May Editorial

[az2004]

so given the gh view, can we also do this to the worlds and olympic games...

get rid of the endless rounds and make it nice and neat...

if you don't want to do it those those, why the ncaa.....??

[Charley Shaffer]

I agree with the editorial's bottom line: "Give me real competition, not time-trialing!"

I've been to a lot of NCAA Championships, and, at least for me, I could do without most of the preliminary rounds. Frankly, I'm not that interested in the collegians that cannot make it to the finals. They're faster than I am, but I won't remember their names.

I've been to the NCAA Regionals, and about the most I could say for them as a spectator is that, if I'm not going to the nationals that year, it's a chance to see some athletes that I might not otherwise see that season. Competitors often don't try any harder than they have to in order to get into the top five. I agree with Garry that taking only the top three would be better.

For competition, we're better off with the regionals than we were without them. Too many schools no longer have any scored meets during their regular seasons, and their schedules are now full of invitational and open meets, where snagging qualifiers is the only real game, and that's just not very interesting to this fan of many decades. At least with the regionals they have to compete once before nationals!