NXN 2024 - The Way Too Early Preview - BOYS

You're coming up with stupid realignment ideas that don't need to happen because the simplest and most correct solution is to combine the two regions that already run at the same location on the same day.

California is impossible to add to a region because their state meet is so late in the year. You would push the season back another week for every team, and handicap the SW schools against the California schools as they run their state meets much earlier than them. You would also force the California schools to go through their insane qualification system, run the state meet, then turn around and run NXR the following week, all so that your idiotic idea of realignment can happen.

There is absolutely zero reason to shift states around in the alignments. Could you? Yeah, but you kick off just as many issues as you are solving. Fix the issue by combining the NE/NY region, add more AQ's from each region, and expand the field to 28 teams in total. It closely aligns with the NCAA system, the fields are not too large, and as evidenced by this year, gets every team that had a legit argument to be there on the starting line.

Quit trying to have some big-brained moment and just realize that the simplest solution is the one that everyone has been clamoring for, not the one that you cooked up that involves moving 6 states around and moving schedules back weeks to accommodate California.

I don’t get why the argument is even being made for an alignment that won’t happen. The only one that makes any logistical sense is to get rid of NY.

I like the random person that’s spent 20 minutes thinking this through that thinks they know better than Nike. Not every region needs to align like footlocker does, and the population for the existing regions doesn’t matter much when Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Maryland, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and Delaware can produce exactly one team that finishes inside the top 20.

Who cares about evening out the population if the largest one is that terrible? It’s almost like the regions are still pretty equal regardless of population.

Careful with the Jesuit LA hype. They race NXR only a few days after the state meet.

NE/NY girls - 5-6-9-11 in NXN. That's been left out of all this discussion.

Are we just going to not talk about how Montgomery Bell just qualified for NXN and you don’t even have them on the top 5 list. They are only graduating 2 seniors and have two of the best freshman in the country.

So many threads with a conversation about combining NE & NY and this is the first time this was mentioned

He left out Vestavia Hills too

In a round about way I did in my post if it helps. My proposal accounts for that.

Haha, look at NY on the boys side🤦

the problem with that is that the depths of regions aren't always the same from year to year, and also there's a difference between being a deep region (re: 3+ more deserving teams) and a top heavy region (re: 2 teams in the Top 10).

I specifically said at the beginning that this would only be feasible if Footlocker wasn't a threat to take athletes away from the NXN series. At that point, you can just move the national meet back a week and suddenly you can have time for a California regional. Which is also part of how you make up for losing the benefit of having 2 regions in one place (NY/NE), which is good for Nike's being able to afford to run this series.

Your solution to add more teams to the field is great except there is no reason for Nike to do so. It doesn't increase participation in their regional meets. Instead, it increases their expenses of putting on the meet and makes the field even more crowded at the national race.

It's also funny that earlier you (correctly) pointed out that just because a region is strong/weak now doesn't mean it will be in the future, and yet your entire argument against my suggestion is that RIGHT NOW you don't think it would add competitive balance.

It's also kind of funny that you are arguing that California would be at a disadvantage for having to run a regional meet after their state meet, while also saying that Nevada/Arizona would be at a disadvantage because they have a break between their state and regional meet.

If the purpose of NXN is to:

A) increase participation in the sport (while advertising the Nike brand)

B) provide a competitive national field that represent the best runners from all across the nation

C) make a profit from the series by hosting well-attended regional qualifiers

then it makes sense to prioritize accessible meets and somewhat balanced regional fields, and importantly: there isn't a good reason to give up the 2-for-1 regional that is the NY/NE unless you make that up elsewhere (such as including California in the regional process, or doubling the participation in one of the other regional meets - such as the comparatively sparsely attended Southeast, or the South which is pretty much just Texas and a small handful of teams from other states). Having a meet that is not within driving distance of the VAST majority of the most populous region, and not being able to host a regional qualifier that includes the largest, most populous state, is not the best approach. And if you can address issues like the natural depth that results from lumping most of the Rocky Mountain states together and large population states together in a small geographic radius when they could add to the depth of neighboring regions instead, then that is a positive step for the future of the sport (specifically in the regions most effected by those changes: Southeast states would be more engaged and the sport would grow better there, weaker regions like the Heartland and South would be bolstered by adding large population/high altitude states to the fields, and all the while the amount of athletes that can drive to the events instead of needing to fly would increase makes it more affordable and further encourages participation).

