I know the local writer for a few states, and last year a staffing shake up led to reorganization of the system's managers. He said he went from pumping out one article a week to basically ignored for 12+ months by the new manager. His articles even made the national page. Most writers likely want to keep writing, but unfortunately it's the managers cutting costs that lead to a lack of content. This manger specifically would rather put up lists from the rankings page and call it content.
Cory really wasn't that good. He was also pretty weird. Best wishes to him moving forward but there is plenty of other mid tier talent that will work for 40k over there.
I am going to sound like a broken record. For the past 15 years I have claimed the founder of Milesplit was not only an uneducated hack when it came to computer programming but he was also a snake oil bully that managed to convince some very gullible people to work for free.
Milesplit was a terrible acquisition by Flotrack. They should have just started from scratch.
So it's not surprising it is struggling now. It was founded on bad principles and poor fundamentals. I am surprised it ever got this far.
I'll tell you what starting to bother me more, though.
99.9% of the millennial generation of runners and close ro 100% of Gen Z-ers have not taken the initiative to do deep dives into the available technology out there.
Chris Chavez is no more than a wordpress hero. And while I am rooting for people like Kyle Merber and Eric Jenkins, they need their Woz (Steve Wozniak).
The ones that ought to also be involved with private experimental projects are the lazy ones who troll and waste their life here. They need to take the grand leap and dive deep into the digital playground their pasttime offers. It doesnt happen over night.
great comment.
would you be willing to go into greater detail on what you mean by the "available technology" in this context?
For years mileSp has been just taking rankings from their database and calling that content in this state. They want everyone to upload video for free and people caught on.
I long for the days of Dyestat, Mocorunning, RunningMaryland and the WesternMD website, that would have every meet covered with video and photos and articles for free. They made their money off advertising and donations.
I do freelance coverage for them. They've been struggling HARD with budgeting issues especially these past few years. It's really bad.
I know the MD guy left and the site seems to have nil local features so far this xc season.
I've said before that there biggest issue is that athletic dot net does a far, far better job with results, meet hosting, formatting, live results, etc, etc
Its kind of weird here because Maryland has largely transitioned to athletic while Virginia is the big milesplit holdout.
When I was in High School, I was fortunate enough to have a majority of my races have photos, videos, and results on NJMilesplit. Sadly, I feel like that time is coming to an end in many states for a majority of reasons. I hope the company finds a pathway to success in the near future, as even though they may have their controversies, they have deifinetely helped some runners and spectators out in certain moments
What is the solution to this? It is an absolute shame that the most participated sport has this kind of coverage in our state.
The solution?
USATF or someone else needs to create the data repository that all high schools use. Make a hard push to get all states to buy in and use it.
Take data collection and storage out of the capitalism model. Have states pay a very small fee for data storage and then have usatf, or whomever holds the data, provide it for free to Milesplit, athletic.net, whomever. Let the vendors compete on the UI and their streaming and other content. Take the mere existence of data out of it.
Businesses need to evolve. Look at how Joshua Grenade destroys Milesplit on reporting college commitments.
Minnesota Milesplit used to produce lots of content (race videos, interviews, etc) but during and after covid, there’s barely any of them nowadays (except during NXR)
And the reason why there are lots of videos for Heartland (more than all Minnesota races) is because Mark Rice was doing those Heartland interviews. He used to be the main editor for MN Milesplit and posted more content than any other Minnesota editor did
It's really unfortunate to see how far milesplit has fallen or Xc/track coverage in general. I graduated high school in 2014 and we used to have meet previews, rankings and results posted almost instantly. I remember Mile split used to even to profiles on athlete's summer training and progressions. Flash forward to now and the site feels dead. There are barely any articles and most of the content is just auto generated weekly lists. It's really unfortunate, that the coverage of high school track was better 10 years ago then now.
This is classic. People bemoan the lack of coverage for HS, but yet no one wants to pay for a subscription. How do you expect these sites to survive? Do you want the journalists to live in their cars for the next 30 years?
