NCAA at-large bids are at stake and the NCAA Cross Country Rules Committee needs to remove Wisco from Louisville results

If Alabama doesn't play their starting quarterback and loses does it not count as a win for the other team?

Or in this scenario their starters don't play hard and get beat by say an unranked team does that loss not count?

If you go and jog and get thumped by competition then that's your prerogative.

Your analogy isn't quite accurate. We're not talking about players simply not having the self motivation to play hard. We're talking about them being instructed by a coach to not play hard.

If a football coach instructed his players purposely to not play hard so they would lose game (perhaps to possibly avoid having to play in the SEC championship game), there would be a NATIONAL outrage.

Don't believe me? This happened this summer in Little League girl's softball. A little league coach instructed his team to lose on purpose so they wouldn't have to play a certain team in the playoffs. There was an national outrage and the loss was nullified by the highers up.

I can't stand Byrne, he's an arrogant dude. He's basically deciding who makes NCAAs by allowing/disallowing certain teams into his meet. Now, he goes and pulls this crap and basically gifts points to a few teams, violating the integrity of the system.

It's a sad state our sport is in. When will we, as coaches, stop looking at self interests (the interests of our team alone) and develop a structure that creates a sport which is interesting and useful in the eyes of our administrators. Teams will continue to be cut if we have zero fans and zero revenue. We're killing our own sport. It's completely our fault. How can we even imagine that under the present structure of the sport that any interest will exist?? It's literally impossible. Honestly it depresses me.

How do you expect thid coach to act? Like any real capitalist he is governed by self interest and self preservation. All this "fairness" horsrshit sounds awfully socialist. What would Ayn rand (RIP) say? A coach's job is to win & to win the only race that matters.. None of these pointless mid-season circlejerks.

If his actions violated some violation, fine, but how dumb are you to expect an individual to place "the good of the sport" over his own self-interest?

Btw you wrote "no ifs, ands, or butts" in your little analysis/bitchfest.

As a coach of a small program, I am more upset with the fact that Byrne must have tone of money to burn to spend this kind of travel money for a tempo run. Also, find is sick the track program is being run into the ground just so a bunch of distance runners can race 2 hard races for the season.

STFU about this. It happens all the time and happens exponentially as you get better. As a DI All-American, I didn't go "all-out" early in the season and ran just as good as I needed to continue improving throughout the season.

I remember racing Colorado and them running "as a pack" as a tempo effort, same with Florida State and same with Stanford.

Let's DQ Ed Cheserek because we know he's not giving 100%, he's just going through the motions out there.

Sometimes you guys amaze me on your ignorance with the sport.

Agreed, you shouldn't do what coach did unless they already had the race well in hand. If your team is way in front at 6K or 7K then you can yell at them to cruise it in to the finish and still get the win. That would be like a coach not wanting to run-up the score on an opponent in football or basketball.

It would suck if some team misses an at-large to NCAAs because some other team picked up a couple extra points by beating Wisconsin's tempo pace. So, I agree with our benevolent dictator... I think there are separate rules for a DQ and this might not suffice (?), but I'm pretty sure the NCAA could rule that teams don't get any points for beating WisCONandSIN this weekend without the DQ.

...are they racing in their trainers in the pics??

As Cowl said, this is not uncommon. I would venture to say that most top teams hold back in races up to conference (sometimes there, too) or regionals. The only reason people are upset is that Wisconsin flaunted it in front of people.

The only races that matter are regionals and nationals. Wisco will grab an auto spot at regionals and if the teams that beat them at Louisville are really worthy of getting an at large bid, then they will continue to show it through Pre-Nats, Wisco Invite, Conference, and their respective regional meet. There is a lot of racing to do, and one race will not likely decide the fate of a team. [quote][

This is what we call a first-world problem (i.e. keep it to yourselves if it's an issue for you; there are far bigger things to worry about, even in running or the NCAA).

I disagree with your solution. I agree the system for how teams get at large bids is wrong, as we see here, but cross country preparation for end of season championships are not like football where the regular season matters. In fact, XC already has the playoff system that college football fans wish for. And administrators resist playoffs because it diminishes regular season importance. The solution to the problem posed by what happened here is not to penalize a team for acting in their best interest, but find a better at large bid process!

The portion of the position statement you quote from the rules book also has a section on the responsibility if the coaches that states in part "placing team welfare above victory."

If we are going to extrapolate these position statements out to an actual ruling (that has no previous precedent) we need to consider this portion as well....right?

Not saying I completely disagree with the premise of the potential disruption in the advancement system caused by this, but I just don't see how we as a sport are going to be able to provide clear direction on exactly what circumstances need to happen in order for a call to be made on something like this...

