Esche Proposal - NCAA Division One Cross Country

Seems like a solution searching for a problem.

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Discuss wrote:

http://www.ustfccca.org/division-i/esche-proposal

Is anyone discussing this?

Curious what others think, but to start it off. I think this is an incredibly stupid proposal. I understand the argument for stricter qualifying for participation in the championship process, but instead what this proposal does is allow far too many teams and individuals from poor conferences into the process, excluding individuals who currently can qualify for the championship and even race to all-american status.

Show me something better. This just doesn't get it done.

What do others think?

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From what I've read on this I have to say I like it much better. It'll be fun to have announcement parties around the country to see who makes it in.

People need to realize the change is to appeal to ADs and Admin, because this will make it easier for them to understand how to make it to Nats. Also this gives smaller schools chances to improve their team, recruiting, school etc because they now have a shot. If we raise the bottom, it will only be fostering better competition down the line. Also people need to remember that the best teams STILL get in and the best individuals STILL get in. No top performers get left out.

By having a race off for the top 32 to go to the Finals the sport also benefits because we now have the best teams at the championship. How many times have you seen teams get in from extremely weak regions go and then place 31, 32 year after year. While teams that could place 20s or better not go because of extremely difficult regions. At least in this format one can say they without doubt are the number 32 team in the country, not because they are lucky and are in a weak regional.

I think people need to realize the implications of leaving our qualification process the same. We have this elitist mentality only taking 32 teams to nationals when EVERY other sport takes roughly 72 teams. I don't know why there is an elitist mentality considering we have no fan base or growth. Every other sport gets to revel in the success of making it to the tournament and gets praise and bigger budgets because they cant be the 72nd best team in the country year in and year out. Cross Country needs change, because we aren't getting fan following, the sport isn't growing. Hell people still call cross country "Track Season". We need change.

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Change 2017 wrote:
We have this elitist mentality only taking 32 teams to nationals when EVERY other sport takes roughly 72 teams.

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Lehigh University - Paul Short had 500 High School and University Teams
Wisconsin --- Easily
Indiana University - Football Games need Hotel Rooms
Iowa State university -- Football Games need tons of rooms
Iowa university
Indiana State University (Pre Nationals)
Tx A and M
Florida State

Shall we continue

I did read the entire proposal.

Look at the summaries of who would have made the meet the last few seasons. There are individuals who ran exceptional at the national meet who would not have even made the first round meets. Then take a look at some of the teams and athletes who would have gotten to participate. It's absurd.

Plus, I don't think it is right to use the regional meets as part of the summaries. If this proposal in fact happens, there will be no regional meets.

Can you give examples of the individuals who would have been left out?

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Common Sensei wrote:

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Change 2017 wrote:
We have this elitist mentality only taking 32 teams to nationals when EVERY other sport takes roughly 72 teams.

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Every other sport takes 64. I'm not sure why they decided on 72 teams. Nattys is already crowded enough as it is with 31 teams. Not sure there is a course or city that can handle four 36 team races.

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This is a Grambling at NCAAs.

This is a small school coach trying to get his bonus. This is why the Power 5 is going to leave division 1

this is no less confusing. Eliminate individual qualifying and there's a start. Team sport. Conference team champs auto qualify, just like every other sport. brackets..... all popular sports have brackets. Madness! November madness!

My thoughts on the proposal:

The primary effect of the proposal will be an increase in competitiveness during the "regular" season. The reason for this increase will be a much higher consequence for not performing well during the regular season: a poor regular season will ELIMINATE most team's / individual's of qualifying for nationals (the only work-around will be to win the conference meet). Whereas, in the current system, any team / individual can show up and have a good performance at regionals.

The result will be that teams / individuals will have to race all out more often. Teams will be required to seek out and try to beat better competition more often. Not doing so could result in elimination from making it to preliminaries. This won't impact the best or worst teams so much, but it will have a HUGE impact on schools that typically finish ~4th-10th in their region. Only 40 schools will be at-large regional selections (32 will be conference winners)...and qualifying for preliminaries will become a really big deal for good-but-not-great squads.

The proposal will also have a huge impact on good individuals on mediocre teams. Only 40 people will get chosen for preliminaries across the whole country...so if you're on a bad team, you'll need to run really well at some point during the season to just make it preliminaries. (Albeit, your primary pool of competition will be other good individuals on bad teams). The selection process for individuals feels like it might get complicated...and it could be hard for people coming back from injury late in the season.

Now, whether you are in favor or against this proposal should really come down to your school of thought on cross country competition.

You will hate the proposal if:
- You believe it is not beneficial for athletes to have to race a lot
- You believe that a team / individual should be judged by their body of work across the entire fall, not just performance while they are peaking
- You believe that great athletes should be allowed to show up during championship season and qualify...even if they have been held out / injured all year

You will like the proposal if:
- You want the regular season to be more competitive
- You'd like to see the top teams and individuals race hard against one another more often
- You think that early season results should factor into selection as much as later season results

My personal view is that I prefer the current system. I think it's consistent with the nature of cross country (i.e. peaking for championships, risks of racing too often), not to put so much emphasis on the regular season. I think the regular season carries an appropriate amount of weight today.

