Do the people who actually run NCAA XC care that the sport is underhwelming?

How many? Teams will jog a dual if that is what is required.

I have a feeling if you're pushed out there, you're probably going to at least run it and run it semi-hard. Maybe you'll hold back a little at the end like Stanford's front runners did at the West regional meet.

Why would the athletes care? Seems like a sweet deal to me - only perform 3-4 times per season in exchange for a substantial reduction in the costs of your college education. Not a lot of missed class time or substantial travel. Won't have a broken body or a diseased brain in 20 years. Unless you are a narcissist or need outside validation, who cares about fan support and popularity? Unless you are talented enough to turn pro, you are turning to some form of paid work upon graduation. It is a means to an end. Why work any harder than you have to because a small cadre of anonymous fans requires more entertainment options?

I think it is at least a decent question to ask. There does seem to be a big drop off between the number of meets most HS teams do vs the number of meets collegiates do (but I don't know for sure). A main driver would be what is the optimal number of meets to race the best at the end. You're going to have conference, regionals, and nationals (for 32). So, if it were determined that 6 meets would be the optimal number, then you'd have everyone doing 3 meets outside of these. You probably already have many teams doing that, no?

There were too many top teams at Nuttycombe this year, they could have separated it into four great meets and added some other good teams.

While that was awesome to watch, there should be high level meets every week.

There was talk at the coaches conventions years ago about having a system that not only awarded points for wins, but also deducted points for losses. This type of system, combined with a minimum number of meets and no designation of “B“ teams would go along way.

No nobody cares! Get over it. It's been this way for 50 plus years. How old are you? As a past NCAA champion, my own Dad used to say the same thing----and he was right!!!! He still supported me and was and my endeavors, but he never sugar coated anything. Great lesson to learn growing up.

Look my daughter runs on a top 10 team and only traveled to the above mentioned meets and still expressed how hard it was to keep up in all her classes. Being an upper class man and being in a rigorous major it takes a toll to travel so much on top of the rigors of daily sometimes double practices, weights, PT, etc.

for example she missed Tuesday - Friday of classes during nationals week.
yea I know sports like basketball travel A LOT more. Kudos to those athletes for making it work. Very very impressive

Teams should have less control of their scheduling. Right now teams don’t finalize their schedule until they know where other teams are. NCAA should require one or two meets per year that they have to go to that counts towards postseason positioning, that way they have to show up and they can choose where to go the rest of the year.

That is really important to consider and didn't think of that.
They do a few useless dual meets against bottom teams.
If say, rather than doing a some dual meet against Appalachian State, N Florida and Lipscomb, you attend the Roy Griak invitational, it would make that invitational more exciting

A couple counterpoints.

1 I would imagine athletes love their sport and love racing. I would imagine a basketball player or a hockey player would be upset about not getting to play their sport that often.
2 This isn't football with concussions. Most of the injuries you get in running don't last with you for life

I think we are on to something. Every team should have one required meet in September and one in early October. The results count towards qualifying for nationals. Call them pre-regionals, but mix up the teams so that not all are from the same region. Pre-nationals could be one of the pre-regionals, but with some assigned teams. The conference meets could also have some significance.

That means there would be four required meets where they need to perform: 2 pre-regionals, conference and regionals. The teams could do what they want the rest of the season. Or for the chronically tepid people here worried about change, just have one pre-regional required and make the conference meets the other pre-regional.

This would help solve a lot of the issues people are concerned about. Pre-regionals weekend would be the biggest sports story of the week, with multiple significant races across the country. Or spread it over two weeks in September and gin up a lot of early-season interest in cross country throughout the week.

Let the nay-sayers have at it, but don't pretend this is an iron-clad proposal, of course things can be changed around.

Actually they should race less. Regionals and nationals should be the only two races for both XC and track. Indoor track shouldn’t exist. Everything else takes away from training and studying.

I didn’t like racing every week in highschool. Every 2-3 weeks gives time to be ready to bring it mentally, and enough time to train between meets to actually see adaptation.

I thought we were trying to increase the popularity of the sport, not coddle athletes and never let the public see them.