NCAA Cross Qualifying Changes?

Sliding Scale wrote:

There will be savings in terms of meet costs. If the NCAA covers expenses for the 80 teams for the first round as well as the final, I don't see how they save money overall.

Even if they don't cover the first round I really feel this should happen. I don't care about the disparity among conferences referenced by the Big 10; it exists in every sport. Reward conference champions, and with 48 non champion at large bids I guarantee the best 30 teams make the first round.

Too many mid major ADs view the sport as recreation because making the final is not realistic for at least 50% of current DI teams and the first round is an optional open meet (something administrators don't comprehend).

Currently at large bids for Nationals require a lot of interregional racing. Not possible for many teams, especially now. Conferences need auto bids.

Anyone that's ever coached in the NCAA knows there will be the expectation to make the proposed "first round." If you make it, you did your job. If you don't, you get trashed in your performance evaluation.

I don't know if I fully understand the proposal and I skimmed through some of the longer posts but what is the rationale behind wanting to change? I always thought one of the strong suits of XC is the ability to have everyone line up and race to qualify for nationals. You ignore politics, metrics, bias and anything that is going to detract from creating the best competitive environment.

Also adding a extra race that "matters" just creates a situation where you are trying to drag out a taper/peak and potentially waters down the quality of the national championship. Conference championships should matter but I like the flexibility teams have now to decide if someone is banged up and needs to rest for regionals.

I don't view it as an extra meet because 3/4 of the teams will be done after their conference meet. Conference meet is essentially the qualifier. Most teams will have 1 less race on the year.

That is fair, as a fan I was looking at it from the top end perspective of the teams that will be contending at nationals as opposed to the teams that won't make it to regionals

Breakdowns of the proposed regions have been leaked....and they are insane. There is no logistical way this works.

https://www.thestridereport.com/post/5ecc19ec85dce30017655327

fact checker 642572498 wrote:

Breakdowns of the proposed regions have been leaked....and they are insane. There is no logistical way this works.

https://www.thestridereport.com/post/5ecc19ec85dce30017655327

Some of the regions seem skewed as well, the West is stacked with teams from the Big Sky, Mountain West, Pac-12 and WCC, while the South has teams from the Big 12, Sun Belt, SWAC, Southland and conference USA.

Last year on the men’s side, the new South region had 3 teams qualify (Iowa State, Texas and Middle Tennessee). The west had 9 (BYU, NAU, Colorado,Oregon, Portland, Utah State, Washington and Boise State) the lowest West team at Nationals was 21st, while the 2nd and 3rd South teams were 25th and 31st.

The plan was not to have preset regions but now that they will, only top 3 will move on automatically.

10 years ago I started working on a way to address this very issue. When my coaching career went belly-up, it just got packed away. Over the weekend I spent about 30+ hours working on it again. I drafted a 36-page document on how it can work for 80 teams and 5 regions and 32 autos. It’s almost exactly the same system as now. The Region Sites are not predetermined (because it’s impossible) and the Top-20 seeds are divided to 4 in each region (trying for two 1-10 and two 11-20 in each). It keeps combined programs in the same region site and it also works out so most schools go to a site near their location (with some needing to travel as it is impossible not to).

The ACC coaches will be talking about this tomorrow. I’ve sent it to a few other P5 and G5. If any coach wants to see it and chat about it, let me know.

info@KevinBarbaro.com

. I took the 2019 season and used the system to see who would have made it (takes 8-9 hours per gender by hand) and I created a mock regional round assignment. It’s actually pretty cool to see how it would have played out.

This would make Selection Sunday pretty exciting, actually.

To be candid, I like the old system. This was started 10 years ago as a worst-case scenario of the NCAA mandating this. Well, it’s a worst-case scenario.

One goofy thing I noticed from looking up who would have qualified last year, not all conference champs went to regionals and many individual qualifiers did not go.

The travel expenses would be too big of a burden. Teams would have to book plane tickets and hotel rooms about a week (or less) before they'd have to travel. Prices would be high, if you can even find tickets.

Hosts can't throw together a regional championship on 2 weeks notice. You'd have to find timers, officials, you'd have to prepare the course, get event staff, etc. Most courses are in parks that you can't reserve on short notice.

This proposal would pre-establish the regional sites. Most good teams will be confident that they will make it to regionals. Some conference champs did not go to regionals last year. This may cause 1 or 2 more not to go if they have a surprise win.

red and sad wrote:

This proposal would pre-establish the regional sites. Most good teams will be confident that they will make it to regionals. Some conference champs did not go to regionals last year. This may cause 1 or 2 more not to go if they have a surprise win.

All those issues are addressed in the 36-page document. As a coach, I can see where the coaches are coming from on the expenses and what not. However, every other sport is able to figure it out without a problem on even shorter notice. Regardless, it’s detailed in the document addressing any issue that has come up in this thread.

And yes the sites are predetermined. However, who’s going to each site is not. Also, you don’t make cost the reason to not have the most fair process. Regardless, I’ve addressed all these.

The NCAA pays for other sports.

red and sad wrote:

The NCAA pays for other sports.

Most other sports. Men’s and Women’s Golf does not pay for the Regional Championships round. Only the Final.

Mr Bojangles wrote:

fact checker 642572498 wrote:

Breakdowns of the proposed regions have been leaked....and they are insane. There is no logistical way this works.

https://www.thestridereport.com/post/5ecc19ec85dce30017655327

Some of the regions seem skewed as well, the West is stacked with teams from the Big Sky, Mountain West, Pac-12 and WCC, while the South has teams from the Big 12, Sun Belt, SWAC, Southland and conference USA.

Last year on the men’s side, the new South region had 3 teams qualify (Iowa State, Texas and Middle Tennessee). The west had 9 (BYU, NAU, Colorado,Oregon, Portland, Utah State, Washington and Boise State) the lowest West team at Nationals was 21st, while the 2nd and 3rd South teams were 25th and 31st.

What I don’t get is why they basically split the south into A and B brackets. The south is terrible (save for MTSU and a few others) while the southeast is much more balanced with the SEC, AAC etc

red and sad wrote:

The NCAA pays for other sports.

Basketball has the biggest tournament with 64 teams. There is no way the NCAA is going to pay for 80 cross country teams for the regional, then pay for another 32 teams to go to the final.

Kevin Hadsell wrote:

red and sad wrote:

The NCAA pays for other sports.

Most other sports. Men’s and Women’s Golf does not pay for the Regional Championships round. Only the Final.

Just one example - Clayton Murphy was fighting to bring Akron cross country back. In his research, he found that the Akron men's cross country team had a budget of $7,900.

Despite that small number, the program got cut. That's the reality facing a lot of these schools. I don't know what the financial situation was at Toledo, but right now for a lot of teams it's existential.

As is standard for message board discussions, this topic is going in circles.

If you don't make cost the reason to have the most fair process then why change? We already have the most fair process.

You say it's not about money and 'red and sad ' has been telling me (every time I post) that this is about saving money so as I said this topic moves in circles.

Fortunately, all of the conferences are against the move and the biggest driver of that is that, right now, with the covid issue being front and center, this not the time to make any drastic changes.

Hopefully it is again put on the back burner because, as I've said previously, I do not think this change is a good idea for XC long term.

How about any change also increases the number of days between the regional meet and the national meet.