Can someone please explain the thinking behind the college tie-breaker? The sport is simple. The 6th man seems simple and fair.
Can someone please explain the thinking behind the college tie-breaker? The sport is simple. The 6th man seems simple and fair.
I sort of understand the reasoning. In theory, you only need 5 people to make a scoring team. Some people thought Oregon should have won the team title in 2014 because they went 1-2, but they didn't because XC is about having the best 5 people, not 2 or 3 or 6.
There have definitely been NCAA D1 XC nats teams with only 6 people before -- I can't recall an instance of only 5 people but it's probably happened.
Plus, using the 6th man essentially makes the race all about one person then, while the current system distributes the contribution across the scorers. Both ways make it impossible to tie again which is good.