Not making this up: NCAA reschedules the NCAA XC championships for the same weekend as the 2021 NCAA indoors

indoor track is not necessary. but is it possible to run cross during jan/feb? there are parts of the country where this is 100% not feasible.

Methinks they won’t be running indoor track . That’s a super spreader in waiting

COVID is showing what organizations are smart and adaptable and those that are dumb and bureaucratic.

Cross country and indoor are in the same season on the international calendar.

Cross country and indoor are preparation for outdoor track which is the "main sport."

Being a 3 sport athlete as a distance runner is disadvantageous.

Weather is a concern in every outdoor sport. Baseball is no fun in February in Maine, so what?

Cross country isn't lovely in miami in September, so what? Sorry that a jan-feb xc season doesn't make wisconsin happy, so what?

The 2021 cross country season should be the permanent cross country season.

Give cross country their own scholarships and cross country scholarships can run outdoor track, but track scholarships can't run cross country.

Cross country runners are 2 sport athletes, xc and outdoor.

Track scholarships athletes are 2 sport athletes, indoor and outdoor

Indoor is lowest of priorities, especially with Covid. Wish that XC and Outdoor were the only two seasons for distance rather than trying to be in "peak" condition three different times a year.

Any athlete that would pick indoor over XC is an idiot.

albanese wrote:

Any athlete that would pick indoor over XC is an idiot.

So sprinters, jumpers, and throwers should all lobby to nix indoor track in favor of xc?

1. The likelihood of indoor is not too good.

2. IF there is indoor, then sprinters, jumpers, throwers do that while distance runners do xc.

If they host both sports in the same season it will be interesting to see if they allow distance events for indoors and if they have distance events at NCAA indoors...

I wonder if some distance athletes will run a few meets for both sports, and could try to make indoor NCAAs if they don’t make XC nationals? Or if indoor is just going to be schools that don’t run XC (USC men?) Could be weird

They should make XC an 8k, eliminate distance events at indoor, and combine the scoring.

idiots everywhere wrote:

COVID is showing what organizations are smart and adaptable and those that are dumb and bureaucratic.

So very true.

......................... wrote:

Cross country and indoor are in the same season on the international calendar.

Cross country and indoor are preparation for outdoor track which is the "main sport."

Being a 3 sport athlete as a distance runner is disadvantageous.

Weather is a concern in every outdoor sport. Baseball is no fun in February in Maine, so what?

Cross country isn't lovely in miami in September, so what? Sorry that a jan-feb xc season doesn't make wisconsin happy, so what?

The 2021 cross country season should be the permanent cross country season.

Give cross country their own scholarships and cross country scholarships can run outdoor track, but track scholarships can't run cross country.

Cross country runners are 2 sport athletes, xc and outdoor.

Track scholarships athletes are 2 sport athletes, indoor and outdoor

Wow! Someone finally agrees with me on this.

Bolded sentence is correct... too bad it will never happen and XC and track will eventually disappear (sooner than later) at many universities.

Why do you want to break something that is functioning so well?

As someone else pointed out, in Europe cross country and indoor track seasons run concurrently. I think the number of runners who'll have a conflict here is really small. You have maybe a couple dozen or so qualifiers for the 3,000 and 5,000? They would be the only people who would need to choose. Most national cross country qualifiers do not qualify for indoor nationals and will just run cross country.

The bigger problem I see is how you're going to have a cross country season in much of the country when courses will be under piles of snow and ice. They had to run last year's Northeast Regional on roads because the course was under too much snow and ice and that was in November. Do they really think that won't happen much in January and February? That, to me, is what's really dumb.

albanese wrote:

Any athlete that would pick indoor over XC is an idiot.

Running a muddy, slow, freezing 10k in some horrible part of the US in front of no crowd in a sport most people don’t know about, vs running a fast indoor 1500m. XC sounds terrible by comparison.

Like Really Bro wrote:

albanese wrote:

Any athlete that would pick indoor over XC is an idiot.

Running a muddy, slow, freezing 10k in some horrible part of the US in front of no crowd in a sport most people don’t know about, vs running a fast indoor 1500m. XC sounds terrible by comparison.

Damn right. Wish this happened while I was at Southeastern so I didn’t have to go run that godawful mud fest at VCP with Jerry and Bruce

Like Really Bro wrote:

albanese wrote:

Any athlete that would pick indoor over XC is an idiot.

Running a muddy, slow, freezing 10k in some horrible part of the US in front of no crowd in a sport most people don’t know about, vs running a fast indoor 1500m. XC sounds terrible by comparison.

To each his own. To me cross country under any circumstance is as good as it gets.

djfjdjdj wrote:

They should make XC an 8k, eliminate distance events at indoor, and combine the scoring.

As much as I like the idea, scoring would be tough. They're two different sports -- indoor relies on individual performances whereas XC is inherently a team sport.

If you treat XC like a track meet event, you lose the team aspect and lose the purpose of an XC national meet. It'll look more like Foot Locker than an NCAA meet.

Assuming all distance folk run the Cross Country meet, how much faster will the Indoor Track event conclude not having to cater to the distance events?

Maybe it makes the "made for TV" more enticing for broadcasting.