NCAA Cross Qualifying Changes?

rojo wrote:

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

This article and the input from coaches shows how out of touch Kevin Hadsell is. Even coaches like Byrne who supported previous changes are steadfastly against this proposal. The only thing worse than this proposal is what Kevin is parroting - seeding after the conference championships.

I don't see the point in changing the current system. The objective of a regional meet should be to make sure the most deserving teams are at the national championship. They should do this in a way that is fair and balanced to avoid bias against any one conference or region. That is what you have right now. Every team gets to line up at their region meet with a chance to advance. Regardless of what you did throughout the season to help or hurt your cause or how you scheduled meets because of travel budget or how many members of a ranked team showed up at a meet, you still have a chance.

This new proposal feels like a way for schools in crappy conferences to validate themselves by saying they qualified for a meet they usually are not a factor in.

not broke don't fix wrote:

I don't see the point in changing the current system. The objective of a regional meet should be to make sure the most deserving teams are at the national championship. They should do this in a way that is fair and balanced to avoid bias against any one conference or region. That is what you have right now. Every team gets to line up at their region meet with a chance to advance. Regardless of what you did throughout the season to help or hurt your cause or how you scheduled meets because of travel budget or how many members of a ranked team showed up at a meet, you still have a chance.

This new proposal feels like a way for schools in crappy conferences to validate themselves by saying they qualified for a meet they usually are not a factor in.

For every 1 coach that gets to brag to their administration about qualifying, there are 3 that will have to answer to an angry administration about not qualifying.

It's a fallacy to think this will result in more support for XC programs across the country because it excludes far more schools than it includes. If anything, as we've seen with Brown in particular, schools will use this as an opportunity to reallocate resources to a team that generates revenue.

Regarding their being a point to it all...this originated from the NCAA (apparently the finance committee), who will have the final say; they do not need the approval of coaches. Gault addresses this in the article. Coaches did not put this together (although many, including myself, did answer the survey regarding regionals).

That survey does illustrate that many coaches do not like regionals, in their current form, and feel the meet should be restrictive.

I am one that does feel the all comers format needs to change, but I understand the hesitation among others. I think the best course of action for coaches is for those who oppose this plan to let it be known; but we also need to take a seat at the table and play a role in defining the regions and at large bids before the NCAA just does it without us.

Speaking as a retired D3 XC and track coach, I never thought the present region meet made a lot of sense. There were some years that my teams didn’t belong there, so we didn’t even go. If I had an individual athlete who was competitive, I took them. There was no reason to clog up the meet and finish way behind. . It’s not Intermural‘s. One of our season long goals was to EARN the region meet. Myself and the AD were the judge and jury.

Coach J wrote:

Speaking as a retired D3 XC and track coach, I never thought the present region meet made a lot of sense. There were some years that my teams didn’t belong there, so we didn’t even go. If I had an individual athlete who was competitive, I took them. There was no reason to clog up the meet and finish way behind. . It’s not Intermural‘s. One of our season long goals was to EARN the region meet. Myself and the AD were the judge and jury.

It's important for development as young athletes and teams get the opportunity to compete against the best in the region. The experience will pay off in subsequent years when they can be competitive in the meet. If you wait and only bring your team if they are decent, they won't be prepared for the situation when they may have a chance to qualify.

Think about how many athletes struggle their first time running at the NCAA XC Championships because it's such a different experience. This will now happen at the regional too. That means bigger schools are at an advantage because they qualify most years and smaller schools have a big disadvantage.

If your team has a reasonable chance at qualifying for the finals, your season will be 3 weeks longer than if you ended after your conference championships. We have to consider peaking in our sport when team sports don't really peak at all.

Do you have any idea of the disparity between the teams? The best teams will have 7 guys capable of sub 14 in the 5k while the worst teams won't have 1 guy sub 15.

fast dad wrote:

Do you have any idea of the disparity between the teams? The best teams will have 7 guys capable of sub 14 in the 5k while the worst teams won't have 1 guy sub 15.

This exclusive regional will make it much harder for teams to improve and close that gap.

Also, outside of that top 10-15, there's probably about 150 teams that are a heck of a lot closer to each other than you'd think. One time a team placed 8th or 9th in the Big 10 only to win their region and qualify for the National Championships.

As far as i can tell the vast majority and likely nearly all team sports advance into post season based off their conference level and regular season performances. This is part of the championship funnel. The result is the ncaa champion.

Irrespective of cost, who pays, etc- there should be a legitimate funnel system that is the result of conference and regular season success. If we want to remain a viable ncaa sport we need to not be afraid of the requirement to be competitively successful during the season. Competitive success and advancement must be earned and the current ncaa regional system is not an earned opportunity.

Do i like the current region set up. Yeah. I love it. However i know there are additional formats that i will love too.

In every regional system there are challenges. The key is to have a format that gets the top teams into the championship and if you get close to the top 20 as a result you will likely not miss a deserving team. By starting with 80 teams the top 20 (ie the teams you really want) should advance. Starting with 80 teams give you plenty of room to secure the best.

The regional system does not need to be an "earned opportunity". Making it exclusive doesn't add any value, it instead devalues it because there are many teams that would be left out that are significantly better than the champions of some weak conferences. Did those teams "earn" it more than teams that are left home that would go 1-5 against them?

In our current system, the NCAA champions can honestly say they beat every other team in the country to become the champion. Just a few years ago in NCAA football, two teams claimed they won the national title.

