Athletic.net to begin charging $60 or $95 a year for Rankings; Milesplit or Athletic.net?

XC times should NEVER be reported to the hundredth.

Loser: The sports of cross country and track and field.

philmccrotch wrote:

Loser: The sports of cross country and track and field.

Exactly. I used to love to follow high school and college. Now I mostly just follow ultrarunning.

Guess I won't be using athletic.net anymore. I'm not paying for their service.

Killing off the interest........ wrote:

philmccrotch wrote:

Loser: The sports of cross country and track and field.

Exactly. I used to love to follow high school and college. Now I mostly just follow ultrarunning.

I've moved to being an ultra-fan and rock climbing (IFSC).

On the track I am 400/800/1500.

So sad.

$48 for a year of milesplit is actually fairly priced though....4/month for access to actually quite a lot of stuff. That’s literally a coffee a month. If we want coverage to grow, it makes sense to contribute to it

Milesplit hands down.

Understandably so. They typically post less (there are regions of Texas that they almost completely ignore) and because Athletic.net allows almost anyone to put in marks with little to no oversight their rankings are a disaster. If 30% of the top ten marks in the nation are bad/inaccurate what does that say for the rest of their database?

Whenever I get on Athletic.net, I feel like I have taken a time machine back to 2005. Milesplit, while it has its flaws, is MUCH more modern and less buggy.

First off, I'll start by saying that I haven't looked into any new Athletic.net policy regarding subscription fees. I agree with another poster that if that is true, the true loser is the sport of cross country.

As to the OP's assessments, I have some notes.

Kreft's 14:29.95 is marked as 14:30.0 on the leaderboards because Athletic.net assumes all marks are hand timed unless specified otherwise (by whoever enters the results). In contrast, I believe that Milesplit assumes all marks are FAT unless specified otherwise, which leads to much more erroneous rankings during track season. If you click on Kreft's race, you see that on the race page it is listed to the hundredth. I don't recall if Athletic.net previously listed down to the hundredths on the leaderboards or not, but regardless it is cross country: comparing times to the hundredth of a second is pointless.

You are correct about erroneous results in Athletic.net's databases. However, there have also erroneous marks in Milesplit's databases in my experience, so also not so clear cut.

Athletic.net is part of RunnerSpace/DyeStat these days. I'd say coverage is pretty similar between the sites, and I'd argue that you are quite wrong when you say that "Milespilt goes and covers meets onsite (big or small) in almost every state", because it is VERY clear that there are some states that have state editors and make an effort, and other states who don't. Milesplit is clearly better in some states in terms of covering meets and getting results promptly and correctly, while

Athletic.net/RunnerSpace

is better in other states. It really does depend on where you live in terms of who provides a better service (before any consideration of how much it costs).

Interestingly, if you put "athletic.net" / "RunnerSpace" together, it automatically creates a hyperlink to the site on this message board. My bad, the link was unintentional (not sure why it does that there, but not when it just when you type 'athletic.net').

If Zach Kreft ran a 14:29.95, then his time should show up as a 14:29.95 whether or not five hundredths of a second matters in the outcome of the race or not. The kid ran the top time in the country so shouldn't he get credit for the time he actually ran rather than be limited to the framework of a website who can't quite figure out how to add a hundredths place to his time? (This was an FAT meet timed by Timing First in Columbus). As a coach, I've definitely had races where a winner comes down to a hundredth of a second. A perfect example is Jacob McLeod (9th) and Sam Bowers (10th) of GA ran 14:50.22 and 14:50.25 at the Wingfoot XC Classic (timed by Delta who is another well regarded timer) according to Milesplit however according to Athletic.net they both ran 14:50.3 and are both tied for 9th. If you're the boy that won, you're the 9th ranked kid and if you're the kid that lost you shouldn't get to claim that. It's one thing if data is missing but if the data is provided then why should it be omitted? Most athletes who are going to be in the top 10 will likely have a timer at their race and hand timed meets are usually a bit obvious to spot as meet directors who do hand times typically aren't putting any decimal points let alone a hundredths place in their results. In addition, Milesplit writes and talks enough about a lot of these athletes that it was pretty simple to pull a few names that didn't ring a bell.

