In track, the overarching goal is to win the race. But given that there can only be one winner, all athletes also pursue a secondary--and no less noble!--goal: registering as fast a time as they possibly can.
Now let's pivot to cross country... which isn't track!
Yes, of course you want to run as fast as you can in your next cross country race. But it shouldn't be because you want to lower your PR--it should be because running faster means beating more people, and scoring as few points as possible for your team is the true objective of our sport.
At a track invitational, you'd probably rather place a distant 12th in a lifetime 3200-meter PB than take third running 20 seconds slower than your best time. In cross country, you'd be nuts to prefer the faster time over the lower place. That's 10 extra points you'd have saddled your team with!
Treating time as the most important aspect of cross country shifts the focus away from the thing that make it special: its outsized focus on head-to-head competition in service of a team objective.
Then there's the fact that comparing times between courses is notoriously tricky business. Obviously an accurately-measured 5K on a steamrolled, bone-dry, and pancake-flat golf course-like environment set at sea level is going to run quicker than one at 6,000 feet with hills, roots, and plenty of camber the day after a rain storm.
This is an extreme comparison, but it's not far from the range of course types available to high school harriers across America. And as we increasingly prioritize time in a sport where it should be at best a secondary consideration, the natural response on the part of meet directors is to make courses easier.
Add a loop of a soccer field here, bypass the hill with a nickname (something ominous like the Widow Maker) entirely there; have the grass mowed the evening before showtime and say "close enough" when the measuring wheel reads 4,873 METERS.
As it stands, the faster the course, the more attractive it is to teams. And meets that rake in registration dollars tend to have more staying power than those that are money-losing labors of love, no matter how charming their course may be.
This isn't to knock any specific performances. Kids are obviously running faster today than they were a decade or two ago--more standardized and dependable track times prove this. It's instead a call to re-center pure unbridled racing during our fall competitive season. (Which, again, will still result in fast times as a byproduct, since we obviously aren't putting that particular flavor of toothpaste back in the tube.)
So how do we course correct--pun unfortunately intended--and shift the focus back to "real cross country" (to borrow a phrase used by Tim Simpson, writing for MileSplit Michigan, explaining the difference between a one-off gimmicky course obstacle and a legitimately challenging course)?
By making courses harder... and yes... slower. In a world where PRs will invariably always be cherished, that may sound counterintuitive. But if you make them so slow that a runner who is accustomed to winning races in, say, the low-15-minute range, breaks the tape in 17:30, then you create a course with myth-making properties. And when a course becomes the thing of local legend, then racing on it--time aside--carries with it bragging rights.
Word gets out that a top-ten finisher at NXN won her most recent race in 21 minutes, people want to know more. They look into the results of the meet, dig around for rumors of its course's cruelty, and think... "hey, I'd like to prove my mettle on something like that, too." This happens enough, and there's appetite for a local course with a hill called the Lactic Luge or something similar. It becomes a source of pride to post a wildly anomalous result on your MileSplit page: it means you've raced Real Cross Country!