The NCAA Division I cross country championships are usually one of the best and deepest races of the year in the U.S., but the event rarely gets the attention it deserves. However, I think this year was a good step in bringing the event more to the forefront.
The NCAA System Past and Present
The NCAA system is not perfect and for decades there has a been a lot of criticism that the college leagues are really not the best way to develop distance runners in particular. While our sprinters and a fair number of mid-distance runners have developed well and thrived at the world stage, the outcome for those running 5K and up has been more mixed over the past 40 years. Yes, many top NCAA runners have become Olympians, but only rarely have they gone onto podium at Olympics or World Championships (if that is a measure of success). If you consider making a final at that level a success (I would), then the record is better. Nevertheless, the argument for a long time has been that the European or East African club systems are better.
For cross country at least, there have been some improvements in the U.S. over recent decades. And, despite a recent investigation on body image/body measurement protocol for cross country runners at CU Boulder, I think CU’s approach to racing has reformed how the system works. Back in the day (say 1960s-90s) most programs would have weekly meets starting in September and going through mid-November so runners would typically race 10-12 times a season. Maybe a good coach would pull some of the top runners out of some smaller meets along the way, but they all ended up racing a lot, while into a full training block, not to mention university course work and student life. That was a lot to take on for an 18-22 year old aspiring to be world class.
At CU coach Mark Wetmore typically took a more measured approach. The Buffs would hold a team time trial in late August, to see who was fit enough to run with the team, but some runners sometimes would not race until the home opener in early October at the erstwhile Rocky Mountain Shootout (ca. early 1990s – 2016). They’d do a big invitational or two in October, race conference, regionals and nationals. So any one healthy varsity runner on the team might only race three to five times in a season, not 10 or more.
That worked, and from the late 90s and into the 2010s CU won many national championships and were a consistent podium finisher at the big show in November. Other schools began catching on and emulated CU’s model.
Meanwhile, the NCAA, like the rest of our society became more and more quantitative-oriented and instead of hosting the regional championships in November and taking the best two-four teams per region (depending on how strong the region was), they implemented a points/ranking system based on a handful of large invitational meets. So rankings going into regionals played more into team selection. The result of that is even fewer small or mid-sized meets in a season. Dual meets went out by the 1990s, and since 2015 or so, a team might run at a September invitational, a super meet in October (Pre Nationals, Nuttycomb in Madison, Wisconsin, or the Cowboy Jamboree in Stillwater, Oklahoma). And then just conference, regionals, and nationals.
The points system is a bit arcane, although there are now objective regional and national rankings which you can follow through the year. The end result, however, is that teams are not over-racing. In addition, individually, many of the top programs (e.g., CU, Northern Arizona [NAU], Portland, Oklahoma State, Brigham Young University [BYU]) are more interested in the longer-term aerobic development of an athlete, rather than what they can contribute right away as an incoming freshman–that puts a lot of pressure on a new recruit to keep their scholarship. Rather, the CUs an NAUs and BYUs of the world typically redshirt their incoming freshman runners, and often do not expect them to contribute significantly in cross country for the next two or even three years. They just do a lot of miles, building from their high school base (often lower mileage and higher quality in the U.S.) to higher something like 80-100 mile weeks by their later years in college.
This makes for better teams and long-term development for aspiring pros. And that’s why we are seeing some amazing team performances at the championships, where some squads are able to score their top five runners as All-Americans.
The Hype for 2022
If you follow cross country at all, this year has been all about two young female runners: High school legend and track NCAA champion Katelyn Tuohy running for defending champion North Carolina State and relative upstart Parker Valby from the University of Florida, who had a solid high school career (sub 5 minute mile in 2019) but who burst onto the national scene last spring (2nd at the NCAA 5000 m in 15:20 to Tuohy’s fast closing 15:14).
They did not race head to head all season, however Tuohy was undefeated going into Saturday’s championship while Valby was also undefeated and she ran some blazing times in the mid-season, leading some to speculate that she was in 14:40 5K shape. Fit enough to blow Tuohy out of the meet venue in Stillwater.
In addition to that there was some good team hype, with the speculation of whether NC State could hold on for another championship, or would the tightly packed team University of New Mexico (with the top five runners finishing within seconds of each other at most of the meets), be able to split up NC State’s squad enough to win on points.
The men’s team and individual races were also wide open, with Stanford leading the rankings most the year, followed by BYU and host Oklahoma State, while Northern Arizona was only ranked fourth, and were considered something of a longshot to win. Individually, pre-race hype considered any number of men that could make win. The names bandied about most were Charlie Hicks of Stanford, Nico Young NAU, Isai Rodriguez and Alex Maier of OK State, Casey Clinger from BYU, and Dylan Jacobs running for Tennessee.
One thing for sure, the winner and podium finishers would be college stars, no matter what happens in the future.
ESPN a New Addition
Until the early mid-1990s the only way you could follow NCAAs was to be there in person (I watched the championships in Madison, Wisconsin back in the late 1970s), or track down a summary article in Sports Illustrated, a brief blip with top 25 lists in USA Today, or maybe a local paper from the host site if you could get your hands on one. A more thorough Track and Field News article wouldn’t arrive in your mail box for another six weeks.
In the 2000s it was more like logging onto Letsrun, the snakepit of the American running scene, while one of the brojos or a minion of theirs posted text updates from a computer–those were crazy times but at least you could get some close to real time updates while the race was happening.
Flotrack stepped up in the early 2010s and actually did an okay job, although the coverage was the quality of a couple college bros grabbing their cell phones and offering up some wobbly glimpses of the unfolding races. I also think the NCAA itself stepped up for a few years and they provided some decent, free, online coverage of the races.
Then came Flotrack again and the dark years. Their production quality hardly improved but somehow they were able to wrangle a multi-year contract with the NCAA, and they provided sub-standard coverage at a $20 per month service fee, in which you were pretty much locked into for the entire year. I heard many stories of those getting locked in with no way out. Meanwhile, the coverage itself on race day would often freeze-up mid race. If anyone else tried posting their own feed YouTube it would be shut down with in minutes. So, for several years the best I could do was go back to 2002 and follow Letsrun posts, and get text updates from those on hand or others watching the online feed. What a mess.
Finally, last year I think, NCAA grew up and got a better contract for the championships. So this year ESPN took over. I already subscribe to RunnerSpace and Peacock for running and track coverage and was reluctant to try ESPN, but at $9.99 a month and NCAA XC is my absolute favorite event to watch each year so why not, I’ll give it a try and I signed up on Friday.
I didn’t regret it! Next up Part II: The Races
rrunnin234 