So yes, removing the NY Auto-Qualifiers and increasing the number of At-Large teams would mean a stronger national field. And adding even more at-large teams to the field and expanding it to 28 teams would also mean a stronger national field. But it doesn't align with the goals that Nike would have because it makes the national meet more expensive to host while cutting the profits from the regional meets they host (and it also moves the qualification process from a more objective approach - finish in the top 2 and you're in - to a more subjective approach - "we think these are the best teams that finished outside the top 2 of their region" ... but objective processes are generally better when possible because it means qualification is determined by how well the athletes race against their direct competition, rather than relying on the opinions of a small group of people).

Some regions are deeper than others. That's why 3 AQs + up to 2 At-Large would help mitigate the difference in depth between regions.

I didn't need to spend 20 minutes thinking this through because I first mentioned it about 5 years ago.

As for the Southeast: they have had years where they have had 2 teams in the top 10 before, and have had years where they had potential At-Large teams. And that's just the boys side, they have had stronger girls seasons as well. Historically, a large portion of the best teams and athletes in the Southeast haven't even gone to NXR because it conflicts with Footlocker which is more popular in the region, and because it is a long way to travel for others. Just getting more of those athletes and teams to compete in the regional qualifier would make it more competitive.

And if you think the regions are pretty equal regardless of population ... consider how dominant the Southwest traditionally is, and how competitive that regional race is compared to some of the weaker regions. To a lesser extent, also the Midwest historically.

IDK why anyone is talking about population of a state like that matters, its size of student bodies of the schools that matters. Utah has ~3.3 Million people and for example from the SE North Carolina has ~10.5 Million people, yet they have the same number of schools with > 2000 students. Its no benefit for XC team strength for NC if they have 3 times the number of kids if they are spread out among 3 times the amount of schools.

You don't need 2k students in a school to field a competitive XC team. Take for example North Central WA: for nearly a decade they were consistently contending for or finishing on the podium at NXN, yet they are a school of around 1100-1300 students.

But to the larger point: no one ever said population by itself would mean one state is better than another. What was mentioned was that (in addition to other factors, specifically states at altitude) having a large population will, over time, increase the probability of having multiple competitive teams. States like Alaska, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, the Dakotas, etc. can certainly have a team or two that are competitive on a regional or national level, but it's unlikely they will commonly have 4-5 at the same time that can compete on a regional or national level.

sorry didn't mean 2k as any meaningful number, just didn't want to scroll any farther on the lists. Just making the point that a larger population generally means the larger chance of good runners. But that is mitigated by splitting that larger population into more high schools.

Not a "Utah isn't actually that good post". They clearly are, altitude or not. It's more to not sh*t on states for not producing more nationally competitive teams without researching anything about those states.

Yeah, I didn't take your post to be suggesting "Utah isn't actually good". That's why I sidestepped the specific Utah vs. North Carolina comparison and talked about the larger aspect: does population matter?

As you mention there is nothing that suggests having a bunch of similar sized schools will necessarily yield one better team. However, taking the example of 2k students in a school, if one area has 50 schools that size and another school has 10 schools that size, there is a larger chance that the area with 50 schools that size will have multiple schools as good as the top couple from an area with 10 schools that size -- if all else is equal. Simply because there are 5x as many chances that X school(s) in that larger area has the right combination of (e.g.) good coaching knowledge, good culture within the program, and good talent coming into the program.

CDA has a bunch of freshman running around 16:40 - 17:20. One of their elite runners had hamstring issues this year and ran about 80% and was never really a factor in 2023. He will be back for his senior year. So CDA will have 3 runners capable of running 14:50 - 15:15 times. They need 2 or 3 of their freshman/sophomores to make substantial jumps over the summer to repeat at NXR.

Crater will have a very strong 1&2 next year in Tostenson (18th at NXN) and Kitchen (5th at NXR). Also this year they have 3 really good freshmen that should step up and help the team next year.

Franklin returns 3 under 15:32 for 5k, but their 4th and 5th returners have PRs of 17:26 and 17:30 which is going to hurt them a lot next year if they don’t step up.

It will be interesting how Kamiakin will do. They made NXN in 2017-2019. They return almost all of their scorers, and they will be lead by a Teeples who will be a senior