March Madness

By etrain11

March Madness is one of my favorite times of the year. I love when the bracket comes out and we all analyze and obsess over the match ups. I love filling out my bracket and carefully justifying each pick. I love watching the crazy opening round games and seeing that carefully designed bracket be uncarefully demolished. Even right now when I'm currently in that, "Well if this, this and this happen I can still have a decent bracket" I'm still hooked.

However, the tournament is not the most efficient way to crown the best team. Everybody has off says and if your off day comes at the wrong time, it's game over. How many years does the best team actually win the tourney?  But who cares because it's fun, heartpounding, money making action!

So naturally as I'm watching the thing, I ask myself, how can we get something like this in the running community? We certainly could use the money and the fans. But of course a bracket style championship will never be realistic in our sport. First off all and most obviously, it's too much racing. Top tier proves often can not even be bothered with the US championships when it doesn't mean qualifying for worlds, so how the heck are we gonna convince them to hop in a biweekly bracket? And college is basically the same way. In XC teams wait the entire year to actually race all out half the time. Always saving up for NCAAs and running B squads and blah, blah, blah. No way you are getting a tourney system there.

Plus running doesn't work 1 v 1 in an individual setting. Like imagine a 1 on 1 10k right now or a 1 on 1 marathon. Even a 1 on 1 1500m would be frustrating. Like a Will Leer v Robby Andrews match would probably be 5 minute pace until the last 250m. Yikes. I'll pass on that.

There's other reasons too probably, but, eh, I'm not here to talk about all of our boring facts, I want to talk about the fun stuff! So let's pretend that we could hypothetically do a running bracket? Everyone would sign up and go all out. What's the best way to set it up?

Idea One: Track Dual Meet Bracket

This would be a traditional march madness bracket where two track teams compete in a traditional dual meet. Dual meets can be fun, there a variety of events and you really need to have depth across the board to have success, especially over the course of an entire bracket. Plus there would be fun meet to meet variation. Like one week O'Hara could choose to run KJ in the 16 and 32 and the next the 4x8, 8 and 4x4 all just depending on match ups. John Lewis can decide which hurdles or sprints to do. 

And if they ever made pro track teams how valuable would Ashton Eaton be in that thing? Seems like an easy #1 pick 

I think the WPIAL already has something like this going on for their team title competition in the track? It's a better true representative of how we decide district and state team titles nowadays honestly, it's just more racing and more impractical.

Idea 2: The XC Team Bracket

This one is the #1 will never happen but I wish it would event of all running related ideas. Seriously though, how fantastic would this be? 

A slew of dual meets, often decided by 1 or 2 points were 6th and 7th runners become very valuable rather than just, well on the off chance we tie you better run well (a point that seems incredibly foolish given the fact that we have had two state titles decided on 6th man tie breakers but there is no such thing as a 7th man tie breaker so ...)

Say you think dual meets are too small, you like the feel of a larger meet. Well you can have 4 team match ups and then the final four would be an even bigger deal because the final four is also the championship. 

You can set up 64 teams selected by a selection committee (creating lots of drama and controversy and good blogging material) then you have 4 regions and some awesome match ups. Plus you get rid of classifications and let kids just race to see who is the best.

Throw Malvern Prep, Stoga, NA and O'Hara as one seeds last year give 2 seeds to something like Hempfield, CV, Easton, DTW, 3 seeds to Lebo, Canon Mac, CBW and WCH and 4 seeds to LaSalle, CRN, CBE and York Suburban ... Think about those potential semi final rounds ... Stoga v Lebo v LaSalle v Easton at Carlisle's course? And then a state final at Hershey? 

If you did the seeding prior to districts/states you could get some serious cinderellas. Think about Winchester Thurston emerging as a study squad as say an 11 or 12 and just running train on some unsuspecting teams. I'm hooked!

But will never, ever happen. Too much racing. Too much subjective seeding/qualifying. Too much traveling. And no room for guys like Dom Hockenbury or Griffin Molino to get involved. 

Guess we will just have to settle for that XC meet of champs ...

Idea 3: 4x800m Madness

Here's one of the crazier ideas. Take the top 64 800m times in the state and put them in order from 1 to 64. Then pair them off into groups of 4 based on those marks (for example 1, 32, 33 and 64 would be a squad) and now you have 16 4x8s. Get everybody together at Ship and either make match ups between 4 teams or 8 teams and have a 2 day event to decide a champ. 

I'd be totally in on Francis v Logue v Wiseman v Brehm v Perretta on an anchor leg of a relay. Like think about it, how often does Perretta get to run relays? He's got a small team. But what if you surround him with studs and give him the stick in the thick of things with monsters of the game? It would be phenomenal.

Idea 4: Random Relay Fun

Take some teams that have great distance (or sprint) depth and throw them in the bracket. Each round the relay is randomly chosen (say one round a 4x8, the next a DMR, the next a 4x16 or maybe a super DMR with 2400, 800, 1600, 3200 or who knows go crazy)

Seriously who wins that? I mean 2014 Henderson almost definitely wins that (especially that super DMR holy cow), but in 2015 you wouldn't be interested to see Pennsbury mold their line up into a million shapes. 

And of course any of these ideas could be expanded to collegiates, professionals, or even me and my Robby Andrews action figure collection set.

I know they will never happen, but it can't hurt to dream can it?

Now let's throw these ideas in a bracket and see who wins.