"Where did all the pro track meets in America go?" by JGault

profit you're playing the "network's" game in the colbert story. we have a fed with some money. everything doesn't have to turn a self contained profit. nor does that fit our developmental goals necessarily.

example -- my family couldn't afford select soccer. my team wanted me to stick around. team puts me on scholarship. trainer makes slightly less or the rich team boss pays for me. i help them win 2 state titles. they help me get recruited and play well in college.

along some of those lines, what i got from the article was bermuda was disappearing into the triangle. but if grand slam had never manifested, would the rest have continued in its absence? perhaps with athletes paid late. perhaps with USATF plugging financial holes.

we got pretty close to a unified pro meet calendar in 2023. major meets like texas relays worked with other meets, tons of pros, and most notably the US relay staff to put together teams there and elsewhere. after the double 4x100 wins in budapest and how the year went in general i was super excited about the future but clearly my optimism was misplaced if this is the staff we have in charge of USATF.

i mean, you're acting like USATF or these meets are a business. the fed is a non-profit. and are the meets really set up to make money or just to hold an event and try to cover the expenses.

the real argument goes something like, after about 7th grade, usa running is just feeding off what the schools are producing. unlike soccer the sport is dominated by school development and performances. many strong athletes see little or nothing of the national youth apparatus, the competing state/regional/national postseason meets. get to d1. go pro anyway. soccer is the sport where schools are a xerox of a xerox of a xerox feeding off the select leagues. you then need the whole club apparatus working, all the state/regional/national tournaments.

that and scouting is sufficiently goofy you'll often have several US national team players who were missed for youth national setups, played college while the youth national kids went pro, then beat them to pro success anyway.

i also think it's missed that with no change in the pro structure there are finite slots for kids to go pro and survive. DL isn't going to line up 9 americans a race. so you need some meet schedule that employs people and provides any reason to be a pro. otherwise it starts to turn into pre-MLS soccer. people compete for a cycle then get a real job.

the alternative i see is USATF offers seed money around to get pros into college meets. here's x amount of bucks to add to the budget, find a way to add a race or slot for levrone or holloway. that would grow local crowds. which we need. it would also be a step back on true professionalism.

or maybe you add a day to drake or penn or texas or whatever, and that's straight pro.

i do think they need a new concept. i think grand slam track was a little goofy but if you want interest, attendance, income, it needs a little more oomph than the grand prix was.

i mean, in my adult sports, there were like series to do. you do well enough in the series there's a title. you want to make that more attractive you put money other end of that. something where the schedule is more than just a sequence of tv events none of which matter to each other.

anyways, to me, what you really want is

more diamond league stops here where it's a quasi-olympic lineup and one bigtime dude could DNS with a hammy and you'd still think your ticket was worth it.

that also might build up something other than small heyward, and broader national interest.

i then see the growth path as the americas as a whole. so much of latin america underperforms at track and could use something other than soccer to watch. and then a country like jamaica could use a platform for more of their runners.

like the current setup, all roads lead to europe, give or take the odd DL meet someplace else.

what you need is a circuit that goes to fresh places, mexico city, buenos aires, etc. undertapped markets, and then toss in an obvious one like kingston, and then if you have a whole hemispheric circuit, you only need to stand up 2-3 US meets within that circuit. we don't have to sustain the whole series, and you don't have to fix us track and its fan base to do it.

GST Kingston had incredibly strong sprint fields full of Jamaican stars and drew approximately zero fans.

What an idiotic statement ….I was In Kingston the attendance was good certainly not great. Saturday was the best attended, all 3 days were great fun for those who were there and Jamaican fans appreciate this sport…. “Zero”. ???

I’m surprised with all the pros that have come and gone over the years that there has been no resistance or uproar from them against Siegel. The Washington Post expose came out after the LA marathon trials and nothing happened. I’d expect a protest or walkout from a meet or so. They completely outnumber USATF in addition to the coaches out there; they really have nothing to lose. I mean what would USATF do, ban 40 of its best athletes for indoor/outdoor nationals for sh*t talking Seigel?

