Ben Rosario has some ideas on how to save the sport. Create 4 Majors so the Olympics are "no longer the pinnacle of our sport.”

I think we just need to come to terms with the fact that the sport we engage in and love is not as fun for spectators as many other sports, particularly as the distance goes up.

I love the idea of 4 majors. I think they need to do it like golf majors even more. Do the full slate of events over a 4 day weekend. The olympics are so overrated and such a waste of talent. If athletes have more incentive to race through the year it would be great. The biggest thing is going to be prize money. The sport needs MLB pitcher type money for winners.

Could one be at BU? And one on the Nike track? And maybe more of a time trial format?

Asking for a friend.

T&F's fall from greatness is due to two things: cable TV (and then the internet) and the end of the cold war. T&F was at its pinnacle when every event was a showdown between communism and capitalism. Bruce Jenner was on every box of wheaties because he beat the Soviets in 1976. After the fall of the Soviet Union, T&F quickly lost popularity with the sole focus on sprinters breaking WRs.

Also, around the same time, cable TV brought along lots of sports that had previously had no air time on network TV. Everything from X games to gambling to international soccer were now on TV. Before, sports were confined to network shows on the weekends, like ABC's Wide World of Sports. T&F had a good presence on network TV because of the East v West rivalry.

I think Rosario puts forward an interesting proposal, but don't agree with his objective of making the Olympics less important. T&F desperately needs the Olympic spotlight. Without it, no one would know who Usain Bolt is. But the court IAAF season is pathetic. The top athletes never face off with each other. Trying to cram meets into 90 min is causing IAAF to kill of all the good distance events. So, I do see having four big mega money events as a big improvement over all the different IAAF meets were no one ever matches up against each other. The big issue is that modern training is designed to have athletes peak at the end of the season for either the Olympics or Worlds. There will be a lot of resistance to changing that kind of training to have athletes ready to compete at a top level four times in a season.

Ben has some good ideas. Until recently there were more "majors". World xc was every year and seen to be at the level of the world athletics championships. All of the best distance runners ran world xc or tried to, including Bekele, the 5k and 10k world record holder. They would peak for this event and seriously try to win it, going so far as to race some xc races in Europe beforehand. Now its seen as a b level competition for developing athletes who aren't ready to move up to the marathon but don't have a chance of being near the front in a national track championship. That's another major.

Tons of distance guys have moved to the marathon and the school of thought is that you can run 1-2 marathons a year and maybe a few halves. Nobody is doing marathons and trying to run a fast track 10k or doing one marathon and competing in track. Then again the marathon has gotten so specialized, that maybe you have to train and race like that to hit a sub 205.

How then do you add more championships? The issue is really how do you get people to tune in. If world indoors, world xc, world half marathon championship were yearly events, widely watched, and paid deeper we'd be fine.

Its become standard other than for the biggest races, for a prize purse to be a few thousand or nothing at all. A guy can win a marathon and make less than he makes in a week of work. That gives the public the idea that its not a serious competition and the athletes are just doing it as a hobby, the same way someone would go home and play video games casually after work. Races like CIM, Houston, Grandmas, Honolulu need to be streamable online for free and then rewatchable. They need to be front page on youtube - not behind some subscription streaming service, or at least available for pay to view.

That brings me to the audience problem. The only way to be a track fan is to pay for a streaming service. The service costs an inordinate amount of money and only has 1/3 (if that) of the content. In the US there is flotrack, runnersport, and nbc sports gold. $400 a year if you want to watch all the track... The Brits figured this out decades ago. BBC is free and shows the serious track meets. Yet in the US, I have to have a tv with an antenna to watch the olympic trials, the olympics, and maybe one or two marathons the only content that will be on nbc. A lukewarm football fan can turn on the tv on any weekend without a cable subscription and see some football. A lukewarm track fan would have to pay at minimum $30 to watch some track. Golf and tennis are more easily accessible too.

