Is T&F really dying? Or should we accept that it's always been a marginal side show?

No question track & field's audience in this country has severely dwindled. As others have mentioned it wasn't that long ago that interest was much greater. The Millrose Games was a big highlight of the winter sports calendar, but finally MSG kicked them out and now it's at the Armory. There are several reasons for the decline in interest but the growth and dominance of the major team sports, particularly football and basketball, has obliterated most of the individual sports, including track. In Europe only football (soccer) competes for fans' attention, so there's still enough fans left.

I seriously doubt a pro track athlete is suffering, where are you getting that from?

How about high school and college track? TONS of schools in the sport TONS of meets going on.

A dying industry.........what????

NO ONE CARES ABOUT HIGH SCHOOL!! Are you serious? We're talking about business, entertainment, dollars, eyeballs, and advertising. We're not talking about a local school district's budget. Please join the actual topic of discussion. And along those lines, I fear you're living in a bubble. Division 1 college T&F programs are under increasing pressure. Some have gotten the axe. They're not cutting volleyball. They're not cutting rowing. They're not cutting lacrosse. They're cutting T&F. And the pro circuit we've already discussed - no one other than the track geeks who read this website care about the sport.

How can you not be aware of this: trend:

runnersworld.com

Amid Athletic Department Shortfalls, Men’s College Running Programs Get the Axe

Across college sports, athletes and observers worry that cuts will continue to hit track and cross country. Can anything be done to save them?

Open link

theguardian.com

As NCAA track and field programs vie to survive, Black students suffer most

Allison Torres Burtka

The shuttering of collegiate track and field programs across the US disproportionately harms Black men and closes doors to educational opportunities

Open link

That guy is a narcissistic, out of touch boomer who probably never participated in the sport past high school. The majority of us just ignore his goofy prattling.

Whoa.......relax my man, ok?

I am talking the sport of track and field got it? That does include high school and college, keep in mind pro track wasn;t always with us.....right?

What schools are giving up track. give me a name. Hell SJS and Oregon State just started back up. You have any idea at all how many JC 's have track programs?

Cool your attitude guy ok? I am talking the entire sport got it?

I had another great track season and expect to have another one next season, actually never had a bad track season.

T&F and road racing are nothing like they were back in the days of the cold war rivalries or the first running boom. Since then, the sport has lost popularity with the general public with most people only tuning in for the Olympics. But the sport is definitely not "dying". Participation is very strong in HS and college and road races are still drawing big numbers. We have just arrived at a new normal where T&F and road racing is more of a boutique sport with a solid (but not very large compared to pro team sports) fan base. That is not a bad place to be in an age where cable and the internet bring people everything from corn hole to poker to eSports to cheerleading and so on.

I'm older than you. "Really popular" is too subjective a term to get into. Track was always a niche sport in my lifetime. But the niche is smaller and different today than when I got into it. Meets don't generally draw the kinds of crowds that Nationals or the dual meets between the US and USSR did. Sports Illustrated routinely ran stories about the bigger meets and top performers. That's largely gone. BUT I can watch more big time track now because of streaming than I could in the 60's.

Nobody cares about high school....??????

PS,

It's hard for me to think that rack will ever die. Most people who follow it were on a track team, high school and/or college once. High school track still draws huge numbers of kids so there will always be some sort of fan base.

Yikes, lotsa empty seats for that 100 final.

This is dying?

April 05-11
McDonnell Invite (April 07-08)
Duke Invitational (April 07-09)
Sun Angel Track Classic (April 07-09)
Click Shootout (April 07-09)
Tennessee Relays (April 07-09)
ARCADIA HS INVITATIONAL (April 08-09)
Walker Invitational (April 08-09)
Illini Classic (April 08-09)
Texas A&M Team Invitational (April 08-09)
Hurricane Alumni Invitational (April 08-09)
USATF BERMUDA GAMES (April 09)
Hamilton Invitational (April 09)
Mason Spring Invitational (April 09)
Rotterdam Marathon (April 10)

Young readers don't realize what track and field used to be like. It attracted far more attention back in the day. In the Bay Area in the Seventies, to cite just one area, there was an indoor meet every year at the S.F. Cow Palace, an outdoor meet in Berkeley, and another outdoor meet in the San Jose area (called, at least for a while, the Bruce Jenner Invitational). All three meets drew good crowds.

Plus, the local papers devoted a good amount of coverage to HS track & field, and a whole lot of ink to Cal & Stanford. Anybody who read the sports section even semi-regularly knew about the better track athletes at those places, guys like James Lofton and Tony Sandoval.

