NCAA Cross Qualifying Changes?

BenJamin Franklin wrote:

I just read through this topic and another topic on these changes. Hadsell is full of crap. He posted dozens of times, many posts are very long. He said he worked 30 hours drawing up a 36 page plan. At the same time he pretends like he doesn't care when he clearly does....it's sad.

When asked for details on the benefits of his proposal, he just insults people. He didn't offer any substantive input. It's clear he's unhinged and deranged.

Cross Country is the easiest sport to understand. Any proposal that's 36 pages long and takes 8-9 hours to determine at large qualifiers is surely convoluted as hell.

We talked about his plan on our ACC zoom Wednesday and it is a very good plan. We don’t want what the TF committee sent us and Hadsell’s plan is very detailed and actually does fix a lot of the issues.

If you were to read it, you can see it probably does take as long as he said. If anyone has ever used the Kolas formula (by hand) you would understand it and also how it would take as long as he said. He typed every conference result and shows all 48 rounds and how many wins. To do Kolas by hand even now takes a long time with nine regions. Imagine having to get the results and wins for 32 conferences and 48 rounds?

He isn’t actually advocating for the change. His proposal goes so far as to state that. This is just a way to deal with the NCAA demanding change.

As coaches we talked about the reality of the NCAA wanting 80 teams. We talked about the reality of financial difficulties of travel.

Kevin talked to me last night about the fact he’s going to do the 2012 (?) season to rest it out on a past season but to do 4 Regional sites as he felt as though that would make it easier to keep teams closer to their actual geographical region.

I know other conferences will be discussing his proposal.

Personally I will say Kevin’s issues are behind him and he has a lot of friends and supporters in our conference and in the profession. Many of us have known him for decades. He’s outspoken but always fair and logical. He’s always owned his mistakes and you cannot be anything less than impressed with his ability to completely turn his life around. We actually owe the guy gratitude for taking the time to help. He didn’t need to do this and that’s worthy of my respect and the respect of many of us on that zoom yesterday.

If anyone wants to see the packet, I will email it to anyone that wants it. The way it is formatted, it would not be possible to cut and paste the whole thing in LRC.

I think I have said this before and will say it again to be clear. I have no stake in this. When I say, "I don't care," I am referencing that I do not care if the NCAA uses it or not. I do not care really if they change the system at all. I like the current system. It is possible to be against the change and yet advocate for the potential change to be logical.

Everyone that has seen the packet agrees that it is obvious that there is no possible way to designate which regional site a school would go to ahead of time. When they are limiting the number of schools in the field and also setting a set number of schools in each regional site: 80 schools and 5 sites of 16 or maybe 4 sites of 20, you cannot accomplish this without sending teams to regional sites away from their campus.

I am sure that someone way smarter than I am (just about any distance coach) can figure out how to get the computer to do this just like they do currently. The only difference is that there are a lot more "judgment calls" with the added teams. These judgement calls are not to choose one school over another as much as it is to decide which school enters first when both schools will ultimately make it. If you understand the Kolas calculation procedure, you will know what I mean. If you do not understand the Kolas system, then it would be like a foreign language. And to answer the hate post: It does take 8-9 hours by hand but that does not make it too complicated. It is THAT important to get the right teams so you have to take your time. However long that takes.

When I originally started working on this 10 years ago, the process was to give 32 autos to the Region and to keep the current 9 regions but fill the field in each region until you had 15-16 teams in each region. At the point I stopped working on that, it was very obvious that the regions would continue to be terribly unbalanced because of the locations of schools/conferences. When I picked this back up, and the NCAA had given the guidance on 80 teams and 5 regions, it was easier to implement this. It is impossible to do this fairly without sending teams to other regions.

Another couple of notes from coaches that have seen it:

Travel to the region sites: About 2/3 of the field remains in a region site closest to their home. Only a few schools would have to fly across the country. However, keep in kind that these MOCK regional assignments are just my own personal decisions as I filled the field. These decisions would change year to year for each school and it would be up to the Selection Committee to make the regional assignments. Not me. Each assignment is only for the year at hand and not a permanent designation.

Cost of travel: My advice to everyone has been the same: Make the NCAA figure that out. The NCAA Championships and the NCAA Finance Committees are the ones making you change. If they are the ones making this happen, my advice, then make them figure that out! Show them the best way to make this happen and then they can see the cost and they can make that decision. They may think it is too expensive! If you do not want them to change, this may be something you can then use to block it from happening. Who knows? Regardless, this is what I mean by not letting the cost cloud your judgement. Make them figure it out and focus your attention on making a great plan based on their criteria.

Other coaches asked about the Individual Qualifiers. I purposely left that out as it is a separate discussion than the teams. In my opinion, I would take the next 4 individuals that are not on a qualifying team as long as those individuals are in the top-half of their conference. I do not have a strong opinion and feeling one way or the other. I am no longer a coach so I really do not care enough one way or the other TBH. haha.

