Why was distance running so popular in the 70s (or 80s)? Was it more popular than football?

HRE wrote:

Definitely, if there hadn't been US guys challenging and sometimes beating those particular Kenyans the sport would have drawn even less attention. But what the heck does "IIRC" mean?

Usual translation is If I Recall Correctly.

Every little girl wanted to run like Little Mary Decker !!! Period.

mother clucker wrote:

Interesting - Re: "bodies have changed" We hear so much talk about "real women" blah, blah blah - apparently, our grandmothers weren't "real women". I seem to recall, and it could simply be brain rot, but I recall there only being 1 or 2 fat kids in a class of 25 students - when I drive by schools these days, it seems to me that the majority of kids are fat. Boys and girls in the 9 - 11 range with bellies and boobs.

Exactly. When I was a teenager (1980s) almost all teenage boys and girl were thin. What is considered "normal" teen bodies today was considered "fat" 25 years ago. Preteen girls with boobs and curvy asses were absolutely non-existing.

Thanks for the translation`.

Backtracking a bit for the OP, how are you defining "popular?" Because if you're talking about numbers of people involved, as someone else has mentioned, there are more people involved in distance running today than there have ever been so it actually wasn't more popular in the 70s and 80s. It was faster, from top to bottom, but not more popular.

HRE, the OP didn't claim the 70s & 80s were more popular than now. The OP asked why it was SO popular, not more. The 70s were decidely more popular in distance running than any previous era.

Ok. But I'd still like to know how he or she is defining "popular" because asking if it was more popular than football, which we all know has been a very popular sport in some form or other since the 1920s, leaves the impression that the OP might think that distance running was extremely popular in the 70s and 80s. Is distance running's popularity here being measured against other sports or against the sport's own popularity at other times? Is it measured by number of fans or numbers of participants?

I've had subscriptions to Sports Illustrated pretty consistently since the early 60s. If you measure a sport's popularity by the number of articles it gets in Sports Illustrated and in the mainstream media, I'd bet serious money that distance running was most popular in the 60s. It was not at all uncommon to find feature articles in SI about individual distance runners. Off the top of my head I can think of articles about Ron Clarke, Derek Clayton, Gerry Lindgren, Tom O'Hara, Buddy Edelen, Jim Ryun and Dave MacKenzie. The NCAA and AAU championships always got articles and the articles always covered the distance events.

As early as the 70s, there were fewer of those sorts of articles, a trend that continued into the 80s, 90s and now has reached the point where it's surprising to see the sport mentioned in SI.

There were more track meets on TV in the 60s than at any other time in my life and again, the distance events were almost always shown in close to their entirety. That happened less and less in the subsequent decades though there was a time when the New York Marathon got national TV coverage.

If you define a sport's popularity by the number of people who are aware of it and follow it with some interest I'd bet that the sport was most popular in the 60s and that it's popularity, measured that way, has declined inversely to its growth in popularity as measured by participation has increased.

My take is that with the general populace in such poor shape, they can't relate to running. The elite runners make it look easy and folks think they could do it. For example look at Wanjurri, Hall, Ritz in the Olympic marathon. A guy watching that is 200 lb's over wieght would have no idea the speed at which they are running. To him it looks like they are jogging because theya re just so fit and amazing. The overwieght populace doesn't try to run because they think anyone can do it. They can toss a football around and so they relate to the NFL. People just don't want to work at something hard that takes consistency like running. We have become a spectator nation (USA) and let's face it running isn't alwasys the most spectator friendly.

If Usain Bolt was American or someone with his talent /charisma was American it would make the sport more popular but it will never reach the football level.

On a side note, does anyone ever see the popularity of sports going down in the USA? To me it just gets bigger every year with the Super Bowl, March Madness, etc.

jamurra wrote:

I agree. Kids today are overweight and fit kids seems to be the exception rather than the norm these days. I can recall the one overweight boy and girl in my elementary school back in the 70s. Seems they look down on kids now who are fit.

That is the truth, my son is a hs freshman runner who gets asked everyday why he is so thin (and he is not a scary thin either). When I was a hs runner, I was thin but was very typical of most teenage girls. I teach PE and find it alarming how many of the children have weight problems who are only in Kindergarten.

