Footlocker vs. Nike Nationals

STEEN very good idea. Kind of an NCAA style meet.

hey i have an idea lets all cry and complain on a lets run forum!!!this is great for the sport you guys that say it isnt are wrong...nike is doing exactly what we want!!!pumping money into our sport...you complained when they pumped money into football and basketball!!!and now even when they put money into our sport and there roots as a company you still f***ing complain...for gods sake wake up...almost every kid loves to wear nike shit and high school kids are the easiest to effect with advertising(i.e ciggerattes) for them to use the NCAA system would make it truly exciting you would get all you need all the top indv. would get to run and the top teams it is true people wanna see there kids go to nationals even if they are the 7th kid on the team...and nike did a great job of implmenting regionals this year to take the bias away from the selection they let the teams prove how good they were!!against eachother....and no footlocker does not support NTN and that is exactly why Ben Johnson gets screwed and he is the only 1 every1 else was able to run bot NTN and Fotlocker reg.

all i have to say is that we should all get behind this new system everything needs change footlocker/kinney had a great run at the top but the new age of team battles is coming so lets just let it go the NCAA format

....what they should do is have there 15-20 selected/invited teams run in 1 race as just teams then you have a footlocker type meet the same day top 8 individuals from the seeded section go then top 2 teams get automatic births and all those slow as f*** kids get to run too....look its that simple and these meets would have a shitload of support behind them!!!

what do you think???

if only footlocker wasnt so darn stubborn, change is GOOD!!

opps didnt mean to post it twice

Back in the day, dual meets were the heart and sole of most college XC & track programs. Now, they're almost obsolete, as teams run invitationals and pre-Nats in search of qualifying times (track) or regional rankings (XC).

Now NTN has brought this mentality to HS. Teams who think they have a shot at qualifying basically ignore their league and even state competition in quest of the holy grail of a plane ride to Oregon. There is a team in CT that has basically done just that - their top runners have never won their state or even league championship b/c they were "training through" those meets, which, IMO, kind of cheapens the victories of those who did win.

While NTN might be good for a very small number of elite teams, I think in the end it is bad for the overall health of the sport.

I think my whole problem with NTN is that it comes down to economics. Look at the list of teams at NTN (and NTN regionals). Lots of upper-middle class suburban schools and private schools. Schools with the resources to fly to regionals to automatically qualify or travel to large out of state meets for the chance to earn an "at large" berth. Fundraising is hard at smaller school in poorer communities when you have to pay for 8 athletes plus coaches and parents to fly to a post season meet. I kow my team in high school wouldn't have been able to travel to NTN regionals, even though we were two-time state champs.

I think Footlocker is more entertaining and important, but NTN is great too. NTN is probably better for the sport because it probably motivates more HS runners since only the elite can make it to FLN.

The thing I hate about the two is how they interfere with eachother. I don't have the solution (I really haven't even thought about HS xc for two years), but they really do need to figure out a different way to go about things. Combining the two is a good idea I suppose, though I kind of like the simplicity of the 40 best runners in the nation competing against one another.

It's unfortunate that Michigan and Wisconsin teams cannot participate in NTN, but it's still better, in my opinion, that not having a national team race. At one point, certain states didn't allow their athletes to run in Foot Locker meets, so were those years also not a true race of all the best runners in the country?

Some kids had to choose between NTN and FL this year, so does that mean that FL "is not a true race of all the best" individuals this year?

I think you'd be hard to press to argue that this year's NTN didn't bring the top teams together and decide a national champion.

Footlocker works because it is a national meet about individuals and NOT about the HS and HS team. The issue that is different between HS and college is that in college you are taking a small percentage of the athletes from around the country and recruiting them. The numbers work fine, whereas with a team you have to have 7 top runners from the same small geographical region without [!?!?] recruitment. The test of which school in the country has the best locational factors and luck is dispensed with.

Further, it is one thing to be pushing the top runner or two in the state in the FL case. However with teams you have a number of teams in the state/region with the result that the push goes way down with the biggest pressure on the #5/6/7 runners who are not in the same category and should probably not be pushed so hard.

I can see why some like the Team champs; people make some reasonable points. However, I am not persuaded.

Having a national championship like NTN is allowing American distance runners to dominate the rest of the world. This is the problem with football and basketball and why none of the best football or basketball players are from the United States. It is importnant to have a team national championship in these sports or the NFL will continue to be dominated by foreigners.

Long live Footlocker!

It is clear from the results at NTN that very few top caliber athletes were present, the top three boys ran away with the race and at least two fo those will be at Footlocker.

