The best D-I X-C programs ever, using simple math?

This ranking seems like a one trick pony. How about incorporating other inputs...graduation rates, quality of facilities, longevity of coaching staff?

Hi Rick. I'm the primary author of the rankings. The factors you cite are interesting, but a little hard to quantify. (Hell, getting the data just to rank the schools based on performance over the last 50 years was hard enough.)

I dunno whether the overall experience for a runner is better at Wisconsin or Oregon or Fairleigh Dickinson for that matter; the goal here was to quantitatively determine which schools had the most success.

~RM

Faster Than Forty

Looks to me like you would have gotten essentially the same list in virtually the same order just using "Total NCAA Appearances".

Yes and no. We had some debate -- and I open this debate up to the LR community as well -- about how we awarded composite points (trying to account for changes in the meet structure, coaching/technology advances in recent years, etc.)

At the top of the list the rankings are strongly corollary to number of appearances; as you scroll down that changes (although, I admit, not dramatically).

One big question we had -- and I confess I'm not sure we really solved it -- was, "Is one NCAA win worth more than three fifth-place finishes?" (Or something similar.)

In the 2000s, Wisco handily beats Arkansas most of the time. In the 19802 and 1990s that trend was reversed, then in the 1970s Wisco was on top again. But in our scoring Wisco wins the overall ranking by 300pts, which is actually a lot, the way this scale was devised.

~RM

I have generated a revised ranking mechanism that allows for selecting different weightings on importance of finish. I sent a reply back but if you do not get it go to the Track and Field News site and start a thread and send me a PM (I use the same handle). My mechanism is not 'different', just generalized, so that when you pick a weighting value you get your current setup but you can also change the weighting in a single cell to alter the results. I also added in different intervals back from the present.

In the 1980's Wisconsin and Arkansas were pretty much dead even in cross country. Both won three NCAA team titles. In fact in 1983 WIsconsis was second and the winner UTEP was disqualified so you can argue Wisconsin was the better program in the 1980's.. Wisconsin had three titles, one runner-up. two third place finishes, and one 4th place finish.

In the 1990's of course Arkansas dominated. Wisconsin had several second place finishes but no titles. And only one 2000-2010.

Nice! Manhattan cracks the top 100.

So, develop your own ranking function. It indicates that UTEP has not been there consistently across the years.

When I rank teams with much greater weight on finishing level I get this for a rather strong weighting of finish place (31 gets you same as missing the cut). I HAVE NOT CHECKED MY IMPLEMENTATION FULLY AND MAY HAVE MISTAKES, BUT i WANT TO GET THIS OUT THERE QUICKLY.

School 2010-1961 2010-1971 2010-1981 2010-1991 2010-2001

Wisconsin 1 1 1 1 1

Colorado 4 4 3 2 3

Arkansas 2 2 2 3 5

Oregon 3 3 4 5 6

Providence 5 5 7 13 15

Tennessee 14 16 20 36 62

Georgetown 11 9 11 11 10

Villanova 7 19 19 16 18

BYU 8 11 16 15 9

Michigan 12 8 9 10 22

Penn State 16 18 26 38 61

Notre Dame 10 13 8 9 12

Arizona 15 10 14 17 32

William & Mary 20 21 18 14 11

Texas 22 22 17 21 17

Northern AZ 9 7 6 6 7

Iowa State 19 15 15 19 40

Oklahoma State 13 12 12 7 8

Minnesota 26 28 24 22 19

Kansas 28 40 37 39 41

NC State 17 14 10 12 14

UTEP 18 20 35 45 35

Indiana 24 25 36 31 24

Stanford 6 6 5 4 2

"Winning should count for more than simply getting in."

Agreed -- and per our model it does... Reread the methodology at:

http://www.fasterthanforty.com/the-fairest-of-all-time-historical-ncaa-cross-country-rankings/

in the FAQs to get an idea of how we did it. Now, what I think you're really asking/saying is, "Winning should count X-times more than just getting in..." But you don't offer what 'X' is. I think that's what 26mi235 is getting at with his ability to vary the weighting -- but I haven't had time to check his work yet. I will and hopefully update the Faster Than Forty site appropriately at some point soon.

Or you're just hatin' for the sake of hatin'... That's fine too. That's what these boards are for.

In either case, as long as we rank each school according to the same criteria, which we did, the rankings are 'fair'.

Fair enough... no sarcasm intended, how would you weight them?

And on further thought, UTEP got dinged more because their successes came so long ago -- and the model rewards recent performance more. I'm a co-author, and even I'm torn about that. On one hand it makes perfect sense: more schools, more parity in terms of coaching, a more "international" field (as opposed to a handful of schools that specialized in imports back in the day... On the other hand, it hurts great one-time performances like '93 when Arkansas put 5 guys in the top 15.

All food for thought.

Interesting stuff. There is no right or wrong answer, but this seems to be a good attempt. I can understand how people can disagree about the weighting, but for those being critical keep in mind it is always easier to nit-pick individual components of someting like this than to come up with a whole system on your own that actually generates better results.

Explain how Georgetown is ranked so much higher than Stanford? How many top 3 or top 5 finishes has Georgetown ever had? Where did that come from for them to get rated so high?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot wrote:

Which is supposedly "fair" how?

RMiller wrote:

even I'm torn about that. On one hand it makes perfect sense: more schools, more parity in terms of coaching, a more "international" field (as opposed to a handful of schools that specialized in imports back in the day... On the other hand, it hurts great one-time performances like '93 when Arkansas put 5 guys in the top 15.

break it up wrote:

Explain how Georgetown is ranked so much higher than Stanford? How many top 3 or top 5 finishes has Georgetown ever had? Where did that come from for them to get rated so high?

I'm not the guy but my reading of those rankings has Stanford WAY ahead of Georgetown.

Ignore the position in the list - just look at the numbers (these are the rankings).

I was responding to 26mi235. His rankings.

break it up wrote:

I was responding to 26mi235. His rankings.

So after someone told you the answer you still did not get it?

Georgetown 11 9 11 11 10

Stanford 6 6 5 4 2

In each of the five intervals (50 years, 40, ..) Stanford has a higher ranking than Georgetown, right. The last number is for the most recent 10-year interval and Stanford ranks second using the weighting scheme mentioned there. (2 vs 10), from 1991-2010 Stanford gets a 4 and Georgetown gets 11), etc.

Those that have been complaining have not yet indicated how they would do the weighting, so it seems like a rather hollow complaint. Since you can go get the spreadsheet you can go look exactly how the model is put together.

My method would be to assign every team over the last 40 years (When you had to qualify) one point for every appearance. Then assign another point for top 15. Add another point for each higher placing (therefore a win would garner 17 points). Add it all up and there you go.

That scheme works in my generalized model but I do not have the spreadsheet here so I cannot run that variant. I think that it places too much on being in the top 15 and too little below -- that is, it is a piecewise linear function with no real reason why it is identical to be in 15th as 31st and then switch but leave a regime where improving from 15 to 14 is as valuable as improving from 5 to 4 or 2 to 1. Can you discuss what you are trying to capture in terms of the effects?By the way, in the various parametric variations that I tried, the ones that go the furthest in the direction of BIU [see previous post with alternative ranking] improved the standing of schools like Stanford but did not alter much the ranking between Wisconsin, Colorado, and Arkansas.

break it up wrote:

My method would be to assign every team over the last 40 years (When you had to qualify) one point for every appearance. Then assign another point for top 15. Add another point for each higher placing (therefore a win would garner 17 points). Add it all up and there you go.