The reason track isn't popular is simple: It's not relatable

sbeefyk2 wrote:

People like sports that are relatable

Tell me how football is relatable

Virtually every person has run. Maybe not in a race or a meet, but we ran. We raced each other down the street to see who could get to the Broome's mailbox first.

Track is one of the most popular sports in high school. Football and track have about the same number of participants

Hundreds of thousands of runners line up for 5Ks and up. But few of them care about running whether track or on the road. I contrast that with golf and tennis players who play AND watch their sports.

TV coverage is not consistent. I know that I am going to see a NFL game on network tv or maybe ESPN every Sunday, Monday night and Thursday night. It is consistent. But I like track and keeping track (ha!) when meets occur is a challenge and that assumes it is on a channel that is not on a tier above my normal already expensive cable package. But then track is not going to be on network tv regularly until it is more popular.

Also I do not think tv coverage is great, but I am not sure great announcers are the answer either. College football has some horrible announcers (mainly because so many games are televised there is going to be a talent spread too thin) and yet is pretty popular. I always liked George Will's line about football combining two of the worst aspects of American culture: violence and committee meetings.

D2sprinter wrote:

sbeefyk2 wrote:

People like sports that are relatable

Tell me how football is relatable

I can defend that a little bit. 1 million boys in high school play football each year. Many, many people go to the high school football games on Friday nights as just something to do.

It is on tv and written about and talked about on sports talk radio so everyone is an expert.

Even people who do not play HS football might play flag or touch pick up games.

However, as I post above those numbers pale in comparison to the number of people who have raced to the end of the street (just about everyone).

D2sprinter wrote:

sbeefyk2 wrote:

People like sports that are relatable

Tell me how football is relatable

This...

interesting troll attempt.

i'm guessing you'll get about a page and a bit of replies

3/10

Here is a way to make it more "relatable": make every event a "beer" event. That's right, not just a beer mile, but a Beer 100, Beer Steeplechase, Beer 110H, Beer Pole vault. Every event has a minimum of four beers to be consumed between the start and finish of the event. The Beer Marathon will have a beer every 5k.

Beer Track and Field: Olympics 2032

I think you need to study how HS T&F is done in California, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Nevada. We have a very relatable and applicable sport here with a wild public interest. We have meets Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun all over the South West USA. There's so much work for coaching volunteers like myself. We are swamped with new kids and parents.

Track is one of the largest participant sports in US high schools, maybe THE largest, I'm not sure, but it has huge participation numbers. I am convinced that it's marketing problem has nothing to do with not being "relatable" and much to do with its lack of an individual winner.

I don't know how relatable football, baseball, and basketball are, but you can get into these sports even without a deep understanding of them by choosing a team that you want to win and watching to see if they do. You can watch tennis and either hope that Federer wins again or that someone you like better beats him. There is no single winner in most professional track meets and I think that for most sports fans there is no reason to care about or be interested in meets. When does track get popular? It's during the Olympics when there is a medals count and you can get psyched about someone from your country adding to that count even if you don't understand or appreciate the event s/he does it in.

sbeefyk2 wrote:

Every other sport, such as cricket and table tennis, can easily be played just by waking up and doing it.

Really...you can wake up and play cricket?

Hang on... you need a bat and a ball, and some wickets, (maybe a bin will do), a field no one else is using, someone has to bowl to you, some other guys (up to 10 of them ) need to field the ball after you hit it, some other guy has to bat at other end ...and so on..

or maybe you bowl to yourself, run fast and get to other end before ball, hit it, run after it and filed it, throw it back, run nback past it before you are run out...

...wait a minute, we've just invented running I think ;-)

It's absurd how many people are into football. I just don't get it. it's such a lame sport, errr I mean game.

I disagree. Running is arguably the most relatable sport. It's also, perhaps, the most personal sport and everyone participating has their own motivators, their own unique needs that are fulfilled when they hit the streets.

Running as an act doesn't have heroes because it doesn't need them. As a sport, first it needs a villain. Then, it needs an underdog with a story, one that marketers and advertisers can get behind.

