Michigan State 3rd in the Great Lakes??
Georgia 8th. rofl
those polls are comical
After as bad as they ran at App, they should be 10th.
Can someone explain how teams qualify for nationals?
How many teams make it out of a conference to compete in the regional meets and how many regional teams make it to nationals?
Are these the same regions that teams compete in for nationals?
every team is eligible to run the regional championship. The top two teams from every regional championship are automatic qualifiers to the nationals.
Then, the third and fourth place teams from every regional championship go "on the bubble" for at large selection to nationals. At large teams are selected objectively by the following process.
Every bubble team gets one point for every team they have beaten(after September 22nd) that is already in the national meet. Multiple points can be scored for beating the same team multiple times (after September 22nd).
The bubble team with the most of these at large points is the first of 13 "at large" teams added to the national meet. The fifth place team from the region of the newly added at large team then moves "onto the bubble." All remaining bubble teams are then given additional points for any victories they have over the newly added at large team and the process is repeated until the 13 at large spots have been filled.
There are a few other rules (the push rule, etc) that complicate the matter a bit but that is the basic process.
The push rule says that if, for example, one bubble team (3rd place) in a region does not have enough at large points to move into the championship, nor will it at any other point in later iterations, but the team that finished directly behind it (4th place) does, the fourth place team "pushes" the third place team into the championship. This push rule can be used only one time per region and other bubble teams do not get points for beating a team that is pushed into nationals.
yes..these are the regions that compete for nationals.
Can you believe Wisconsin is #1 in the GL ?
God, no! what a travesty
Can the "push rule" wind up pushing a 14th at large team into the national meet? Or is the team that finished directly ahead of the bubble team behind them that got in kept out of nationals if the team behind them gets the last at large spot?
Ha ha, Lamar already spanked those Longhorns to shake up the South Central.
"yes..these are the regions that compete for nationals."
And yes, it is well known that the regions are not all balanced, as the four T&F regions are not balanced, although that is more complicated because they are unbalanced in different ways for sprints/throws/distances. [I have NO quibble with the nice description above.]
no the push rule cannot be used for the 14th at large team to push in the 13th....Once there are 30 teams in the meet, the push rule cannot be used.
Oh man, check out San Francisco in 15th... Guess there's only so many Pac-10 teams. Still, pretty cool for them.
This is all fine and interesting, but... when do we see national rankings???
Hope the west region doesn’t have 7 at large teams like last year.
Heck Lamar could have beat the bottom half of the west at large.
I thought Georgia beat Tennessee at the first meet of the year. Why would Tennessee be ranked so much higher? Oh, wait a minute, who ranks these teams? The Florida coach.
The rankings aren't all that valid quite yet since so few of these teams have actually competed with full squads yet, or against other top teams. Stop freaking out!
Northeast Region pre-season top 3 same as top 3 finish last year at regionals. Cuse is gonna knock out Providence for that second auto qualifier this year though! Go Orange!
when will the new(er) rankings come out?
Not sure about regionals, but competition considered for the National Poll does not begin until September 29.