OK, its time for a review of the coverage, because I'm that kind of person.

First, I think its wonderful that we HAD coverage.  Speaking for our niche sport, we need more of this stuff;  done well, with multiple cameras, in race results tabulation, knowledgeable announcers etc.  We got a lot of that here.

Second I have to ask why the live streaming video was much better quality than the replay? (Answer:  You translated it to a much more heavily compressed flash video, as compared with the wmv stream of the live feed)

It could have been better.  I write this because I want better.  I want the powers that be to want to make it better.

Frankly, as a professional, I'd like the job of being a part of doing it.  But that isn't likely.  They always hire their friends.

Well here is what their friends did.  Mostly a good job of showing the leaders--that's to be expected--as they covered the course.  Occasional cutaways that we couldn't figure out what was happening, but technically that is necessary.  There was little to show a perspective of the others in the race--that is really hard to do.

The announcers were face with the challenge of trying to identify individuals and teams.  It was a lot to ask of them.  Most particularly the identification of Elias Gedyon in the top 3, when he wasn't there was obvious.  So many of the names, the announcers needed to be fed, that process was obvious.  Still the guys (all guys) did a good job.

Filling in the gaps is the problem:  The website, in its hugeness, let us down.

If there had been the basic information--bib number and athlete name--available on the website, we the viewers could have followed along and found our athletes ourselves.  

A second failure:  when we click on the athlete's name, (in an ideal world) we should be taken to their profile, season results, what they did to qualify for this meet, perhaps a picture and most importantly, what the team uniform might look like.  Remember, we are seeing a tiny athlete on a blurry image that is not much larger than my cel phone.  Yes, you can blow it to full screen but the resolution doesn't get any better.

Of course, this visual identification is made that much harder by the fact that they are almost all in a different color uniform than we have seen them all season--necessary under the damned NFHS rules.  The whole semantic thing about independent cross country teams that just happen to be from the same high schools is BS, we know it, everybody knows it but we have to do it to conform to the rules.  I'm a NFHS Official.  I have to enforce those rules because they are in the book.

By the occasionally readable close-ups, we actually can see the team names and by the end of a 5K race, we might have identified the look of the teams of our interest.  Now we get to the finish of the race.  Here is where the camera people and director need to work against their common reactions.  This is where they failed.

Don't spend the critical time, as the race is finishing, focusing on the winner trying to catch their breath.  THIS IS A TEAM RACE.  Don't cut away from the finish line.  This is where the critical action is happening!!!  Each place counts.  Anybody who knows anything about this sport knows that fact.  A casual fan, a basketball trained TV crew, wouldn't.  So as the critical point total is being decided, we watch people trying to not to throw up.  It might seem dramatic--though I've seen it on the finish line of my local races every week through the season.  After you've had your shoe barfed on a couple of times, the novelty wears off.  Its not exactly what I want to see on my video of the race on two accounts.

Bottom line:  Dissecting the results and the coverage, you cut away from the the place the race was being decided (the finish line) for most of the critical minute when it counted.  To put it in sports terms you might understand (to do this I have to use an analogy to another sport): With all the build up to the super bowl, after then watching the entire game, you took a shot of the cheerleaders when the winning field goal was being tried, or maybe even during the final 2 minute offense attempt.