Getting people to watch is the issue and it won't be solved by adding more championships.

Now every NFL, NBA, NHL and NCAA venue has to have a wrap around 3D Virtual Reality video screen that spans the width and length of the playing field.

So Fi Stadium is the first to have it.

It's costs a fortune.

So he wants to create the Golden League 2.0. Got it.

Agree. Hayward will draw a big crowd. Oregon meets often get a crowd though. We need that kind of energy elsewhere - for meets in the midwest, in Boston, in Florida, etc. Track can't be a big sport if the only meets worth watching are at Eugene, Stanford, and Portland

I wasn't alive for the "glory age" of track and field but having read about some of the different events that have taken place in the past and watched old videos a few things stand out to me as the biggest differences.

1) diversity- on a global scale you can look at races from different eras and you can tons of representation from different countries; USA, UK, Ireland, France, Kenya, Russia, Australia, Germany, New Zealand and plenty of others could all potentially have a star with a chance to win (thinking distance races). Now with the East African dominance it takes a little bit away from the root for the home town hero and national pride.

2) excitement- the announcers suck for most present events. They don't have knowledge or passion or a way to make it interesting. In longer events they act like it is a chore to get through or skip off to field events and interviews. If you can't get the people putting on the presentation to be excited about the event then why would fans get excited

3) accessibility- not enough free events to build a fan base. Most track and field events are behind some form of paywall whether it is flotrack, NBC gold or just not live. This kills the chance of getting casual fans interested because they are channel surfing (I know this is a dying art) and happen to stop and get interested

Now how to overcome those issues is the biggest challenge. I don't think it is as simple as introducing a new event and people automatically start to care. I don't think limiting opportunities for athletes to compete (like the diamond league is doing) is the right answer either. Looking at Japan they have tons of people who tune in for the Eikden (sp.?) which is a much longer event than a diamond league meet but is just presented better.

You need to figure out a way to get athletes to be more visible in the prime of their competitions, I think more should be done to capitalize on the excitement from the Olympics or World Championship meets. Events like the time trial 5k that Woody Kincaid broke 13 at should be free streams featuring multiple top USA athletes trying to go after records after or before a championship. Get the Bowerman vs NOP vs OTC vs anyone else to compete in a relay race with all of their stars.

We can't realistically sustain a open model because of how running works. You can stay at your physical peak in golf or tennis pretty much year round or close to it. However running isn't the same and you can't expect someone to be on to win a Open event 5k in May and then do the same thing in October while competing several times. I think that model also limits the sport to a few stars and kills off the developmental athlete that needs competitions and a stage to make more people visible. People care about the 35th best QB in the NFL but no one knows who the 35th fastest miler in the country is. That isn't likely to change but if we had events where they mattered and were a leg on a relay or in a scored meet that makes them more important.

A US Ekiden with all the top distance athletes would be really cool to see

You know There's almost zero track and field fans who aren't former athletes themselves.

Fans wants to run races.

Marathons and Road Races are 99% non-elite enties.

Non track people won't show up unless there's night life and sightseeing of a big majot city.

With every top meet you have to have relays which include masters, youth, high school, college, paralymics events.

Without races people just stay home.

It's a fringe sport. Only relevant to the public once every four years. I would argue swimming is the same.

Hey, both sports have great youth participation and plenty of interest through high school.

Maybe instead of big meets a team-based approach would be better.

Teams are formed with individual athletes competing in their events. Each team has a group of athletes for each event so that multiple athletes from each team can compete. Teams travel to other cities to compete against other teams. 10-12 teams rotate through. Then maybe a championship or something. Call it the USA Track League or something. Probably be full of semi-elites because the real elites think they're above competing more than twice a year. But that's the problem. No one cares enough about the individuals to show up unless they are a die-hard fan or know someone who is running. Most runners have the personality of a framing square, but on a team, at least you can hype the few individuals that know how to relate.

Gambling. Gambling. Gambling.

