What's better than NTN? - Let me tell ya....

It's coming. Nike will stage a NCAA-style team and individual meet once Foot Locker falls apart without the Nike sponsorship $$$, vision and organization. State meet--regionals--Nike National Meet will be the eventual face of HS cross, like it or not.

You do realize Foot Locker is a giant corporation that can support their own meet if they want. They'll find another shoe sponsor next year, and while that company may not dish out the cool million Nike did, even half of that would be well worth it (the same amount Adidas paid before Nike stepped in). Foot Locker is going to be around for a long while still.

That would be interesting, but there would be 50 teams in the meet, having some 350 runners is excessive. Why would anyone care for teams from Hawaii or Rhode Island there? And the races would be stacked in favor of schools like California, Texas, and New York. But it would be intriguing.

This year it would be CO FTW with CA 2nd and VA third. CO is stacked right now.

RUS wrote:

You do realize Foot Locker is a giant corporation that can support their own meet if they want. They'll find another shoe sponsor next year, and while that company may not dish out the cool million Nike did, even half of that would be well worth it (the same amount Adidas paid before Nike stepped in). Foot Locker is going to be around for a long while still.

Foot Locker and Nike are incredibly close business partners, even if its a love/hate relationship. I'd be shocked if they didn't work out a single championship solution that was in the best interest of the sport. I really don't think that having a national level HS meet means nearly as much to FTL as it does to Nike.

You are wrong then. FL Nationals means just as much to the Foot Locker gang as NTN means to Nike. They may not have the same youthful energy NTN has, but FLN has been around for nearly 30 years. I hope they somehow find a way to work together, but it doesn't look good. Both entities will be around for a few more years each.

(cough) read the whole post (cough)

RUS wrote:

You are wrong then. FL Nationals means just as much to the Foot Locker gang as NTN means to Nike. They may not have the same youthful energy NTN has, but FLN has been around for nearly 30 years. I hope they somehow find a way to work together, but it doesn't look good. Both entities will be around for a few more years each.

Foot Locker has only been the title sponsor of Nationals for 15 years, taking over from Kinney after 1992. But that's beside the point. The point is that FTL and Nike work together in an incredibly close relationship. There are many people at Nike (and other shoe companies) whose full-time job is to focus on their Foot Locker business. While it's a close relationship, it also can be a tense relationship.

It's also clear that the current set up of two different national championships is not in the best interests of the sport. Which means that it is not in the best interests of either title sponsor. Since there's no reason that there couldn't be one single championship besides the stubborness of Nike and Foot Locker, my sense is that a one championship solution will be reached. And when you have two parties being stubborn, the more determined one ususally wins. In this case that will be Nike. It may take a couple of years, but I'd be shocked if the FLN still exists in its current form in 5 years.

I have gone to Footlocker Northeast Regionals for a few years. It was different this year without Nike. They weren't selling as much merchandise and there was no shoe company representation (as in the Nike Van).

The fields were smaller. There were only 76 9th grade girls for example.

That said, it was still a great meet. It is obviously a group of kids who love cross-country.

I had some new kids go this year and they (and their parents) loved it.

I would like to see a combined race for nationals. Qualifying would be the issue. They would have to pick teams and individuals at the same time- like NY picks its State Meet teams/individuals.

Finding courses that would support such large fields would be tough.

speaking of new york...

theres a federation meet which would make it easy to pick the top 7 runners in the state - rather than trying to select from 2, 3, 4, or 5 divisions.

Kinney and Footlocker are/were the same company.

Nike has it in their sights to kill FootLocker nationals. It's an objective. They started with the heavy team emphasis, but now they've pulled FootLock qualifiers for Western division kids that qualify for NTN, and I'm sure at some point soon NTN will introduce individual, at-large berths, too.

mobile9 wrote:

They started with the heavy team emphasis, but now they've pulled FootLock qualifiers for Western division kids that qualify for NTN,

Can you explain that.

And the individual qualifiers are closer than you think:

you all are over complicating this selection of 7 runners...

Have huge regional meets...Have about 12 different regions with 4 different states in each. The top 4 team time totals from each state meets are eligible to go. In the case of separate divisions, they're all (as far as I'm aware) run on the same course on the same day. So you just total up team times. Yes, this will be an advantage to teams in larger, more competitive divisions, but I look at it like this. It's not like all 5 guys on teams in the smaller divisions would have run 30 seconds faster. Usually only the front guys in the smaller divisions can say they would have been faster in the big race. Maybe give the small schools a 20-30 second handicap since their front one or two might have been able to cruise.