One coach asked if it could potentially be manipulated where a school just scheduled the weaker conferences? I do not think this is possible at all. It still takes 5-6 wins to even be on the board for consideration in the 40-48th rounds. You would have to be a very good guesser and there are only 3-4 races per year to even earn wins. Not to mention, even if you did get on the board with 5-6 wins, there are usually a bunch of other schools on the board with you and if you only raced weaker conferences you would likely lose on the tie-breakers.

Listen, I am in no position to put anyone down. I don't mean to do that and it certainly should not take away from the healthy discussions you guys are having. I apologize. I am not a coach. I do not even really live in this same world anymore so I am just a fan at this point. My past indiscretions have been played out in the media me years ago. It is not even worth bringing up but if someone is that bothered by it, eight years later, I think that says more about them than me.

Like I said, if anyone at all wants to see this, please just hit me up at

info@kevinbarbaro.com

. If you care about the sport, this is very important. The NCAA is making this happen whether the coaches like it or not.

Also, this is a complex process. The only way to completely explain what is happening is to give long detailed explanations. If that classifies someone as "unhinged or unstable" then we are all screwed. You also have the option of not reading the posts.

Somebody put a great deal of time into designing a 5 region plan that was released on Monday. How did it get scrapped the next day? Was it due to the B10? I think it can be done by shifting 1 or 2 conferences toward the East. The West regional would have only 4 or 5 conferences but the best teams would be balanced enough to get the top 30 teams to nationals. Beyond that, who cares? The Western Athletic Conference would be a logical one to push further East.

fast dad wrote:

Somebody put a great deal of time into designing a 5 region plan that was released on Monday. How did it get scrapped the next day? Was it due to the B10? I think it can be done by shifting 1 or 2 conferences toward the East. The West regional would have only 4 or 5 conferences but the best teams would be balanced enough to get the top 30 teams to nationals. Beyond that, who cares? The Western Athletic Conference would be a logical one to push further East.

The NCAA Track and Field Committee was asked by the NCAA Championships Committee to try and come up with a plan for 80 teams and five regions with 32 autos. The Track and Field Committee tried to put it together where the regions were actual geographical areas. The plan was not balanced and fair as well as being too ambiguous. It was circulated about two weeks ago. Another coach sent it to me then and that was when I decided to go back and break out this old proposal and make it fit the current issues. That proposal just really cannot work but they released it to the coaches more for guidance than to tell everyone that this was exactly the way it was going to be.

The difficulty with shifting teams around is that you would have to split men and women and that just doesn't work for a small program that has 1 coach and is used to driving a small bus to every meet.

It's interesting to me that the coaches do not see this as their opportunity to get XC on equal footing with other sports. That is what the NCAA is saying their reasoning is so why not give them a proposal that leads with the fact that XC needs it's own set of scholarships to make things equitable (step 1).

The following step of the proposal would be to limit qualifying for regionals to 80 teams with some detailed plan which will be somewhat objective and partly subjective (that is unavoidable unless the system is left as is). To avoid the financial objections from ADs about adding scholarships to the budget, the amount of track scholarships would be reduced by an equal number.

I know I've said this in a few posts but it honestly surprises me that more (all?) XC coaches would not want to see this as the first step in this regional qualifying change which everyone seems to feel is going to happen regardless of what coaches want. They seem to think it's a separate issue when it's not.

I'm still curious as to where this demand for change from the NCAA is coming from, generally no one other than distance runners care about XC. It's perplexing.

fast dad wrote:

The difficulty with shifting teams around is that you would have to split men and women and that just doesn't work for a small program that has 1 coach and is used to driving a small bus to every meet.

On the contrary, it is actually easy to keep the schools at the same site. Every school, regardless of whether they are actually combined or not, are at the same site. You are only seeding the top teams and when you seed a tournament like this, it is different than seeding a single-elimination tournament like basketball. You do not "serpentine" the seeds. You have the top-20 and you just try and placee two teams seeded 1-10 and two teams seeded 11-20 in each of the 5 regions. You then compare men's and women's fields and it is actually very easy. On the surface, before I did it, I was worried it would not work. Then, once you actually go through and create the fields, you see it is easy. Keep in mind that you only seed the Top-16 or Top-20 teams. this is exactly the same seeding process the NCAA Championships committee uses in other sports like golf and even baseball. The combine program issue is not actually an issue at all and you can see that in the packet.

How about you upload it to Scribd and embed the link so everyone can see it

https://www.scribd.com/upload-document

I have zero idea where it came from. Usually it is someone with an agenda that has connections on the NCAA Championships Committee or some other committee. The question was asked 10 years ago for the USTFCCCA body to explain why we do not qualify for the NCAA Regional. At that time, we made the decision to send our reasoning (which everyone has explained) BUT, just in case, we would try and come up with a way to do it. We would only share that way IF they required it. For reasons that nobody seems to know, the NCAA Championships Committee and the NCAA Finance Committee decided to get together and make it happen. 10 years later. Seemingly out of nowhere. Odd.

theres a way around that wrote:

How about you upload it to Scribd and embed the link so everyone can see it

https://www.scribd.com/upload-document

I have been asked to not put on the internet and I will honor that. However, like I said, if you are a coach, you can just email me. Many coaches are getting it from each other or their conference rep. If someone that is an actual coach wants to put it on the internet and their name behind it, then that is on them. I am going to honor the request of the NCAA coaches and not publish it. If they want to work on it and change it, and publish it, they can if they want. It is not my place to do so until they tell me it is OK to do so.

