How we came up with these rankings After doing all of these rankings, it was natural to try and come up with the greatest teams of all time and for each decade. The hard part was trying to decide the best method of selecting these teams. As with everything we try to do, we wanted to take as much subjectivity out as possible. The best way to do that was use purely mathematical numbers, the most objective way we know. After that was decided, we wanted to come up with a way to select the teams subjectively and we came up with three measures.
1. Using the Inclusive All Time Meet Scores - This method gave a major edge to teams that had the really great athletes. The ones people talked about for years after they were gone. If an athlete was great for three or four years, their team got more credit than if an athlete was only great for one year. After all great athletes often yield great teams. However, was it really fair for one athlete to pile up tons of points in a single event?
2. Using the Exclusive All Time Meet Scores - This method allowed each athlete or team to score only once in an event. This also seemed logical. In a meet, an athlete can only score once in an event. The again, should an athlete who was great only one year count the same as one that won the event for 3 or 4 years?
3. Taking into account Team Scores - This method gives more emphasis to what truly makes up a team. The people that score 3rd or 4th place and the 3rd and fourth runners on a relay team. With the exception of just a few teams, those that won championships won because they had a full stable of very good runners, not just a couple of great ones. To score the teams using this method, we gave the 1st place team every year 10 points, the 2nd place team 9 points, the 3rd place team 8 points and so on. We then added those points up for all the years from 1916 to 1959 to see who scored the most points.
Since each method had it's merit, we decided to count each equally. The final question became how to score each of those methods. We finally decided on the following: We would take the top 10 teams using each method and they would score points. We made 55 points available for those 10 teams to divide based on their scores using each of the events. Again, 55 points comes about by adding 10+9+8+7, etc. To get a Team A's score using method 1, we took their points and divided them by the total points of the top ten teams using that method. We then took that number and multiplied it by 55 as described above. Doing this allowed a team that beat another team significantly in any method to score proportionally more points. No method is perfect and you could debate this endlessly, but we think we have used the fairest measure we could come up with at this time. With that said, here are our picks.
Early Era All Time Team (1916-1959)
1950's All Time Team
1940's All Time Team
1930's All Time Team
1920's All Time Team
1910's All Time Team