I know, kinda weird but hear me out. The goal of cross country is to score as few points as possible. Each runner is given a score based on the place he finished the race. I thought it might be fun (because I am bored) to figure out how the conferences would rank based upon this type of scoring method. So I used the AP top 25 poll as well as all of the ORV teams to populate the race field, this week there were 38 teams who received votes in the AP poll.
In high school or collegiate CC, teams need 5 runners to score but at the professional level they need only 3, so in order to be included in the scoring I decided that conference needed at least 3 teams in the rankings to get a score. I only counted conferences that had at least three teams in the rankings toward point totals. For example, this week Notre Dame was ranked 13 but because they are independent and there are only two independent teams in the field they were not eligible for a score therefore they were removed from the rankings and the next team up, Kentucky, was given the rank of 13 because they were the 13th eligible scorer.
In addition, cross country only allows 3 or 5 scores but teams consist of usually 7 or 5 runners, two more than count towards the overall score. only the top 5 or 3 runners on a team have their scores count for the teams score but the additional runners can increase the scores of the other teams by finishing ahead of scoring runners from other teams. For my purposes I decided to only allow conferences 5 teams, this means that conference like the SEC who has 9 teams in this weeks field only had 5 of them count towards overall points but because their 4th and 5th teams placed ahead of the PAC12's 2nd and 3rd teams the PAC12's score was influenced by the SEC's superfluous teams.
Anyway, here are the results, if this is interesting let me know and I will make it a weekly thing, it was kinda fun to put together.
Rankings/scores/overall points
SEC / 1,4,12,(15),(13)/ 17
BIG10/ 5,6,7, (9),(11)/ 18
BIG12/ 3,8,17,(22),(24)/ 28
AAC/ 2,18,26/ 46
ACC / 14,16,19,(20),(27)/ 49
PAC12/ 10,21,23,(25)/ 54
P.S. is anyone else having an issue with putting the tools bar? It will not let me put in a table so I can easily show you the field.
In high school or collegiate CC, teams need 5 runners to score but at the professional level they need only 3, so in order to be included in the scoring I decided that conference needed at least 3 teams in the rankings to get a score. I only counted conferences that had at least three teams in the rankings toward point totals. For example, this week Notre Dame was ranked 13 but because they are independent and there are only two independent teams in the field they were not eligible for a score therefore they were removed from the rankings and the next team up, Kentucky, was given the rank of 13 because they were the 13th eligible scorer.
In addition, cross country only allows 3 or 5 scores but teams consist of usually 7 or 5 runners, two more than count towards the overall score. only the top 5 or 3 runners on a team have their scores count for the teams score but the additional runners can increase the scores of the other teams by finishing ahead of scoring runners from other teams. For my purposes I decided to only allow conferences 5 teams, this means that conference like the SEC who has 9 teams in this weeks field only had 5 of them count towards overall points but because their 4th and 5th teams placed ahead of the PAC12's 2nd and 3rd teams the PAC12's score was influenced by the SEC's superfluous teams.
Anyway, here are the results, if this is interesting let me know and I will make it a weekly thing, it was kinda fun to put together.
Rankings/scores/overall points
SEC / 1,4,12,(15),(13)/ 17
BIG10/ 5,6,7, (9),(11)/ 18
BIG12/ 3,8,17,(22),(24)/ 28
AAC/ 2,18,26/ 46
ACC / 14,16,19,(20),(27)/ 49
PAC12/ 10,21,23,(25)/ 54
P.S. is anyone else having an issue with putting the tools bar? It will not let me put in a table so I can easily show you the field.
