Reviewing Our Ranking Rubric

It's that time of the year again. With the summer months comes our summer rankings for cross country. The rankings for our Top 50 individuals requires a heavy amount of time, energy, thought and discussion in the weeks leading up to its release.

Naturally, there are going to be some disagreements (which we totally support). However, to give our readers a better understanding of how we create these rankings, we thought it would be appropriate to outline some of the criteria that we look at when constructing our lists.

We also wanted to give a breakdown of how we will release our rankings and when we'll be posting them...

This year, instead of doing the rankings for every division all at once, we'll be splitting them up. Our Preseason D1 Top 50 Individuals will be posted starting on August 10th (although our Honorable Mentions and Just Missed names may be coming on August 9th. We're still unsure).

Our Preseason D2 Top 25 Individuals and our Preseason D3 Top 20 Individuals will be next week.

This will give our readers some consistent analysis/content over the next couple of weeks instead of just conference updates and news.

As for our XC team rankings, we're still working on that approach and schedule, but those will absolutely be coming this year. Given our time frame and uncertainty of when/if a cross country season will happen, our rankings may be a bit shorter, but we'll absolutely still post them.

The major problem that this summer has posed for TSR is trying to decide whether or not our rankings should include individuals from conferences/schools that have cancelled/postponed fall sports. We are aware that there will be no D2 or D3 XC Championships this fall.

To make everything simpler, we are moving forward with our preseason rankings as if everything was completely normal, no one has had their season cancelled, and there isn't a global pandemic.

Is that how we'll approach our team rankings? Truthfully, we're still unsure, but we'll figure that out when we get to that point.

Alright, let's jump into some of the actual ranking criteria for our 2020 summer rankings...

Let's suppose that Runner X comes into the 2020 cross country season and absolutely dominates. The athlete easily dusts a handful of elite talents during the regular season, cruises through their conference meet and wins their regional meet with no one close by. Then, all of the sudden, that runner unfortunately has an "off" day at the National Championships and falls back to 200th place.

Are we really going to say that Runner X wasn't a top five or top 10 runner that season?

Not all examples are as extreme (or as easy) as that, but one performance at the National Championships is not going to be the driving factor of where someone is ranked.

That meet obviously holds the most weight when it comes to the order of our rankings -- and there is something to be said about those who perform well on the big stage -- but the cross country season is so much more than just one meet.

This ties into the above section, but one great race or one bad race isn't going to drastically alter someone's ranking for the entire season.

Reliability can make runners extremely valuable. Coaches know what they are going to get out of their athlete and can have the comfort of knowing that they will likely not perform below a certain standard.

Did you perform well in a smaller meet? Did you perform well in a larger meet? Have you defeated top talents on more than one occasion? Have you shown that you can be competitive in multiple race scenarios?

Runners in our Top 50 don't necessarily need to hit all of that criteria, but it certainly helps when they show time and time again that they can produce strong results regardless of the races that they are in.

And yes, consistency applies to poor performances as well (not in a favorable way).

It sometimes takes a while for certain athletes to get in a groove. Some athletes perform at a much higher level after they get a few races under their legs. Some coaches are experts at ensuring that their team peaks for the postseason. Some athletes are younger and simply become more comfortable with racing at the collegiate level as the season goes on.

If an athlete can show an upwards trend in a positive direction, we are going to take that into consideration. Momentum is a very real thing when it comes distance running. Athletes on a hot streak are often difficult to take down (i.e. Bryce Hoppel on the track).

Each meet needs to be put into context. If we take a look at last year, you could make the argument that meets like Nuttycombe, Joe Piane and maybe Pre-Nationals were more competitive than most (or all) of the conference meets in the country.

It would also be unfair to compare the PAC-12 or BIG 10 to conferences like the A10 or the Sun Belt. The competition in certain conferences is simply much more competitive than others. The same can be said for regional meets (although there is usually less disparity).

This brings me to our next point...

Some teams can't always travel to larger invitationals like Nuttycombe or Pre-Nationals. We completely understand that. However, we are then forced to put things into perspective. There have been multiple instances where athletes have dominated every meet they have entered, but then get to the national meet and completely blow up.