At the national level, Dick Buerkle made the cover of Sports Illustrated for setting a world indoor mile mark. What track athlete could make an SI cover now? To answer my rhetorical quesiton, none at all, except for maybe as part of an Olympic Games preview.

Once track became a pro sport here came the cheating which turned a lot of people off to the sport. Will SI have an obvious doper on the cover....nay.

BUT......at the HS/NCAA will still see plenty of meets a lot of great action, and if you recall there was a time that was all we had. That and foriegn athletes who could stay in the sport.

Bob Hayes was a college football player.

Brutal it's a cheap sport, provide a jersey that the athlete may have to pay for himself and that's it.

Track and field is deader than the horse as a mass form of transportation. I wish it would raise it's profile but if the top athletes are only making few million a year for being the best in their sport it's not going to draw or keep the best athletes from first world countries.

Also the sport can't retain the equivalent of minor league athletes as they are literally starving to death unless they can break into the top 10 of their events to get Diamond League entries.

The NCAA full ride scholarship is the only thing keeping track and field from being fencing and other lower profile Olympic sports.

I love running as a sport to participate in and watch. But if running/track-and-field is your favorite sport, you are in a tiny minority (along with me) and have been for longer than any of our lifetimes.

The popularity of sports varies greatly over time and location. Worldwide, track and field doesn't even register in the top 10 most popular sports worldwide and hasn't, for almost a century.

Note that rugby was the most popular in the world at one time. Not anymore. Note that American football doesn't even register on the list, either (since most countries don't play it all all). But in the USA, we think it's #1. It's not. Hockey was tops at one point. Not anymore. Soccer (football) is #1 now. It may not always be.

But it doesn't matter. If you like it, you like it! Keep liking it. The rest of the world doesn't have to agree.

Most Popular Sports Over Time

Track had a higher profile because the NFL was semi pro by today's standards and the other big leagues were similar.

Sime, Morrow, Ryun and others all made covers back in that era. Only a Bolt or Lewis type would make a cover in this era. I don't even think Warholm with his freak time would be on the cover when that would have been a lock to be on the cover in the 70's or earlier.

Two separate questions: (1) is it dying as a participant sport, and (2) is it dying as a spectator sport.

I think participation is still relatively healthy looking at all the high schools and colleges that sponsor track and field. And the number of pro athletes isn't considerably less than in previous generations. So, I'd say not dying as a participant sport. Yet, participation could be even higher. I think a lot of that is sports specialization. Gone are the days when a big chunk of athletes would be in track and field in addition to football, basketball, or another sport. Not that there's no multi-sport athletes, but the numbers have dropped. Also programs have been cut. While there's still a lot of school sponsoring it at the college level, I'd have to think it's less than during at its peak.

T&F is probably dying a little as a spectator sport, but really how much? There has always been and continues to be the track and field obsessives, and then there's a huge subset of the public who like track but really only watch it during the biggest events, or even just during the Olympics. Same for a bunch of other Olympic sports. That's nothing new.

With infinite viewing and entertainment options at their fingertips, I'm not sure a lot of people even know they can find T&F coverage outside of the Olympics and wouldn't even think to look. It's not like in the age of major network dominance, small amount of cable, and no internet or smartphones when someone just might happen upon the Millrose Games and watch.

"What schools are giving up track, give me a name". So you didn't bother to read the linked articles before replying. Well, to quote from one of them:

"On November 5, Clemson University became the second Power 5 school—after Minnesota—to announce it was cutting a track and field program at the end of the current academic year. Unlike Minnesota, however, Clemson is getting rid of the entire program: men’s cross country and indoor and outdoor track & field. No other sports were affected by the cuts."

"By this point in 2020, the script seems familiar. With COVID-19 cited as a major factor, at least a dozen schools this year have ended track or cross-country programs or both, including Minnesota, William & Mary (which announced that it was reinstating all sports programs it cut, though promising only to do so through at least the 2021–22 school year), Central Michigan, University of Akron, Appalachian State, University of Connecticut, Florida International University, and a handful of other smaller colleges. Some, such as Brown University’s, were spared after blowback."

Society has changed drastically in 50 years. We used to live in a slower-paced world where you didn't mind watching a pitcher warm up, your favorite batter take his sweet old time, or your favorite runner circle the track countless times.

That's been replaced with a 24-hr, instant access world of entertainment at your fingertips. Any entertainment can be replaced by any other form, if its just quicker and easier to access.

But as long as there are two kids to line up in the dirt and say, "Wanna race?" then our sport will still exist, in some form.