I'm sorry. But please explain to me how one of our biggest advantages, biologically, is not relatable but something like football or basketball is. The last I checked our distance ancestors didn't play ball sports. They ran. And even ball sports do quite a bit of running. What did you do primarily as a kid?

ok kentlemen wrote:

interesting troll attempt.

i'm guessing you'll get about a page and a bit of replies

3/10

I think it has to be higher. You're the only one who didn't notice that the premise was intentionally absurd.

HRE wrote:

Track is one of the largest participant sports in US high schools, maybe THE largest, I'm not sure, but it has huge participation numbers.

And pathetic participation numbers outside of high schools. Only those who dominate high school compete in college, only those who dominate college turn pro.

There is no "grassroots" participation. I walk past local club soccer matches all the time, out of shape yahoos facing off, very into their sport but not even close to athletic, just your average schmucks. It's no coincidence that high school soccer is not a big deal, that's why they still want to play.

As long as track is a "kid's" sport, it will be marginal.

Everyone can run- fast, slow, whatever- look at marathons and 5k's nad 1/2 marathons.

It's poorly marketed here in the US.

Did you see the crowds at Shanghai? Watch the Diamond League meets from Europe.

It's marketing- bottom line.

trudooly wrote:

It's absurd how many people are into football. I just don't get it. it's such a lame sport, errr I mean game.

Marketing.

Look at the Super Bowl.

How do they get TV viewers?

Hyped up commercials and they change the rules by extending half time for a lame show that people look forward to.

They change the rules in the most important game of the year.

Marketing.

Bad Wigins wrote:

HRE wrote:

Track is one of the largest participant sports in US high schools, maybe THE largest, I'm not sure, but it has huge participation numbers.

And pathetic participation numbers outside of high schools. Only those who dominate high school compete in college, only those who dominate college turn pro.

There is no "grassroots" participation. I walk past local club soccer matches all the time, out of shape yahoos facing off, very into their sport but not even close to athletic, just your average schmucks. It's no coincidence that high school soccer is not a big deal, that's why they still want to play.

As long as track is a "kid's" sport, it will be marginal.

1) Every sport is a "kid's" sport. Very few adults participate in organized athletics.

2) More adults run road races than play soccer, and the availability of road races means adult distance runners have little reason to seek out the track--especially because as distance runners get more experienced, they get comparatively better at longer distances. Even the most hardcore amateur runners I know do 90%+ of their racing on the roads.

3) As for track specifically, the reason you don't see a lot of 30-something amateur discus throwers is the same reason you don't see a lot of middle aged gymnasts, ski-jumpers, or even swim racers. Track isn't a game; it's a serious athletic pursuit. Once you've seen where you talent can take you, a lot of the reason to keep going is gone. Why would a former 10.5 guy want to get up early on Saturday morning after a long week at work to run 12-flat? (The reason so many people keep running distance, I believe, is that very few of them ever come close to their potential, so improvement is always achievable.)

runn wrote:

trudooly wrote:

It's absurd how many people are into football. I just don't get it. it's such a lame sport, errr I mean game.

Marketing.

Look at the Super Bowl.

How do they get TV viewers?

Hyped up commercials and they change the rules by extending half time for a lame show that people look forward to.

They change the rules in the most important game of the year.

Marketing.

Uhm, no.

Try entertaining.

NFL fans like football for the entertainment of it. Period.

Trying to make a track meet as entertaining as a football game is something only LRC readers would contemplate.

Did you see Adidas Boost fan count last week?

Barely 100 fans. Thats 1 hundred, not a thousand.

Did you read Ken Goes article on ESPNs recognizable athletes of the world ??

Cricket and table tennis athletes listed, yet not one single track athlete.

Wake up!

.00000001% care about a 10k track race.

In most sports, committing a foul doesn’t automatically cost you the game.

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=8828656

In most sports, you know who the winner is once the competition is finished.

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=8796415

One last thought that I would struggle to find a link to: Track is much less subjective than other sports. Yes, eras and athletes in the field matter, but to casual fans, numbers are numbers. A “Jordan vs LeBron” debate can last for pages; a Pre vs Centro debate lasts about as long as it takes to count to 4 minutes. As infuriating as subjectivity can be in sports, it is one of the driving forces behind keeping excitement alive year round. (I also believe that this is the core of why College Football continues to grow in popularity while the NFL continues to decline: no subjectivity in the playoff selection, while exponentially more fair, takes away from the buzz of the league.)