My gripe with all this is Michael Johnson actually tried to revive track in the US. He did this completely independent of USATF or Nike. I get it failed but that’s better than anything we’re getting from USATF execs who are making millions and having it as their job!! Instead of clowning Johnson why aren’t we clowning the people actually making millions for doing nothing?

Who is on the board of USATF? They shout refuse themselves after firing Max Siegel. all one needs to do is look at swimming. Swimming is a far less accessible sport than T&F, and races the vast majority of people can’t relate to. Yet over the past 20 years they figured out how to market their stars, and now hold their Olympic trials in NFL stadiums. it is laughable to think about the job Siegel has done with track, compared to the work of USA Swimming. Completely laughable.

The 128 best 100 meter runners in the USA needs to break out of regular meets and go where the money is, create a Wimbledon Tennis type tournament in 7 rounds over 7 days (the round of 128, round of 64, round of 32, round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals and on the 7th day a mano-a-mano final.

Probably more feasible to make it the 64 best national runners and depending on location for week invite the 64 best local runners to be honored in the first round of line-up.

Not enough people care about middle distance (*sad face*) so the next attempt to popularize the sport has to go where the general public interest is - and as things stand right now that's only in the 100 meters.

I suppose the answer to the question posed by the headline is that USATF bet big on Grand Slam and lost big.

The rest of this year will be picking up the pieces of that failure. Hopefully the schedule is a little cleaner next year.

I’m still wondering whether the American Track League is still functioning. This article says it is, but lists a bunch of defunct events on the schedule. https://www.kingstoncityrun.com/american-track-league/

People here seem to have some confusion about what USATF actually is. USATF is a governing body, nothing more. Every Olympic sport has one. It's primary mandate is to establish and enforce the rules of the sport and to select US teams for international competition such as the Olympics and World Championships. USATF has nothing to do with GST or the American Track League. See also the NBA and USA Basketball or MLS and USA Soccer.

I'm hoping the American Track League survives, it was a much more sustainable, grass roots effort to build a track league in the US. MLS started like that and took about 20 years to reach profitability.

If you read between the lines you can see what's going on and what the fundamental disagreement is in every paragraph, but this one makes it the most clear:

Basically every complaint throughout the entire article boils down to "USATF isn't giving us enough free no-strings-attached money to do whatever we want with." It is entirely reasonable that if USATF is providing funding then they should have a seat at the decision-making table. Expecting USATF to just hand out blank checks to everyone and then have no say in any decisions is actually pretty crazy. And if USATF is expected to be hands off and let people make their own decisions, then there should be no expectation that USATF should be a huge funder.

If you want to do your own thing, pay for it yourself. If you want other people to give you funding, then be ready to let them have some say in what you're doing. That's reality. The entitlement oozing from every quote in the article is nauseating.

If you were to visit the USATF website right now, you would have absolutely no idea that there was a meet this weekend. It's as if they were intentionally trying to kill the sport.

I never heard that Siegel was Antisemetic, which I think means hates Jews, Unless you can show evidence Examples, Links, Proof, then he should not be considered Anti Jewish, I Mean show some Evidence before, you call Him that.

USATF is insular organization and its number one priority is self preservation. Gross incompetence is rewarded not punished and it's been this way for a long time - even before Seigel. The organization tries hopelessly to serve the interests of four categories (elite, open, masters, youth) and five sports (cross country, mountain-ultra-trail, race walking, road racing, track & field) - it's impossible and elites suffer. To start Youth need to be jettisoned to AAU and masters to Senior Olympics. Most importantly athletes need a players union. All other professional sports have one to represent the interests of athletes which is sorely lacking. We're fortunate athletes always show up ready to compete and continue to improve and impress - it's a miracle given how the sport is managed.