First, let me get the negatives out of the way: I think it's a travesty that they've eliminated the 5K and the 10K from the Diamond League, but I think that's kind of unrelated. I also think it's dumb that some athletes can qualify by time and then don't have to worry about their rankings.
And while I'm not sure if *this* ranking system is the best ranking system, I think *a* rankings system has a lot of potential for T&F and I'm looking forward to seeing how it will be used. Here are some potential pros:
-It can incentivize people to race more
-It can incentivize athletes to run for faster times
-It can introduce new and more varied racing strategies into the calendar
-It can bring greater drama in the leadup to international competitions
When I'm trying to be optimistic about it I think about the Tour de France, Tennis, and a few American sports.
In tennis, the top ranked athletes are guaranteed a spot in the big tournaments and guaranteed a nice draw as well. It allows them to play weaker opponents in the early stages, rest, and save themselves for the later stages of the tournament. It incentivizes chasing points during the regular season because it helps make things easier for them in the big tournaments. We could TOTALLY have something like that in track and field. Instead of seeding heats by time, we could seed them by world ranking. The IAAF could give an extra entry spot to countries with guys in the top 5-10, or more, depending on the event. Certain meets could make it easier for the top N ranked athletes to come and race (and that's what's happening under the current system). It would really incentivize people to race more and improve their results.
In the Tour de France, you have multiple objectives in a single race. Guys go for sprint points, try to win stages, or try to win the overall. Adding in this ranking system will give guys secondary objectives. They'll show up to meets to try to run a fast time to fill out a ranking, they'll show up to try to win the race for the prize money, and other guys will try to win *with* a fast time if they're desperate to improve their ranking before, say, a world championship. And it's primarily the distance events where these multi-pronged tactical strategies can play out.
The other thing I think would be cool, instead of having a world championship where every country sends three people, is to have a year end Tournament of Champions where the top ranked athletes regardless of country get to show up and race. Let those B Kenyans race for something big. See how well western athletes do when they're truly facing the best in the world.
There are also downsides I haven't discussed here but mentioned in other places. It's not fair that some poorer athletes are going to struggle more to get points. And the slower runners will struggle to get into meets. But the same thing happens in other sports like tennis that really seem to be thriving in comparison with ours. It really sucks for the players trying to compete on the challenger circuit in tennis but I think it improves viewership overall.
Maybe this won't solve any of our problems -- maybe sports like tennis are just inherently more watchable than track and field. But I don't think that's true, and I don't think it's the real issue. Like, baseball is an inherently unwatchable sport and yet they somehow manage to have more games and longer games than almost any other sport (cricket is longer but not more frequent).
So I'm optimistic, and I hope they just tweak things a little bit so that the top athletes are incentivized to care about their rankings too.