As others have pointed out Majors in other sports develop organically.

The only radical idea (and never gonna happen) is to have less events at Oly/WC. 100 / 400 / 1500 / 10k / Mara. You can then have other events at DL which might generate excitement, say World MD Champ (1500) up against World LD Champ (10k) over 5000.

You don't have to have the best athletes at every occasion. When you watch NFL it's not the super bowl every week - it's a slow build up with weaker teams and stronger teams facing off.

Another idea could be smaller more identifiable teams at championships - maybe State teams at Pan-Am? Would certainly be a boon to local track if it was known this athlete is from your state.

I also think to make the sport bigger it needs to be about the team, not an individual. I think Ben is hoping running isn't something that is huge once every 4 years but more popular like NBA, MLB, NHL, NFL. Yeah, I agree with other comments that it would be really hard to be in top shape year-round for running. But those sports aren't year-round. So maybe the NRL (National Running League, just made that up) is from May-July?

Going back to the team concept. Let's take NBA to start out with. If the NBA were like running the games would 1 on 1s or even just watching someone shoot on their own. Interest would dramatically decrease. It would be boring as hell to watch Lebron shoot a ball on his own every night during the season. Yeah the NBA has star players, but it's about the team. 5 on 5. The rankings. The playoffs. The rivalries. Fans becoming diehard and lifelong team fans. The US needs more teams. Every major city could have a big team of runners or track and field team. Maybe they travel around the US and have dual meets or more major type meets. The scoring should be about the teams trying to win the meets (I know this sounds like high school track but the older athletes get in running and t&f the more it's just about the individual).

We don't wait 4 years to get excited about baseball. We watch it every summer and get more excited about the World Series. The NBA finals are more exciting to watch than the basketball finals in the Olympics.

Maybe I'm describing a post-collegiate US track and field league?

I think if people had a team to cheer for, it gets people more invested in it. That's why people watch the Olympics, because we are team USA. No one gives a crap what sport they are watching, they are just rooting for their team.

I guess my point is that running isn't about the team beyond the collegiate level. It's slowly becoming about the team (NAZ Elite, BTC) and developing a fan base. But I think it would be more fun and awesome to see LA vs Denver this weekend for a track meet. And then at the end of the season maybe it's the top 4 city teams, maybe some individual starts, at a national championship weekend meet.

Nice! Just posted the same concept

It is so frustrating to me that periodically people come up with similar sophomoric stuff. The first rule of anything is to recognize differences and treat different things according to their differences. Virtually non of these suggestions heeds that rule as is obvious from the comparisons.

- Track and field is not a team sport (with a few exceptions), so it cannot be like ballgames, simply forget about it. It's not going to be improved by making it more team-like on the international level.

- It's also totally different from tennis or gold (apart from the small fact that it there is far less money to be made).

- In fact, it's not ONE sport but more than 20 very different events that became conjoined by historical circumstances. (And most athletes compete in only one or two of these events.) But most of these events can only survive in this historical package. Not only the throws but even a spectacular event like pole vault would be a small niche on its own.

- But t&f has been the core of the Olympics for >100 years. It has a great tradition worth keeping. But it has to be kept in this particular combination of diverse disciplines of track AND field with the Olympics (and lesser events like WC, EC, Commonwealth games etc.) as absolute highlights. Therefore it would be a huge mistake to devalue the Olympics (and similar events)

Good points all around.

But does having futball leagues devalue from the World Cup?

If track and field wasn't a team event, then why are the Olympics focused around teams and medal counts? If the US athletes didn't represent team USA, then we wouldn't care about watching it. It would just be a normal track meet with no viewers. It's all about team identity with athletes and fans.

Is it just me but I think pro track isn’t popular in the US because we don’t see athletes compete regularly. (80)NBA games, 160 mlb, weekly nascar, golf all the time...

I also think we could garner attention by actually have a country against country track meet that is scored like a track meet. Rotate that meet around the world.