In reference to your statement that Runnerspace and Milesplit are comparable in regards to coverage, how can you say that if Milesplit has state editors and Runnerspace doesn't? If Milesplit has an employee who does onsite meet coverage in even 25 of 50 states, that's still 25 people who are dedicated to a single state while Runnerspace doesn't have a single one as they dissolved the four or so dyestat state sites they once had a couple of years ago. While I think arguments could have been made previously that if a user was just into state rankings, then you could probably get nearly the same product for free with Athletic.net, the fact that Athletic.net is charging more than Milesplit for an inferior product has tipped the scale to the point where it's no contest now. It's $60 a year if you're a fan and $95 a year if you're a coach. While that's not probably not breaking anyone's bank, I'd rather just take my $48 and get a yearly subscription to Milesplit where I get accurate stats, more meets, and probably get an article recognizing one of my kids once every few weeks.

Like mentioned above, XC times should never be posted to the hundredths when comparing them across the board. Always to the tenth. Especially when using chip timing (which is what you will get with the professional timing companies for big meets). Hand timed meets are almost always the ones where people type in the full time to the hundredth because they don't know what they are doing and just copy it straight from the timing device.

This is XC, not track.

Looking at the results of the Wingfoot XC Classic (since you brought it up) on Athletic.net, it looks like McLeod is indeed listed as running a 14:50.22 and Bowers a 14:50.25. It's posted right here:

Again, why should it matter if they don't list down to the hundredths in the state/national leaderboard? It's XC, not track. Times from different courses (or even different days, and oftentimes not even different races on the same day) are not comparable down to the hundredth. In your example, McLeod is given credit for beating Bowers. Both are given credit for running 14:50.3 (because that's the general form for XC).

Re: Hand times / FAT standards, I wasn't talking specifically about XC/Track. There are PLENTY of people who mark down to the hundredth even when using hand times, because they just don't know any better (or do, but don't care). It's a much better policy, IMO, to assume that it is hand timed unless it is specifically marked as otherwise, because that is the safer bet (you'll get more erroneous marks if you assume everything is FAT, because that is the higher standard). The coaches or meet managers uploading the results only have to click "FAT" under the timing system used and it solves that problem on Athletic.net. That's really not a negative aspect of the site.

Milesplit does write about a lot of athletes. Last I checked, so did RunnerSpace/DyeStat (the parent of Athletic.net). Both sites provide coverage. If you're from the Southeast, then Milesplit has probably done a better job for the most part, because that is the strongest coverage area for Milesplit (along with Colorado and a select few Midwest/Northeast states). Traditionally, DyeStat/RunnerSpace has done better west of the Mississippi and split in the Midwest/Northeast.

You're getting into a very different topic here, because Milesplit's staff management style is very different from that at RunnerSpace/DyeStat. Milesplit is more grass roots and their state editors aren't necessarily salaried staff, some are volunteers (or are only paid based on the number of subscriptions their state site generates). The quality and content of each state site varies depending on what the state editor does. DyeStat runs on a more top-down paradigm, with their employees being paid staff members (and also have contributing volunteers).

You are correct that there are more contributors on Milesplit than at DyeStat. In terms of meet coverage, it isn't so cut-and-dry as to who provides more or better coverage. Plenty of areas where DyeStat's coverage is just as good if not better.

As I said in my original post, if Athletic.net is starting to charge for their rankings, that changes things in Milesplit's favor. Whether or not that is a big enough deal that Milesplit is the clear better option depends on where you live, and what you're looking for. Regardless, if Athletic.net is moving to a paid service, the true loser is the sports of XC and Track and Field.

How much stock would you put in rankings if say only 30% of the people are on it?

Interesting conversation, but seems that there's a need for a national governing body for running?

Can a body like that exist with a primarily high school funded sport?

It's surprising to me that the sport hasn't seen a not for profit emerge... But might make sense when club teams are spotty, and cannot fund a national level body...

Sometimes FAT times aren't even reported correctly. My eldest daughter's PR is listed as 10:56.18 in track and it's actually 11:15 something because the timing machine messed up and instead of correcting it they just reported that BS to every site. Now every time a college coach calls she has to tell them the correct time as she doesn't want them to expect her to run that time. According to her she feels like 11:15 is pretty much her full potential.

Reality123 wrote:

Interesting conversation, but seems that there's a need for a national governing body for running?

Can a body like that exist with a primarily high school funded sport?

It's surprising to me that the sport hasn't seen a not for profit emerge... But might make sense when club teams are spotty, and cannot fund a national level body...

We do have one, it's the NFHS. For clubs its AAU and USATF. It's been that way a long time, I doubt you put the worms back in the can.

Where is it stated they're going to start charging?