You know what, when they were ramping up this whole thing, taking on FLN and all, Nike needed a gimmick--or at least felt they did.
Mud was a great gimmick (Remember the "Get Your Mud On" slogan?), and they had the course that could produce it on a fairly reliable basis. Mud would make this their signature event.
Ever since, they've played up the mud factor. And, in a couple of those years (this year included), the mud got really out of control.
It would be nice if Nike would say, "You know what, we have the organizational upper hand now, we don't really need this much mud. In fact, it's costing us more than its gaining us in the PR game. People know we're not the meet to come to if you want to take your uniform off just as unspotted as when you put it on, but maybe we don't need the albatross of the Portland Meadows Swamp hanging around our neck any longer."
I'm not sure how much hope I hold out for that epiphany to happen. But, if they'd move this meet to a course like Ft. Vancouver where there could be some mud but without the whole swamp thing, they might be able to make FLN irrelevant in about two-three years.
As things stand now, you have a nice percentage of top kids who simply don't want to go to Portland Meadows for the crowning race of their high schools careers. They'd rather decide it on a more reliable, less gimmicky course. And I can't say as I blame them. Yes, they'll deal with the rain if that's what Balboa Park dishes out on race day, but all the squishy possibilities of Portland Meadows aren't very appealing for the kind of event NXN purports to be. They're a lot more appealing for a throwaway Tuesday invitational meet in September.
I don't know, however, if there's enough maturity on the Nike that strategizes this thing to own up to the fact that their gimmick has outlived its purpose. I hope there is. But, at the moment, I see them locking into the same kind of bullheaded stupidity about their own way of doing things that Foot Locker demonstrated a few years back. It was FL's bullheaded stupidity that led to the rise of the Nike regional system in the first place. We'll see what happens now in round two.
From this year's experience forward, the Portland Meadows course is a liability for Nike. They stand no hope of increasing their share of top-end individuals at this point, and they could possibly start alienating some teams. There were already some teams pretty unimpressed with having the microphone shoved in their collective faces and being asked to wax eloquent on how much they loved the mud.
To paraphrase, "To be honest with you, Mr. Wheating, the course was dreadful. Please pass that up the line to the Nike brass."