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oh brother wrote:

You will hate the proposal if:
- You believe it is not beneficial for athletes to have to race a lot
- You believe that a team / individual should be judged by their body of work across the entire fall, not just performance while they are peaking
- You believe that great athletes should be allowed to show up during championship season and qualify...even if they have been held out / injured all year

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I still say 32 teams at Nationals is too many.

An 8 team championship would be ideal. No individual qualifiers.

I didn't want to read through the dearth of information so I was wondering if someone could just quickly answer this info or lend their thoughts:

a) Is there potential for a small, mid major to win its conference on the east cost, have a low RPI, and get assigned to the West Region? (The result being to budget and fly out to a place Oregon on 10 days notice)

b) Is it even possible for a mid-major to garner enough points to compete for an at-large spot. For example, in a Conference like the MAAC which essentially is Iona, huge gap, then another team, would a small team having a historic year, who doesn't have the budget to hit these big meets in the regular season even have a chance of even qualifying?

c) One of the arguments for this is consistency across all sports. Wouldn't this be inconsistent immediately in regards to outdoor track as individual conference champs don't advance to NCAA Outdoor Preliminary Rounds? Or would they have change that to reflect cross country's change?

d) If they are worried about it just being an All Comers meet, how about we raise the bar and require every school to participate with a full team? Right now schools have the option of not even bringing a single person. Not that it changes anything from a competitiveness standpoint it would at least be more consistent.

e) And looking at effects like Boise State had on football or Gonzaga on basketball. Once they got good enough, people stopped scheduling them for fear of losing. What's stopping an invite from preventing a couple cinderella's from attending their invite?

I don't see the necessity to all these changes though someone clearly put the time in to make all those documents. The real winner in this is the IC4A and ECAC as they will finally have teams return to the meet.

a) It looks like East / West would be abolished. The two preliminary races per gender would be seeded to be "even". All races would take place at the same venue.

b) I think it would be virtually impossible for a team in that scenario to make it to nationals without beating Iona at conference.

c) I think they're making a comparison among championships that "qualify teams". Since NCAA track doesn't qualify teams, only individuals, it's defined out of the comparison.

d) Fair point

e) Don't know

I was very recently a D-1 runner, I ran at regionals and nationals 3 times each. I guess I don't have that much input, and this certainly has no implications on me directly since I no longer have any involvement in NCAA XC... All I want to throw in is that I actually really enjoyed regionals. I thought it was such a cool race because it gives good but not great athletes a chance at some real recognition since the top-25 are considered All-Region (and if you are All-Region you are also eligible to be an Academic All-American, which most people probably don't know that it exists, but about 65 athletes get it each year). Lets be real, most people aren't going to be All-American. But I really felt a sense of pride and accomplishment when I was able to go top 25 at regionals and see my team through to nationals.

Further, there was a sense of camaraderie I felt running with the other northeast teams. Sure we were all competing with one another to make it to nats, but I felt that race had an incredible community feel that reminded me of one of the reasons I love this sport.

This is a really pointless post and adds nothing to the argument, I just want to say I like the current system. It rewards you for doing well early in the season (when you get points), but you still have to race well later or you won't make it to Nationals.

I really would like to hear what Rojo has to say about this since he coached for a number of years.

The problem with the current system is that the regions aren't balanced in any way, shape, or form, and the entire championship field can spin on the whims of one coach. Look at the women's qualifying last year - because Texas sucked all year long, then ran in a shit regional and got second, then it changed the final eight at-large spots from the teams that ran at Wisco to the teams that ran at Pre-Nats. Literally if Texas had placed third, a third of the NCAA field would have been different.

The likely effect of adopting this proposal is that you'll strengthen a lot of the smaller meets across the country. This is what happened with men's golf -- they used to not include team performance in the process, simply the scoring average. A few years ago, they implemented a rule that you had to be at least .500 to be considered for an at-large bid -- all of a sudden, you have teams from power-5 leagues showing up in random tournaments all over the place, not just the same 20 tournaments each year to play each other. They can't take the risk of only playing other top teams, because then you could end up sub-500 and ineligible. So, you have a lot more competitive events happening all over the place, all throughout the year.

Another plus in favor of this proposal is that it nearly doubles the number of teams that earn Director's Cup points, which REALLY helps coaches in terms of showing value to the Athletic Directors (and therefore helps stave off cutting teams). Right now, everyone who places top-5 in their region earns points for the Directors Cup (for those confused: this gives points for NCAA participation to each team, which then creates a department-wide ranking on NACDA.com). That's 45 teams per gender -- places 1-31 go to teams in order at nationals, and then everyone else who didn't get invited shares the points of places 32-45. This proposal would give 72 teams per gender points - again, 1-32 would be reserved for finals, but then the two teams that place 17th in the semifinal races would share points for 33 & 34, 18th sharing 35 & 36, etc., on down the list until teams 65-72 all get five points apiece. That means more teams contributing to the department goals, more happy ADs, more funding (or at least, fewer funding cuts), and a deeper, healthier sport.

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Blathering Blatherskyte wrote:

LITERALLY if Texas had placed third, a third of the NCAA field would have been different.

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