ranking cross country

I don't think there is a good way that doesn't involve voting. Times from different courses or even different days on the same course don't really mean much. Scores from meets could be used, but this is problematic too because there aren't very many big meets and there's no way to account for things like injuries or runners being held out.

methodically go through and take the average time of each runner on every team from every race run by the teams (taking the best time instead of the average time from every race for each individual, I've found, doesn't rank teams well in Cross Country), then put that data in strata labeled for every team, next take the average time of the team, probably the top 7 runners, and rank the team by the highest average time to the lowest (I've done that many times before, pre-computers)

or you could vote

You have to weigh the performances of runners on a certain course against runners on another course. Using common opponents, you can roughly extract time differentials between courses.

example:

teams A, B, and C run on course 1.

teams D, E, and F run on course 2.

the next week, teams B, C, D, and E run on course 3.

suppose teams B and C averaged 16 seconds slower per runner on course 3 than on course 1.

teams D and E averaged 4 seconds faster per runner on course 3 than on course 1.

you could make the very rough judgment how good all 6 teams are in comparison to each other by adding 16 seconds to team A's runners' course 1 times, subtracting 4 seconds from team F's runners' course 2 times, and placing them all in the race results from course 3.