NCAA regionals - WTW Follow Up

I would buy the "Most of the favorites qualify anyway so who cares" argument a little easier if they had provided ANY coverage during the entire season. It's not just that we want more coverage of the Prelims, it's that we want some form of coverage PERIOD in-season. If they did in-depth coverage of conference meets and then skipped regionals I would get it.

But for the most part, LRC's coverage doesn't even START until the last week of the NCAA season. It really takes away from the amount people care since they are only hearing about a lot of these names for the first time when the season is practically over.

Fine skip prelims, but do a mid-season 'favorites' or All-American watch or something instead.

I don't get why letsrun all of the sudden needs to cover every single meet. They are a forum first, and they write articles for us too. They even do a podcast. Honestly, if you pay attention to the sport most of the articles are about things you already know, with the exception of the great stats that letsrun typically comes up with.

If you guys can't figure out what happened at the meet that's on you more than anything. They had live results all weekend and the tfrrs lists are public information.

CORNELL 2002 said: The meets are prelims so they don’t matter.

it seems to me that the argument that the prelims don't matter because... they're prelims, directly contradicts the point that LRC has been making for the last four months or so that the US Olympic Trials are sacred, cannot be changed, altered or amended because... Olympic Trials. wah, wah, wah.

they're just prelims. and, by your own admission, prelims don't matter.

in fact, they're not even prelims. they're just tryouts to see who makes the team.

so what is your actual point of view? do prelims matter, or not?

cheers.

It isn't about the favorites. It is about the bottom half of the field. For those people the prelims are the championship meet. Their goal isn't to be an AA at NCAA. it is to be at NCAAs.

I think regionals are good how they are (it's not the NCAA first round like they say, that's just stupid)

The thing I would change is move the 10k to qualifying like the decathlon. Only go off the national descending order. It's very difficult for someone in a tough conference 10k to run it there at conference, then come back in two weeks and have another very tough run, and then another two weeks at nationals. And then there's the possibility that they ran it at Stanford or something. Allow them to have regionals off, you'll have a more competitive NCAA 10k if you do this, because everyone will be pretty fresh and ready to go, and usually there's a bunch of 28 mid 10k guys so that would be a competitive race.

What's the website people have been throwing around the last couple of days? The website that covers college running more in-depth?

PeanutButterJelly wrote:

What's the website people have been throwing around the last couple of days? The website that covers college running more in-depth?

The Stride Report?

thestridereport.com

This guy at list is answering the OP’s question.

Which is - why have the regional meets if all they do is

1. Add expense to schools

2. Don’t result in any material positive change to the NCAA championship fields

3. Are seen as prelims anyway (no prestige or other value like Penn Relays or conference meets).

I think the OP has a point that perhaps they aren’t a good add and that LRC may want to rethink their positivity towards them

The BroJo's article panning the regionals misses the point that the Regionals are usually a great indication of who is in top form heading into Nationals next week, and who is struggling. That's one big reason they are worth following.

For example, on the women's side, one might have wondered whether Weini Kalati would be starting to feel the effects of a long season of tough racing. Not a bit of it. She looks ready heading into Nationals. Allie O also looks ready to roll. Grant Fisher looked very sharp again after two losses at Pac 12.

Some people do just enough to qualify (think Morgan McDonald), but most people give a pretty good indication at the Regional meet of what they can do 2 weeks later.

it's a bit hard to hard to take rojo's article's claim that he cares for NCAA women's sports being ruined by transgender athletes seriously when he doesn't even bother to cover NCAA women's sports in the first place.

The reason I had heard to defend the set up and qualifying for regionals and nationals was to allow the smaller schools or schools with smaller budgets to be actually able to compete for a place at nationals. If there was only a descending order list, all the 10k and 5k qualifiers would be from Stanford or similar meets and small schools that can't fly their distance runners there wouldn't have a chance. Obviously those runners still need to hit a time within the top 48 in their region but that opens the door way more than a descending order list. New england or upper midwest schools with small budgets that can't travel far every weekend tend to compete at smaller meets with a higher chance of crappy weather.

I think of NCAA basketball. Conference champions, regardless of national ranking, make the tournament field to even out the possibility of those teams not looking as good by not be able to compete with the best due to scheduling. I certainly don't think every conference champion in every event should get an auto to regionals because the 48 deep descending order list is a good compromise.