It's one thing to go undefeated and run super fast during the regular season, but things are going to be extremely different on the national stage when you're facing a stampede of the greatest collegiate runners that the country has to offer.

Speaking of postseason meets, let's chat about the regional cross country meets for a moment. The regional meets are tough to gauge, mainly because a lot of the best teams in the country don't always put forth their best effort in an attempt to preserve themselves for the National Championships.

On the hand, some teams and individuals are going all-out to extend their seasons, fighting for the last few national qualifying spots and hoping that the Kolas system swings in their favor.

Generally speaking, we don't look at the regional meets too heavily. In our opinion, those meets aren't truly indicative of what the overall cross country season actually looks like as far as competition is concerned. While we certainly take outstanding performances into consideration, it's rare for us to really look at the nine regional meets and have them be a significant part of our rankings.

This section is a bit less relevant in 2020 since there wasn't an outdoor track season. Not having 10k and steeplechase results to analyze isn't ideal, but we still have plenty of indoor track results to review.

Traditionally, our rankings haven't looked too closely at performances on the track. Sure, we absolutely use those marks as indicators of someone's improvement or where they'll go, but performances during the cross country season are the main driver behind someone's ranking.

However, there are going to be instances where someone had a decent cross country season, but didn't really breakout until the track season started. Some performances are just too good to ignore and for that reason, someone will usually sneak into our rankings thanks to their fast times on the oval.

Runners are human. Not everyone is going to make massive improvements or even match their performances from a year ago. If an athlete had a great 2018 cross country season, but struggled/underwhelmed in 2019, we'll still consider them for a spot in our rankings. Talent rarely just disappears and injuries are typically to blame for "down" years.

That said, not everyone who was great in 2018 will automatically get a spot in our rankings. Does this athlete have a history of injuries? How good were they in 2018? Have they raced at all recently? If so, were their performances encouraging?

These are the questions we ask ourselves when trying to rank runners that we A) haven't seen in a while or B) have seen struggle as of late.

Rising freshmen often draw plenty of debate. Every year, there are always a couple of high school superstars who enter the collegiate ranks and conjure discussion about whether or not they deserve a preseason ranking. There are two trains of thought on this...

College is obviously a wildly different and new experience for almost everyone transitioning out of high school. In a lot of instances, it takes time for these incoming freshmen to get adjusted to their college workload and new environment. They don't have the experience of racing at the collegiate level while other collegiates are simply more proven against NCAA competition.

On the other hand, some high school athletes have set all-time marks which indicate that they will be superstars in the future. Sometimes, historically great talents need to be recognized as such before they even toe the line for an NCAA race.

Our TSR writers who are responsible for constructing the women's rankings may also view how we rank freshmen differently from our men's group (and vice versa).

We don't often crowd our rankings with freshmen, but there are certainly instances where a couple of true freshmen make appearances inside our Top 50...

Athletes who are coming into the NCAA from overseas or another country are truthfully difficult to rank. It's tough to know what their competition was like prior to joining the NCAA and no one is 100% sure how they'll handle the rigors of a competitive cross country season.

That said, some athletes have track times that are just too good to ignore or have championship experience and finishes that we believe makes them game-changers for the upcoming cross country season.

Now, admittedly, we simply don't know about each and every international athlete that is coming into the NCAA. We've done our best to track all the recent moves and transfers that have taken place this offseason, but it's boarderline impossible to know about all of them.

Still, we'll continue to evaluate every name that we can in order to ensure that our research is extensive and exhaustive.

We have a variety of different groups overseeing each of our rankings. We have a D1 women's group, a D1 men's group, a D2 group and a D3 group. Naturally, not everyone is going to agree on a ranking.

Some writers will want to place a greater emphasis on championship performances while others will want to rely on consistency. Others will place a significant amount of importance on injuries and absences while others will think it's not a big deal. Oftentimes, we debate about an athlete's potential versus what the athlete has actually done.

The debates are endless, but my point is clear. Just because we have this ranking rubric doesn't mean that everyone is going to place the same amount of weight on each category.

But then again, that's what makes this so much fun.