AIAW Era Power Rankings Reveal PSU Tops!

First up on our review of the complete AIAW (Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women) Archives supplied by the University of Maryland's Special Collections Archives, is team Power Rankings of Cross Country Teams. (Thanks to the help of Michael Henry!)

Our lowly Math Intern warmed up by using a simple formula for determining the strength of a School's results for all 6 years that Penn State ran Cross Country in the pre-NCAA years.  He simply assigned a point value in reverse order to all participating teams in the field each of the 6 years. There were team totals of 19, 23, 23, 23, 24 and 25 teams for a maximum total of a 137 points.  He then added up the totals to reveal....

Penn State was the top team in the nation despite never winning the title outright.  Two second places, two third places and at least a 5th place finish in each of the years helped the Nittany Lions outpace four-time Champion Iowa State and two-time Champion North Carolina State.  Oregon actually sneaked into second place overall.

The XC Rankings (1975-1980):

 1.   Penn State                 124 points.

 2.   Oregon                      113 points.

 3.   Wisconsin                 110 points.

 4.  Iowa State*                108 points.

 5.   Michigan State            90 points.

 6.  North Carolina State*  71 points.

   7.   UCLA                         70 points.

  8.   Colorado                    63 points. 

  9.   Kansas State               62 points. 

10.  Virginia                       58 points.

11.  Cal Berkeley               53 points.

12.  Tennessee                   47 points.

13.  Arizona                       44 points.

14.  Texas                          42 points.

15.  Colorado State            40 points.

* Multiple team titles.