"...I would venture to say that most top teams hold back in races up to conference (sometimes there, too) or regionals....The only races that matter are regionals and nationals. There is a lot of racing to do...."

Apparently not for everyone.

Agreed, DevilsAdvocate.

I'm not a big fan of what Byrne did, but with that said, in letsrun's statement they even acknowledged that teams do this at conferences and regional meets, along with myriad other examples already outlined. DQ WI here? Fine, then will you DQ XYZ University if/when they inevitably do something similar later in the season? How do you write a consistent and fair rule for this?

I really don't understand why there's all this outrage. Bad for the sport? How? Because Joe Sixpack tuned in and decided running is for sissies because he saw a bunch of Wisconsin runners in a pack finishing together? Get real.

Is it better for the sport if we go back to how things were, when many of our best got churned up by the college system and came out the back end fried? Is that better for the sport? As a fan, I don't care one way or the other what Wisconsin does in some early season race. And, as a sign of just how absurd this all is, if the guys had split apart a little during the last half mile and strode for home, it would be a non issue. So the only reason it is an issue is because they made an obvious display of doing what other teams have done repeatedly over the years. Yeah, that's something to get your panties in a bunch over.

Only two, maybe three races matter all season: conference, districts, NCAAs. Everything else is just part of a plan to execute at those late-season races. Wisconsin could have its guys skip the fing race for all I care--as in grade school playground skipping. If anything now, I'm more invested to see how Wisco's season plays out.

Let me suggest that if anything is wrong with the current situation, its the points used for at-large bids. Why have a system that relies on an arbitrary measure when part of the beauty of the sport is that it's black and white? You ran x. You were good enough to win. You weren't. Teams should show up at districts and make the cut or go home. Which exposes these early season meets for what they are--meaningless, as they should be. It's a long season. Let the coaches decide how they want to roll the dice.

I agree with a lot of what you write here, but...

...it's a slippery slope. Who determines 'best effort' and does it only apply to a whole team? An individual? You know that a lot of runners are not giving their 'best effort' in every early season race (exhibit 1 is Ches, who was literally smiling as he let Korolev beat him at regionals last year). Do you DQ them? Based on what criteria?

I think the solution is to use at large points and conf champs to qualify for regionals, not nats. Then, he who runs well at regionals gets to run at nats. Regionals would have to be reduced to ~4 locations and balanced, just like basketball.

It would make the sport more interesting and reduce the impact of guys and teams tempoing during sept and early oct, which is totally legitimate behavior.

I don't think most of you understand the impact this can have, which means you don't understand the at-large system. Deserving teams will not get in because non-deserving teams picked up a win over Wisco who should auto-bid. I'd say since it's pretty well documented they did a tempo then just mark it up as a B team effort and move on.

DQDQDQ wrote:

It's a sad state our sport is in. When will we, as coaches, stop looking at self interests (the interests of our team alone) and develop a structure that creates a sport which is interesting and useful in the eyes of our administrators.

When the system stops incentivizing self-interest over the "good of the sport". It's seems pretty black and white to me.

Byrne will get way more positive response if he wins Nationals than if his team "tries their best" at a mid-season meet and comes up short on the big stage. This is what he felt gave him the best chance to perform well at Nationals.

The NCAA is stupid for making these meets "count" for anything. It happens in track too, you run as hard as you need to in order to make the final, no more.

Byrne is just playing the game the way the system works. Who controls the system? Not Byrne. The NCAA.

I respectively disagree with you on this. I think that you have it all wrong and that you should not try to blow this out of proportion. I believe that this is a very important aspect of cross country and track and field. It is part of the training strategy that makes the sport unique from others. You can't compare cross country running to baseball or basketball. I would argue that it is what makes our sport interesting. It builds interest leading up to the bigger races. The exact opposite would happen if everyone raced all out for every race. We would already know the result of the NCAA meet if that were the case. And it is not just Wisconsin that does this tactic. Nearly every team does this at some point during the season, whether it is against top teams or not. If that rule were upheld in the manner you want it to be teams like Wisconsin will just avoid racing until the end of October (even more so than they do now). Wisconsin should not be disqualified for this. It is part of our sport. I cannot even imagine if this were upheld for track and field. How would an official know that an athlete was told to hold back by their coach until the last 300 meters of a 1500 meter race? Would they have officials subjectively evaluate each athletes/teams total effort during each meet?

Wouldn't it be interesting if the Wisco boys have a bad days at regionals and don't auto-qualify? And then fail to make it on points because they 'jogged' Louisville?

Seriously, this particular event only blows up IF, next month, some team just misses an at-large bid because (arguably) some other team got lucky picking up points at Louisville in front of Wisconsin.