Change Doesn’t Score Well

Tradition will take a back seat Saturday when it comes to scoring the USC-UCLA track and field meet at UCLA’s Drake Stadium.

The scoring system that has been used in every USC-UCLA dual meet since the series began in 1934 awarded points to the top three finishers in individual events on a 5-3-1 basis. In the 400- and 1,600-meter relays, the winner got five points while the runner-up got zero.

It’s out.

What’s in is the so-called international scoring system, adopted by the NCAA in 1999, which awards points on a 5-3-2-1 basis for individual events--but with only the top two finishers from each school counting in the scoring. It will be in effect for the first time in a USC-UCLA meet when competition starts in the field events at 9 a.m. and in the running events at 12:30 p.m.

“It’s a feel-good kind of thing,” UCLA men’s Coach Art Venegas said with disdain about the new system. “The better team is usually still going to win, but it’s very hard for a team to blow the other team out.”

Ron Allice, the director of track and field at USC, is even more critical of the international scoring format that rewards depth less than the traditional format.

“It has no validity,” Allice said. “It doesn’t reward excellence. It rewards mediocrity.”

With the new system, athletes from the same team could sweep the top three places in an event but outscore the opposition by only an 8-3 margin as long as the other team has two competitors who finish a race or post a mark in a field event.

In the traditional scoring system, a 1-2-3 finish in an individual event would give a team a 9-0 advantage.

“It’s designed to keep the scores close for the crowd,” Allice said of the new system. “It doesn’t necessarily indicate what’s truly going on in the meet.”

The international scoring system also differs from the traditional one in the relays because the second-place team gets three points to the winner’s five.

“I can’t stand that in the relays, you get three points for just getting it around the track,” Venegas said.

Despite protests from both sides, USC and UCLA will use the new scoring system in Saturday’s meet because the Pacific 10 Conference has declared they must.

“They basically told us that we would be in violation of NCAA rules if we continued to score meets the way we had been,” Venegas said.

No matter the scoring system in use Saturday, the women’s meet is expected to be the highest-quality collegiate dual meet in the nation this season.

The USC women won their first NCAA title last year and are favored to win again when the championships are held at Louisiana State from May 29-June 1. But NCAA runner-up UCLA is the five-time defending Pac-10 champion and has beaten USC in nine consecutive dual meets.

The USC men snapped their 22-meet losing streak to UCLA last year with a 82-81 victory, but the Trojans will be underdogs Saturday.

“On the women’s side, every area is a war,” Venegas said. “Every event is going to be important.... There seems to be a lot of women’s events where the No. 3 entrant could win. Things are that competitive.”