One of sports’ more lopsided debates is the system for which Division I college football determines its national championship teams. Known as the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), it’s drawn the ire of: President Barack Obama, who has said that if he could change one thing in sports, it would be the BCS; Paul Begala, a CNN political analyst, who referred to it as an “evil” of the modern world; and U.S. Congress, which threatened to investigate whether or not the BCS violates our nation’s antitrust laws. Senator Orrin Hatch went so far as to call it “un-American.”
And that doesn’t even count the sports media.
Criticism for the BCS stems mainly from the absence of a playoff system to eliminate all but the two best teams. Instead, the championship game is based on subjective and computer-generated rankings that formulaically spit out what it deems the nation’s top two teams to be. As a result, there are usually several deserving teams – some are undefeated – and they get neglected the opportunity to compete for the title.
This year is no different. On Sunday, the BCS games were announced and two undefeated will not have a shot to play for the title.
In a distant sports universe, high school cross country is in danger of following a simliar path as it relates to its format for determining the nation’s top prep runner.
Since 2004, the country’s best runners have been gradually getting split up among two national cross country championship meets: Foot Locker Cross Country Nationals and NikeCrossNationals (NXNs). It was in this year that Nike began sponsoring a team championship meet and top runners on top teams began racing at that meet as well.
Before that, the lone meet was Foot Lockers, which invited the nation’s top individuals to one race. For 25 years, it settled any debate over who was best and its history of champions is rich: Melody Fairchild, Sara Bei (now Sara Hall), Erin Davis, Adam Goucher and Jorge Torres are all winners of the prestigious race. In 2000, three of the greatest American distance runners ever – Dathan Ritzenhein, Ryan Hall and Alan Webb – faced off against one another and finished 1-2-3.
Foot Locker is still the country's prominent individual meet, but there are signs that the field of competition has become watered down. In 2004, 16 of the top 20 boys and girls combined at the Nike meet also ran at Foot Locker Nationals, which is held a week after.
Last year just five such runners did both meets and this year there is only six. More runners, it seems, are content on doing one or the other.
The reason for the drop in runners who race both meets stems from Nike’s decision to restructure its meet in 2007, when they added eight regional qualifying meets and offered qualifying spots to individual runners for the first time.
Now a top runner must run four additional meets - two qualifying races and two championship races –if he wants to do both. That’s a lot of physical wear and tear and coaches may reconsider entering their top young athletes in both races.
“For those that qualify for both, it’s a very demanding athletic experience,” says Phil Zodda, Foot Locker’s Northeast Regional director.
Another reason is the simple matter of scheduling conflicts, which is where high school cross country truly begins to resemble the BCS as unfair. Three of NXN’s regional qualifying meets – Northeast, New York and Southeast – fall on the exact same day as the Foot Locker qualifier meets, making it impossible for national elites in these regions to run both meets. If they happen to run for a team with a chance to qualify for NXNs, they are forced to decide between individual and team, and they usually opt for team.
As a direct result of this conflict, and as long as it exists in its current format, it will be increasingly difficult to ensure that the country’s best individual runners are getting a chance to race one another each year.
Take the case of Joe Rosa, one of the country’s top-ranked runners all year. Forced to choose, he decided to race with his team at the NXN Northeast regional and forfeited a chance to race individually at Foot Locker. He placed third on Saturday at the Nike National meet, but his season is now over and he’ll be home this weekend when his peers face off at Foot Locker.
An unsettling question to ponder is What if Rosa won and still couldn't race at Foot Locker?
As it is, Craig Lutz won NXNs and will be one of the favorites in San Diego this weekend. He spoke with MileSplit this week and expressed little concern over the heavy race load from the last month: “My coach and I looked at my season and decided that I had enough base milage and fitness to be able to handle both.”
If Lutz can win Foot Locker, he will be the first runner ever to win both meets. If he does win, he will be the consensus national champion and for at least one more year, enthusiasts can rest well with this knowledge.
Until a change is made to the current format, however, there will always be the What if? chance that a nation’s top runner from one of the conflicted regions races at NXNs and incidentally disqualifies him from Foot Locker. When that happens, and there are two individual national champions with no way to settle it, high school cross country will be no better than the college football BCS.