I think that the regional system is great on balance, especially in division 1.

The good: Big programs with a chance at a national team title have the opportunity to get as many guys/gals through to the championship as possible by peaking the right way. Individual athletes who are good but not AA material get a championship experience.

On to the bad: The west regional is almost always deeper than the east regional, especially in the distance events, and that seems unfair. The regions don't seem to be very regionally accurate to me either, but that could be a numbers thing.

I wonder who you are, Cornell 2002 since I started coaching Cornell 2003.

I get what you are saying. Being no longer being a coach, as I was writing it, I was like, "I see why the big time coaches just want to get rid of them."

That being said, let me explain myself.

Nothing is in contradiction. We said the meets don't matter in response to some messageboard poster who was upset we weren't doing a blow by blow recap. We mean they don't matter only in the sense that they don't deserve a blow by blow coverage. For the most part, the big time favorites (90% of them) move on. So all you need to report is the big names that don't make it which is what we don't.

It's no different than a regular season meet. No one cares really about the specifics of the Stanford 5000. All they need to see is the finishing times.

As for cost, the main reason why we liked regionals is in theory it could reduce cost or help schools without a big budget.

Without regionals, you need big time cash to make it to NCAAs. If you are a sprinter at Cornell, you'd better fly to texas or florida mid season. If you are a distance guy, you'd better fly to Cali to try to fun sub 29 or sub 1345. Now. there is no need to fly down to Texas or California mid-season. Just run locally and hit 14:00 and you're in the 5000.

The problem is teams still pay tons of money to fly all over the place to brag to recruits and keep up with the joneses. If Princeton flies to Cali but not Cornell, then every kid on the Cornell team bitches about it.

Also the problem with cost is now teams chase regional times. The reality is they shouldn't spend exorbitant money to make regionals but they do. The 45th qualifier is rarely going to make it but it's still an accomplishment so people now spend money on both.

But hit me an email as I'm trying to figure out who you are.

Basically it is not negotiable. The NCAA views T&F as massively under-represented at the championship level, and the Regions are thus the Heats and Quarterfinals. Everything else that does not satisfy the requirement for much greater participation at the championship level is a non-starter. So, whatever is proposed MUST satisfy that requirement. No use bringing anything else up. As for all the top contenders going through to the next level, you might want to talk to Houston and a few other teams about that.

Last year at the West Regional you might remember that Monson beat out a highly rated Stanford runner (O'Keffee, I think), presaging the emergance of Monson on the national stage (unfortunately, Monson is injured this year). Other big favorites also did not do well (Kurgat...), and we got to see a preview of the big meet in a week.

rojo wrote:

Nothing is in contradiction. We said the meets don't matter in response to some messageboard poster who was upset we weren't doing a blow by blow recap. We mean they don't matter only in the sense that they don't deserve a blow by blow coverage. For the most part, the big time favorites (90% of them) move on. So all you need to report is the big names that don't make it which is what we don't.

It's no different than a regular season meet. No one cares really about the specifics of the Stanford 5000. All they need to see is the finishing times.

What a funny way of thinking for a journalist covering track and field on running site. Why report anything at all, ever?

We can just look up the times.

I don't think you understand your audience very well. People like to follow stories as they are unfolding, not just get a recap a the end of the year.

No one was asking for a blow by of regionals, so why make that up? We would have liked at least some coverage though, beyond two cut and pastes of results and a comment or two on the board. Either an overall preview, or highlights of the main storylines afterward would have been nice, because otherwise, your entire coverage of NCAA won't even start until the season is basically over.

ESPN built one of the biggest media companies in the world by deciding that people might want more than just the scores, even during the regular season. Maybe, especially during the regular season.

I think you are missing the boat here. A recent informal poll on the board showed half the responders were more interested in NCAA than Pro. Yes, the sample size was tiny, but I have a hunch those results would hold. Why not run an official poll? I know I know, you're not really interested in input from random forum readers.

It's fine though, ignore that group. A lot of them will be gone soon enough anyway.

You give shoes away for non-running related trolling, but can't manage a single solid writeup in-season during NCAAs? It seems pretty indicative of what the priorities are.

Yes