with other teams 1v1, 2v2, etc. then you need to run in a way that gives you that advantage. NAU did that by having those two going out hard and guaranteeing they would have two of those locked up just in case.

OK, you make a good point until the end. You don't really think that their team strategy was for two guys to go out really hard just in case we need a tie breaker, do you? Please say no.

At this level, everyone is red lining.

The tie breaker is fair because everyone knows it going in. But I like the 6th runner tie breaker- they know they potentially play a roll. With this system, if your 6th isn't displacing they're useless.

I go back and forth on the rule. I like both tie breakers for different reasons.

I don’t think sending those two out super hard was purely for the tie breaker, it was, per Mike Smith, the strategy he felt they needed to use to win. However, getting the edge in the tiebreaker is a byproduct of that strategy. At that point they just need to win one out of three for the win.

As big of an NAU fan I am, I do wish it was a 6th man tie breaker.

I don't understand why it isn't scored as a dual to break the tie. That removes everyone and uses the same method.

Thank you for your honesty.

Why? They scored 83 points and had the best top 5 in a year with 4 teams capable of winning. It'd still be a dynasty and bloody impressive for NAU if OK State had won the tiebreaker just like it's a bloody impressive performance for OK State despite losing it.

And also Oklahoma State had an advantage of having the race on their home course. Anywhere else and it wouldn't have come down to a tie breaker. If the tie breaker was 'total time' of all runners added up, NAU wins that tie breaker as well.

According to Astro/semihaze Tuohy never redlines. She could just keep going faster if she wanted.

Rules are rules.

They won according to the rules.

No one cares about your opinion.

While I miss the HS tiebreaker, I disagree that the 6th and 7th runners are useless.

6th place runners matter a ton if you have a deep team. They can make up for a bad day from one of the top 5. Nevada Moreno was NC State's 6th and Brooke Rauber their 7th runner going into the race. Moreno stepped up huge with a 24 and Rauber with 74 when Seymour and Quarzo had off days. Without them, NC State would not have been able to repeat.

It's as if some people think teams force their runners to finish in the same order every meet. They can line up 7 and score 5. They are all equal at the start.

Can we be real that OSU was only that close because it was their home course. They had a huge advantage and still couldn't get it done. Any other course and they are not getting that close to NAU,

I'm still impressed by their win, but I don't believe that the rules were the best for deciding which team had the best performance. I think that using a head-to-head tiebreaker is silly since both teams still scored the same, and thus their overall net performance was still equal. I think the 6th man tiebreaker would have been a better measure of depth (which is the point of having a team race), which obviously would have made OKST the natty champs.

OP definitely doesn't deserve all those downvotes.

If they scored it as a dual they could potentially tie again. I dislike the 6th man as a tie breaker rule however, because if you hypothetically ran a different race, but kept the times of the top 5 runners on the tying teams the exact same, but you changed the amount of other runners in the race, that could change the outcome, so then you’re not awarding the tie breaker to a team that’s “deeper” you’re just potentially rewarding a team who happen to eek out a tiebreaker based on luck of the way OTHER TEAMS’ runners placed. So if there’s a tie, they should score as a dual, if that’s a tie then do head to head.

What if both teams only had 5 runners?

If you want to reward a team for being “deeper” then just make 6 runners score. Tiebreaking based on 6th runner is like rewarding a tie based on who had the best backup quarterback.

It is what it is. If one top 5 OK State runner passed one other runner then they win by one point. At the end of the day it sucks to lose a tiebreaker, but it's just the way it is. As the old saying goes, don't let it come down to a tiebreaker. Win during the race and problem solved.

It would be fun though if the tiebreaker was head to head 100m sprints. All 7 guys line up against another opponent and sprint 100m. The team that wins 4 duals, wins. That would make XC exciting to the casual fan. And very comedic as most of these guys have zero raw speed and are just aerobic monsters who sprint like prepubescent kids.

What is the international standard for XC tie breaking? How do they break ties in the UK or, at World XC Championships, how would they break a tie if Kenya and Ethiopia tied?

Everyone here who points at the 6th man tiebreaker is ignoring the smaller schools that don't have such mighty programs.

So much for "dreams" and all that, instead it's "money."

This thread was started by someone who has some serious issues.

You are not excused.