Performance at conference championships and regular season meets do matter in the current system - there are crucial points at stake.

I'm with you FC. I don't think this change will be good for the longevity of XC.

The only way this change could be a positive for the sport is if they also gave the sport of XC it's own scholarships. This change without the scholarships will eventually limit options for distance runners at the D1 level as more and more programs will be dropped.

Programs woukd drop the sport immediately if it had its own scholarships.

go go run wrote:

Programs woukd drop the sport immediately if it had its own scholarships.

Not if they were taken from track as the current set up allows. Reduce the amount of track scholarships by the amount of XC scholarships. This costs the schools nothing extra. It basically equalizes scholarships for both track and XC for all schools instead of what is currently in place.

Other than Power 5 schools, most D1 programs survive with a few scholarshios to no scholarships. Many Power 5 schools put no scholarships to 1 or 2 of their 12.6 scholarships into XC. Imagine what woukd happen if the SEC and schools like USC and Ohio State and Iowa started putting 3 or 4 scholarships into XC. A hundred schools would drop XC because their ADS woukd not tolerate being completely embarrassed when the 7th runner from a rich school crushes the top runner from an underfunded school.

Good article by Gault. One point of clarification in his article is that he said the NCAA Championship Committee asked the USTFCCCA to come up with a plan to qualify. That’s not entirely accurate. The NCAA championships committee asked the NCAA track and field committee to come up with a proposal. The NCAA track and field committee then went to the coaches Association to ask them for input.

The article isn’t saying too much different than what I am saying. I’m saying that if the NCAA wants to make the change, they are absolutely going to make the change. They are giving the coaches an opportunity to figure out a way to qualify that is fair. The NCAA championships committee did not come up with this RPI idea. That was the track and field committee just trying to figure out what to do.

I like the old system and I qualified teams under the old system and I missed qualifying under the old system. I don’t coach anymore so I really couldn’t care less. All I have done is to finish a project that I started 10 years ago when I was on the executive committee. The goal was to try and find a way to use the current Kolas calculator to figure out who should go if we went to automatics for the conferences. I figured out how it can be done and be done fairly.

The NCAA track and field committee can either take that or they can leave it. It doesn’t change my life not one iota. I have forwarded that process onto the NCAA track and field committee and they can do with it however they please as members of that committee asked me for the proposal.

The coaches can do whatever they want. If they want to send a letter from each conference telling the NCAA they don’t want to change, they have every right to do that. I encourage it. At the end of the day, however, don’t be surprised if the NCAA just decides to do whatever they want to. And if you spent all of your time trying to get them to not change, and they do change and you have no plan in place, I have no sympathy for you.

Good luck.

Kevin Hadsell wrote:

Good article by Gault. One point of clarification in his article is that he said the NCAA Championship Committee asked the USTFCCCA to come up with a plan to qualify. That’s not entirely accurate. The NCAA championships committee asked the NCAA track and field committee to come up with a proposal. The NCAA track and field committee then went to the coaches Association to ask them for input.

This is not what I wrote. I said that the NCAA Finance Review Working Group went to the NCAA Track/XC Committee and asked them to come up with a plan to qualify. Which is what happened.

[quote]Jonathan Gault wrote:

This is not what I wrote. I said that the NCAA Finance Review Working Group went to the NCAA Track/XC Committee and asked them to come up with a plan to qualify. Which is what happened. [\quote]

Sorry man. I cannot go back and edit my post. I misread what you said. I totally stand corrected. We are on the same page. Your article doesn’t say anything then that I haven’t been saying this entire time. Totally on same page.

~Kevin

Notwnoe wrote:

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.

Yep. That's how our AD told it to our coach (at least according to him.) We were told that if the team was top 2 in the conference we'd go to Regional meet. We came in third and stayed at home. We did have a runner win the race and he went on to Regionals.

I do like the auto qualifier for winning the conference. It makes our sport like other sports and it places some emphasis on the conference meet. At a school like mine that had zero chance of winning or placing high at Nationals, it would give the athletes and the coach something to shoot for and show to the AD as an accomplishment.

Everyone who is using the argument that this gives people something to shoot for or helps mid major teams value their conference meet is focusing on trying to follow the participation trophy model of making everyone feel good. In high school and rec league/intramural/clubs, sure let's encourage participation and give everyone a chance but this is again to determine that national champion. That is the purpose of the qualifying system, it is not for teams to pad their resume and say they qualified for a race that used to take everyone.

Cross country will never be like every other sport because it is inherently different. We have the option to line as many teams (within reason) as possible up to race for the title so why wouldn't we do that. If we wanted to be like every other sport we would just take 64 teams and do march madness with dual meets or a playoff model like football. However that isn't how our sport works and we shouldn't try to fit it into a different mold from something that has been working very well.

The regular season shouldn't matter any more than it already does. This is not baseball or basketball where you can go and play a game every few days and still be at your best or even better in the post season. Physiologically our sport is different and doesn't work the same. Is it perfect? No of course not it would be great to have teams racing all out throughout the season but instead I'd rather see teams truly at their best when it matters for regionals and nationals.

In the long term I think this change hurts the sport because of how many teams will never even make it to the regional level. Why would a school keep a program that never makes it out of their conference and how are you going to attract runners if they view it the same way. In this system at least you have a case of seeing how you stack up at the region and making tangible progress to getting closer.