So top 4 team time totals from each state advance to regional. In addition, top 20 individual times from all divisions advance to regional. Any finisher in top 3 of their division advances regardless of time.

So a state with as many as 5 divisions might send 60 kids total. Realistically, most states don't have 5 divisions, and alot of those top guys will be on top teams, so you're really looking at about 45 guys per state. This leads to regional fields of around 180-240 kids. Totally manageable.

When you get to the regional, everyone runs for their own HS team or club, whatever. But they score it two ways. They score it as teams, and as states.

At the regional, top two teams/clubs advance, and the top 7 from the top 2 states, regardless of whether they're on an advancing team or not, also advance. Also top 2 individuals, regardless of team or state. That's a max of 30 kids per region, making the national field a max of 360 kids. Realistically, most of the top guys will be on advancing teams or states, and you'll be looking at about 24 kids per region, making the field around 288 kids strong.

A large national race, but it will encompass everything. At nationals you score it individually, by HS/club team, and by state. It's a system that makes it easy for the best to get to the regional, but they have to run well to get to the big show. It allows you to declare who's the best HS team, just as NTN does now. It allows you to determine top overall runner, just as FTL does now. And it determines the top state, which currently we have no good way of doing. Right now, comparing FTL regional results is the only good way we have of measuring states, but not all the top guys run. Usually only half of the all staters from each state run.

The hardest part of the system will be selecting a site that will suit everyone. It needs to be able to handle a large field, and have tough conditions that don't obviously favor one region. There will always be disputes about this, and no system will be perfect, but at least try to be as fair as possible.

The numbers I suggest could be changed around a little bit (maybe make selection even harder to make the national field smaller), but honestly, if we had a regional system that resulted in a national championship that would meet the criteria I described, isn't that about everyone's dream? If only Nike and Footlocker or whoever could work together to make it happen.

like an above poster said, in NYS we have a federations meet, which is a week after the state meet. The state meet is run to declare a winner within each class. Then all the winning teams, are automatically given a spot to feds. A coaches meeting held right after the state meet selects the remaining teams and individuals given at-large bid style entries to the meet. This would ensure the best team and individual competition and would prevent a top athlete on a good team from having to pick between qualifying for a team or individual national championship.

what does this mean wrote:

mobile9 wrote:

They started with the heavy team emphasis, but now they've pulled FootLock qualifiers for Western division kids that qualify for NTN,

Can you explain that.

And the individual qualifiers are closer than you think:

http://talk.dyestat.com/showthread.php?t=75971

NTN is the same day as Footlocker West (the weekend after the CA State meet). There's obviously a conflict there for kids in the western region who are studs (and want to qualify for FL) but are also on very competetive teams (who want to run NTN). To address this, as late as last year Nike worked out a deal such that the top two individual kids at NTN from the western region would be awarded berths to the Footlocker final, so that kids from the western division had a chance to both run NTN and qualify for FL.

As of this year, this is no longer the case: kids in the west muct chose to make NTN their last postseason race --or-- try to qualify for FL individually.

And no shock that the individual at-large berths are coming from NTN.

wejo wrote:

Kinney and Footlocker are/were the same company.

Kinney and Foot Locker were both subsidiaries of Ventor Group. Kinney has been gone for years. But they operated as two separate companies back in the day.

Just a clarification- all of the Class team winners do not go to the NY Fed Meet.

They merge the results and the top 5 go. If you are a team class winnner and are in the top 9 or 10 in the merged results, you go.

Individual champions get an auto bid.

As for the rest of the teams:

NY has 4 "divisions"- NYSPHSAA, PSAL, CHSAA, AAIS.

NYSPHSAA gets 16 teams, the others get the other 11 teams.

They basically have the 16 best teams plus 11 teams. On occasion teams from the other divisions are competitive. Usually, the 16 NYSPHAA teams are at the top of the Fed Meet.

Check out

www.tullyrunners.com

for a link to the rules for selecting the Fed Meet.

It's a great meet, but more teams from NYSPHSAA have to be added.

top 5 runners from each state = 250 runners

top 4 runners from each state = 200 runers

those numbers look like they're more do-able. ncaa's has 200+ runners running and its a longer distance(does that make it easier or harder? they probably get strung out more). top 5 runners would be fine, i would think, but then if anyone screwed up, there goes their team comp. but they could score the top 4 runners instead. you could even combine certain states until a minimum number was met(like add states like nevada and montana together until they meet 10,000,000 in combined state pop., then take the top 5-7 runners from the states that were combined. that seems more fair than letting 39,000,000 people strong california select its cream of the crop and pit them against nevada's small porportions.