On the girls side i think only Fllod will be at Footlocker, but few of the top girls there would have qualified anyways, maybe Roecker.

Being that NTN was a team championship, I don't think it's surprising that very few top caliber athletes were present, although I would think that many of the guys in the top 20 will be running in college next year. In a year or two, we'll be seeing both top teams and individuals competing in the same race in Portland. It's going to happen, so embrace it!!! :)

Davidson from Saratoga was another likely candidate to make FL finals had there not been a conflict. Also, CJ Brown from Southlake-Carroll was 5th at NTN, 3rd at FL South. There was another 10 finishers within 12 seconds of him, so there were definitely some strong kids running at NTN.

Davidson would not have made it this year, she was soundly beaten by Lipari at the NY fed. meet and Roecker at the NY NTN meet. Not to mention 6th at Manhattan. Still a good runner, but seems to be regressing as Toga girls tend to do.

Duals first of all were an attempt to americanize cross country. Turn it into something like baseball and football with some regular season games. The truth of the matter is that the only races that really matter are the championships be them districts, state, or nationals. I'm glad duals are losing their importance. It's the invites and state that really matter.

In running the best runners are the ones who know when to peak.

Also NTN and footlocker is adding to the quality of cross country as a spectator sport. It's helping Dyestat, Flotrack, Letsrun by getting the high schoolers involved, making it a real professional sport and making kids say wow i want to be Alan Webb instead of Michael Vick or Allen Iverson

I might hold a minority opinion here, but I dislike NTN because it is a competition of coaches and school size more than anything else. Every state has their well established big-school and/or magnet school programs, and the kids in these programs already enjoy all the benefits of growing up in the right district at the state level.

Honestly! Who cares if Saratoga Springs or York win yet another free trip to a national meet? Not me. NTN is a case of the rich getting richer.

I MUCH prefer Footlocker - and the team element: S, W, MW, NE.

saursoor wrote:

leaping lanny wrote:

I prefer Footlocker because of tradition, but also because I don't like Nike or the whole process of NTN.

I have to say, there's something that irritates me about getting the best high school teams in the nation (and east africa) together and making them sit through a presentation on footwear that's little more than a marketing pitch.

Here is what I meant by "the whole process of NTN" :

-The teams are not running under their school names

-It isn't the best teams in the nation---Not all states allow teams to go, teams choose not to go or can't afford to go, etc.

-The season rankings are bogus. Teams that are clearly not even the best teams in their state have been ranked, while several better teams remain unranked just because they don't attend meets that receive attention on dyestat.

-It lengthens the season and some idiot coaches might decide to peak in hopes for a good showing at 'nationals' instead of peaking for their state championship meet.

The one positive thing I can say about NTN is the course for nationals has looked to be great. I love real cross country courses and not the grass track meets(or in footlocker west's case, a road race).

This post points out the huge difference between college and HS team races. In the NCAAs, how many of the top 50 runners are not teams? In HS almost none of the top runners are on teams. The team title is not the same kind of race. You need to get to state-level teams, except some states are much bigger, so you use area teams. However, FL does have area teams. So, it has the right individuals and it draws the appropriate level of teams.

my opinion wrote:

Being that NTN was a team championship, I don't think it's surprising that very few top caliber athletes were present, although I would think that many of the guys in the top 20 will be running in college next year. In a year or two, we'll be seeing both top teams and individuals competing in the same race in Portland. It's going to happen, so embrace it!!! :)

Davidson from Saratoga was another likely candidate to make FL finals had there not been a conflict. Also, CJ Brown from Southlake-Carroll was 5th at NTN, 3rd at FL South. There was another 10 finishers within 12 seconds of him, so there were definitely some strong kids running at NTN.

britt.,., wrote:

Davidson would not have made it this year, she was soundly beaten by Lipari at the NY fed. meet and Roecker at the NY NTN meet. Not to mention 6th at Manhattan. Still a good runner, but seems to be regressing as Toga girls tend to do.

Davidson gave up the chance to qualify for Footlocker for her team but I wouldn't presume she couldn't have. Sure she had a bad race at Manhattan but then turned around and ran 17:00 (#4 all time and faster than many footlocker finalists from section 2 have run). This was also a course PR so I'm not sure about regressing. At NTN she finished about 3 seconds back of All American Flood beating Georgia Griffin who was 2nd at Manhattan. Your arguements could also apply to Suffern's Shelby Greany who finished behind Davidson at NYSPHSAA where she won and at Feds. She managed to qualify for FL nationals so I wouldn't presume Roecker and Davidson couldn't have.