Another point made earlier, it's now okay to enter races even if you are slow, so most of the entrants are running eight minute miles or slower. Nothing wrong with that,it's great that the sport encourages wider participation now, but it seems now to be more of a sport for anyone who takes up running(jogging more like). Back in the eighties, when I was competitive, most racers were running at least 7 minute miles and were very competitive.

Someone mentioned that if an American won Boston or New York marathon the media would cover distance running to the extent that it did in the '70's but I highly doubt it.

If Ryan Hall won Boston I would bank on that he won't make the cover of Sports Illustrated, the magazine who put Salazar and Rodgers on the cover. In the late '70's, early '80's I had these taped to my bedroom wall.

Marathon running just isn't covered the same as other major sprting events today, although it used to. You had Borg on the cover after Wimbledon and Salazar on tbe cover after winning NYC.

Also, remember the big Indoor Track circuit? You had a major meet nearly twice a week for 7 weeks. I remember watching Eyestone trying to stay with Coghlan in a 2 mile in Dallas and losong 8:17 to 8:25. Also remember every meet ending with a "dream mile" usually with Steve Scott, Eamonn Coghlan, John Walker, and Ray Flynn. One year in Cleveland I saw Olympic Bronze medalist Jose Abascal take one of those.

F. Booth wrote:

Someone mentioned that if an American won Boston or New York marathon the media would cover distance running to the extent that it did in the '70's but I highly doubt it.

I brought it up and that is absolutely not what I said or implied.

I said it would get "more attention" meaning probably mention on the sports shows on TV and maybe even some entertainment shows such as the late night talk shows or the early morning TV shows. It's probable that some of the more generic web sites might cover it more also....not just the running sites.

Also your further point about being on the cover of SI really doesn't equate these days as the magazine business has gone much more specific and SI is not even close to being the same magazine that it was in the 70's.

One of the OP's comments was "if you look at many old courses that have been around for decades (I come from California, so the courses that have been around for a long time here off the top of my head are Crystal Springs, Mt. Sac, and Woodward Park). A lot of the top 20 times are from the 70s and 80s... for example, on Crystal Springs, in the last decade there have only been a handful of boys and girls that have gotten on to the top 20 list...

Why is this? You'd think with all this new technology today the record books would be constantly reset, but no, most of the records are from decades ago..."

I wondered this same thing when my son joined his high school cross country and track teams a couple of years ago. There have been a number of posts indicating there are many reasons for the rise, decline, and partial rerise of the sport in the US. While other factors certainly play a big part, it seems to me that the record aspect would most closely relate to the training methods involved. A number of posters have commented about how much mileage they used to do, and how that is not done today (presumably to reduce the level and severity of injuries). Why do York High School in Illinois and Woodlands in Texas consistently win or place highly in state and national cross country meets with the same type of athlete that exists in all of the other schools? They probably train differently. Maybe harder, maybe smarter, or both, but they train in a manner to be good enough to win.

Any comments from those who ran in the 70's and see enough high school/college programs today to compare the training methods from the two eras?

Because of Steve Prefontaine!!! Pre Lives!!

Because people didn't have enough kids to fill out the population (guess what, that's where the social security problem came from as well, I didn't make it up).

Because track meets aren't well-featured or presented on TV. Don't sell the media short in their ability to influence people or sell a product. Part of this is production, but I think part of it is the inclusion of (sorry ladies) the inclusion of some boring women's races.

The image of the runner. Instead of Jim Ryun tearing it up on the track people think of the local jogger.

This may not be different from the old days, but there are few knowledgeable coaches as well. One h.s. coach coached both Joe Falcon and Matt Tegenkamp. There have to literally be hundreds of their equivalents sitting around playing nintendo and eating hot pockets.

If you were to declare a Golden Age of high school distance running in the US I'd vote for the 60s. Gerry Lindgren and Jim Ryun were world class runners while still in high school, three of the four sub 4:00 high school milers were running then and there were loads of guys just a notch or two behind the top.

This created a LOT of expectations among track fans and athletes. An awful lot of people had pretty much awarded Olympic golds to Lindgren and Ryun even before either had run an Olympic race and it was just assumed that Tim Danielson and Marty Liquori would also be world beaters.

But the piles of Olympic medals never happened. There was one silver medal from the lot, Lindgren's and Ryun's post collegiate career never matched their high school and collegiate careers, Danielson barely ran in college and while Liquori had a great career he only managed to make one Olympic team.