Let's analyze your proposal against the 5 main concerns the executive committee had with the NCAA's idea.

1. Cost - This is the biggest concern. Your plan would objectively be more expensive than the NCAA plan because teams wouldn't be able to plan travel in advance for cheaper rates. You say the NCAA should figure out the cost problem, but they won't. And they can't. They are not going to pay for 80 teams to travel for XC when they only pay for 68 men's basketball teams. Then they'd have to pay for the 32 teams to go to the final championships when they only pay for 4 basketball teams to go to a different location for the final 4.

It would also require more travel during the regular season because every team will need to chase points for at-large qualifying. Even the best teams in the country are forced to chase points and try to get a top seed to make their path to the final championship easier (so they don't end up as a 4-5 seed against other very strong 1-3 seeds).

2. Regions are not balanced - Your plan would likely result in more balanced regions, but it is unclear if it would be a significant difference. All the top teams tend to be in the same area (West coast and mountains) and many of the weaker teams are in the South and the East. The more you base them on geography, the more imbalanced they get.

3. Student Athlete Welfare: Your plan would be worse because there is an even greater emphasis on gaining points. That means more traveling in the regular season and more hard racing in the regular season. Even top teams would have to worry about getting a top seed because it will make their path easier. For athletes that compete in all 3 seasons, that puts a big stress on the athletes and is not good for development.

4. Selection of at large teams: Yours gives detail while the NCAA plan doesn't. However, your plan has more at large teams - you said the top 2 in each region would get an auto. That means 10 teams auto qualify for the championship while 22 would be at large. Additionally, any at large selection is far from perfect and can easily be manipulated. There will inevitably be a lot of controversy about any at large selection process.

5. Inequity - Your idea has the same impact as the NCAA plan. There will be many teams and individuals denied entry to the regional that are significantly stronger than auto qualifiers.

In summary - your plan is better in one area (balance of regions). Equal in two (selection of at-large teams and inequity). Your plan is worse in two areas - cost (the most important) and student-athlete welfare.

Dear Ben:

If you had the proposal in front of you to analyze instead of just guessing it would probably help. Do you want to see it? If so you can just ask for it. To all of your points: maybe you’re right!

All I can tell you is that the NCAA wants to make this an 80 team field. If they decide to do that, which it looks like they are, you better have a plan or they will invent one. If you have a better way of figuring out how to create an 80 team field with five regions then I would suggest that you do just that.

I love the 9 regions and the process we had when I was coaching. I think many coaches do.

Kevin Hadsell wrote:

Dear Ben:

If you had the proposal in front of you to analyze instead of just guessing it would probably help. Do you want to see it? If so you can just ask for it. To all of your points: maybe you’re right!

All I can tell you is that the NCAA wants to make this an 80 team field. If they decide to do that, which it looks like they are, you better have a plan or they will invent one. If you have a better way of figuring out how to create an 80 team field with five regions then I would suggest that you do just that.

I love the 9 regions and the process we had when I was coaching. I think many coaches do.

Not to be cruel but your proposal is a waste of time. If you could have refuted my earlier points, you would have.

Your plan is the least cost effective. We've lost 5 programs so far in a couple weeks, with presumably more to come as schools hit hard times financially.

A lot of you think a qualifying system will make teams invest more into their sport. It's going to be the opposite. Look at Brown - they cut track and other sports just to give their favorite sports a bigger budget.

If you are a coach, I recommend that you voice your opinions to your region representative. They will carry that onto the executive committee on your behalf.

I’m not advocating for, nor am I formulating a proposal for, changing from the current system. I think you are confusing the fact that I am working on a procedure with me advocating for the change to 80 teams in 5 regions with 32 autos. The decision to make any change like that comes from the NCAA championships committee. If they decide to make a change, this is just a way that they can determine the qualifiers.

If you are not a coach, I guess you can file your opinion in the same place that I file my opinions: LRC. :)

Jonathan Gault has 4,000 + words on the matter.

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2020/05/what-we-know-about-the-potential-changes-to-the-ncaa-cross-country-regional-system

I like the read, only thing I haven’t seen is individual qualifiers. A team from my region had 3 individuals qualify but no team, how do they get in? How is that determined from a weak conference?

Then you haven't been reading or listening to Flotrack or Stride Report. Top 4 from each conference not on a qualifying team get to regionals. A weak conference will get 1 team and 4 individuals while a strong conference could get 8 teams and 4 individuals.

Or maybe it is another way for athletic departments to reduce costs for teams that really shouldn't be in the regionals anyway. If a team has no chance to make it to nationals why spend the $$$ flying teams and all associated costs to a meet they don't deserve to be in. If there are individuals that deserve to go - that will show at invites during the season - send them.

How accurate are the speed ratings? Any chance that could be useful in helping to select individual qualifiers? Or do we think the XC is too difficult to judge performances on different course/weather. Maybe it could at least be another metric used by a committee (if there is one).