I see the same sentiment regrading the demise of high quality, made in USA products. Constant complaining about crappy foreign-made goods, but then these same people moan about the high price of a quality product made domestically. You can't have it both ways.
USATF or someone else needs to create the data repository that all high schools use. Make a hard push to get all states to buy in and use it.
Max Siegel will install a personal buffet with chefs in his USATF office before the USATF ever invests a dime into any kind of solution to this or any other problem.
This is classic. People bemoan the lack of coverage for HS, but yet no one wants to pay for a subscription. How do you expect these sites to survive? Do you want the journalists to live in their cars for the next 30 years?
I see the same sentiment regrading the demise of high quality, made in USA products. Constant complaining about crappy foreign-made goods, but then these same people moan about the high price of a quality product made domestically. You can't have it both ways.
Cultural racketeering is never a great marketing tool. "Our product sucks because you won't pay for it! So pay for our substandard product because we might improve it if you do! If you won't, then we might die and then you get nothing!"
This is similar to why a lot of pro sports are struggling with attendance and viewership, by the way.
This is classic. People bemoan the lack of coverage for HS, but yet no one wants to pay for a subscription. How do you expect these sites to survive? Do you want the journalists to live in their cars for the next 30 years?
I see the same sentiment regrading the demise of high quality, made in USA products. Constant complaining about crappy foreign-made goods, but then these same people moan about the high price of a quality product made domestically. You can't have it both ways.
Cultural racketeering is never a great marketing tool. "Our product sucks because you won't pay for it! So pay for our substandard product because we might improve it if you do! If you won't, then we might die and then you get nothing!"
This is similar to why a lot of pro sports are struggling with attendance and viewership, by the way.
If you think a service is sub-standard, that's just fine. Don't pay and watch it wither away. But then don't turn around moan and groan about the lack of coverage.
What is the solution to this? It is an absolute shame that the most participated sport has this kind of coverage in our state.
The solution?
USATF or someone else needs to create the data repository that all high schools use. Make a hard push to get all states to buy in and use it.
Take data collection and storage out of the capitalism model. Have states pay a very small fee for data storage and then have usatf, or whomever holds the data, provide it for free to Milesplit, athletic.net, whomever. Let the vendors compete on the UI and their streaming and other content. Take the mere existence of data out of it.
Businesses need to evolve. Look at how Joshua Grenade destroys Milesplit on reporting college commitments.
I've said this before on here, the high school federations all need to get on board with using tfrrs as our official results/meet registration system. The college coaches were smart to insist on having their own private instance of directathletics so they would "own" the data forever. I know Florida and a few other states use tfrrs for high school but it's definitely a minority.
Milesplit has been going down hill for more than a decade, and they have something like a decade and a half of track and XC results for dozens of states held hostage. We should never allowed a single company to put our data behind a paywall.
Getting state HS federations to agree on anything is difficult. Some states have several federations. Plus to be the sole provider, each federation will have their hand out. NFHS cannot top-down that request. FloSports buying DirectAthletics was the first step in trying to accomplish something without having to do that.
USATF or someone else needs to create the data repository that all high schools use. Make a hard push to get all states to buy in and use it.
Take data collection and storage out of the capitalism model. Have states pay a very small fee for data storage and then have usatf, or whomever holds the data, provide it for free to Milesplit, athletic.net, whomever. Let the vendors compete on the UI and their streaming and other content. Take the mere existence of data out of it.
Businesses need to evolve. Look at how Joshua Grenade destroys Milesplit on reporting college commitments.
I've said this before on here, the high school federations all need to get on board with using tfrrs as our official results/meet registration system. The college coaches were smart to insist on having their own private instance of directathletics so they would "own" the data forever. I know Florida and a few other states use tfrrs for high school but it's definitely a minority.
Milesplit has been going down hill for more than a decade, and they have something like a decade and a half of track and XC results for dozens of states held hostage. We should never allowed a single company to put our data behind a paywall.
I agree but recently tfrrs was acquired by Milesplit last year :/ the monopoly continues