Conversely, Frank Shorter, who had been just a slightly better than average high school and college runner, won two Olympic medals. The idea that perhaps the high school prodigies had been doing too much too soon and became burned out caught on. Better, many decided, to go fairly easy in the early years and be ready to hammer it by late college or after graduation.

A current high school coach who tried to have his kids do what SOME programs from the 60s were doing would likely be fired. Whether this is good or bad when analyzed from a performance angle seems uncertain. We haven't produced any more world class high school runners, even Webb was not competing equally with world record holders and Olympic madallists like Lindgren and Ryun had done. But we also haven't produced any more Shorters.

Good points, but I take exception to calling Shorter "just a slightly better than average college runner." NCAA champs deserve a little more.

I should have added "until he was a senior." What I mean is that unlike other NCAA champions, he was largely unknown until his last NCAA meet and certainly hadn't done anything prior to that meet that foreshadowed what was coming.

I point to a number of factors (in no order):

1. Rise of video games and cable TV: gives kids something totally engaging to do, that does not promote fitness. Growing up in the 70s not a lot of my friends had cable.

2. African dominance. North American kids don't have identifiable role models. This is not meant to be racist, but I think it is fair to say that the perception is that one in 500 million will be competitive on the world stage, so why bother. Totally different in the 60s and 70s.

3. Availability of fast food/junk food. Again, in the 70s McDs was just catching on. The concept of drive-through and eating high calorie crap because we are all so pressed for time was not so ingrained (see points below).

4. A families' economic model has changed. In the 70s it was totally unnecessary to have both spouses work because so few did. As women began to become equal earners, single earner families fell behind - thus pressuring them to have both spouses working. This created a situation were men either had to earn more, so as to keep up with double income families, or their wives had to go to work too. As men needed to earn more, being a part-time employed dirt bag runner became less feasible. As well, as workers, or prospective workers, looked to the future, they started to get more education so as to earn more. Education became more important as did getting an early start on one's high earning career. This also made parents realise that to keep their children competitive in getting the best education and eventually the best incomes, they had to make sure their kids were doing all sorts of resume building activities (likely that take away from having the time to run 80 mile weeks). The result of all of this is that whereas in the 60s one could finish high school, screw around for years and then in one's late 20s jump into a career that was not far behind everyone else's, these days one had better go to university, get 2 degrees and start one's career right away, or risk being way behind every one else that did that (which is way more common now). [Note to the old times, I am not trying to say that having a career in the 60s or 70s was not hard, just that there is a huge focus on education and qualification and expertise that I don't believe existed back then.]

5. Urbanization. More people than ever are living in big cities. They are more expensive than small towns. Accordingly, people have to work more and play less. As well, big cities offer less opportunity for fitness, lots of opportunity for eating crap, and few jobs that require physical labour.

So why are we having a resurgance of sorts? I would guess a combination of demographics (I have no idea, but since the other factors haven't really changed it has to be something) and it took a while to realise the dangers of the above points. After a generation of latchkey kids sat in front of the TV eating poptarts while their parents went out to be super moms and dads, people realized the dangers and started trying to get back to where we were.

Physical Fitness Craze as others have inferred and it could be from a number of sources as stated, Pre, on and on, a Bike Boom occurred too, people buying nice Peugeots and other foreign brands that's why I earnestly think you find a lot of vintage road bikes on the market for low prices. Some people say the bike boom took some from the high cost of gas, gas lines back then.

Too, the ecological "green" boom as well so you had a few "booms" making it popular.

rockin handrblockin wrote:

Because people didn't have enough kids to fill out the population (guess what, that's where the social security problem came from as well, I didn't make it up).

Because track meets aren't well-featured or presented on TV. Don't sell the media short in their ability to influence people or sell a product. Part of this is production, but I think part of it is the inclusion of (sorry ladies) the inclusion of some boring women's races.

Some of this is true.

Also...do not underestimate the effect of Soccer on distance events.

Back in the day...the food chain went....in no particular order from 6th grade through maybe 9th grade....baseball/football/basketball. Track/XC got the leftovers.

Now we can throw soccer into that mix. I don't know how many times I see a kid running around as an 8th grader and I think to myself that he'd be a great XC runner. I mention to the kids parents that, when he gets to HS, have him go out for the XC team. It too often turns out that the kid ends up being one of the better players on the soccer team and he never gets to the XC team. I suspect that some of these kids would be very high end athletes.