Michael Johnson not working for the BBC in Tokyo - more GST fallout

Well it's obvious that he wouldn't be able to continue doing so. That would be a conflict of interest.

Part of the job is telling people that he ship is fine and totally not sinking after hitting a massive iceberg

You’ll never hear a CEO say, “yeah just sell the stock we are in financial ruins”. It will sound more like the junk MJ has fed us, which is normal CEO behavior but NOT what he said grandslam would be like

fortunately UCLA was smart enough not to let MJ rent their facilities on credit, this really helped to bring grandslam’s financial situation to everyone’s attention

Anyways I’m thrilled not to hear MJ commentating. He’s so boring and lame

I liked the GST format. It had promise. I hope the athletes get paid and it continues on to greater success. That professional athletes dedicating themselves to their craft and providing us with much entertainment and enjoyment and yet have to work jobs and or live in their cars just to scrape by is abhorrent.

I can’t believe rojo of anyone has any sympathy for MJ, especially after his statement a month ago said, laughably: “Once those funds are received on our end, we will work to immediately process them to your athletes, noting all banks have different timelines for receiving and depositing funds into individual accounts.”

They had no money, no investors lined up (this was in July), and they were calling out different banks’ processing rates as if the money would be imminently transferred? It’s disingenuous and insulting to everyone involved. “Hey, agents, just so you know, it may take anywhere from 24-72 hours to process the payment that is never coming.”

1) The hate towards Merber has always being not just idiotic but f--king idiotic. No disrespect to Kyle, but what exactly did people think he was doing in this venture? He was given a budget (with no way for him to know if it was liquid or not) and told to sign athletes and assemble fields. Johnson pulled in all these idiots from the NFL and the "events" world to handle all the alleged unique value of the series and people think Kyle Merber was getting up there and challenging their POVs on anything? I've said this before, guy was probably making a great paycheck doing something he liked in the sport he loves versus selling high interest savings accounts at AMEX. You think he was rocking the boat? No. He is just as caught up in this as the majority of athletes and non C-suite employees.

2) You can't be so black and white and pragmatic about separating whats happened in GST and this commentating gig with the BBC. No "technically" they aren't related but that's not the point. The point is that Michael Johnson carries some serious baggage with him right now that is just not worth getting involved with. Even though it's doubtful he's actually defrauded anyone, that is what the sentiment is - just read your messageboard! Sure some opinions might be extreme but they reflect the sentiment that right now he is a failure as businessman and have left a bunch of athletes high and dry with money he said he would pay them. And you think it's fine to put him on TV to potentially commentate on some of the very athletes he possibly owes serious money too? Why would you ever do that? The optic of that is terrible and people aren't stupid because he's not doing that BBC gig for free is he?

3) So with all that being said, is he so good commentating that you overlook all this? Of course he's not! There are multiple former athletes out there that could do the same thing and not like he holds all these awesome insights. He is actually not very good at all in that role, kind of boorish and uninteresting anyway. He got that gig on the back of being recently retired as a "legend" of the sport back in the early 2000's (2001) when there wasn't really anyone else around. Move on, get someone else. The BBC will survive.

Final thing, stop with the "from day one were told it's a startup" BS. That narrative only came out when the venture was teetering and about to implode - in fact unless I'm wrong it only came out for the first time when they announced they were cutting the Philly meet from 3 days to 2 and then reinforced when LA was axed. When this series was created and sold to athletes and agents, the narrative was "it's the new dawn of pro track and field with the money the athletes finally deserve" and "unrivaled this" and "never been seen before that". All he did was chirp about his 30 million dollars in backing - I never ever heard him say it wasn't guaranteed or it was a startup and things might not be guaranteed. All I heard was how awesome it was going to be and how he was saving the sport of track running. It's easy to say "well the agents should have been on to it and understood the pitfalls" - based on what? They have never had to confront this before - what are they going to do when their athletes are like "hey we finally have a chance to make serious, career changing money" - go back to them and say "hey I don't think you should do this because it's a startup and you might not get paid"???

I do agree that the world will still turn and the athletes will be big picture be fine. If the worst thing was that they got to fly business class to a venue, stay in a 5 star hotel for 5 days and run a few races without being paid, then given the hardships some people face in life it's not all that bad.

But it doesn't exonerate Michael Johnson who let's be honest now, was using this as a vehicle to promote himself and his ego (and his bank balance) just as much as he was "saving" a sport that doesn't need saving to begin with. And right now he doesn't deserve the privilege of being paid himself to offer up his opinions on that sport so the BBC have done 100% the right thing here. There is zero case to be made in his support on this one.

It is also true that Kyle Merber left his old job to get paid substantially more at GST and he received his salary while the business was operating in a deep hole. His gig at Amex was not a demanding job.

Thank you for saying this. It’s a BS take that Merber had the wool pulled over his eyes and had “no clue” what was happening at GST. What’s even further BS is trying to say he couldn’t possibly be involved in this scam and grift “because he has two young kids” as if that somehow exonerates him from his piece in this mess. It’s the hill I’m willing to die on, but show us where the money went. Both MJ and Merber got paid so how much did they get paid. Let’s see receipts or an audit.

i agree wlth kicking MJ's butt on this fiasco

i also agree with Covett here in commending him as well.

if there is no fraud, you can say the guy tried.

How can we even believe Johnson isn't partial in his analysis. His he so positive, or is he just sucking up for the guy that he ows a lot of money? Is he so negative, or is he just bitter on the athlete that spoke up, or maybe went to court to get his money?

good one covett, worth rementioning.

Hey Ackman reneged. Period.

He never engaged in fraud before?

cgaa.org

Bill Ackman Fraud: How He Was Linked to Herbalife Scandal

Sheldon Kuphal

Explore how Bill Ackman's role in the Herbalife fraud scandal impacted investor trust and the company's reputation.

Open link

Never did damage to a pro sport?

forbes.com

Bill Ackman Slammed Online For Tennis Loss After Accepting Wildcard

Yezen Saadah

Billionaire Bill Ackman faced backlash after a swift tennis loss, sparking debate over wildcard fairness in professional tennis.

Open link

Stop blaming the black guy. Johnson was naive. Period

I think it's been discussed many times - it's highly unlikely there is "fraud" at least in a legal sense.

Yes he tried but then you ask yourself this important question. Did he "try" because he really cared about moving the sport forwards and the wellbeing of athletes, or did he try to personally profit in terms of ego, popularity and money? I don't have a firm stance on that but the point that I can't unequivocally say it's the first possibility is a problem in itself.

The other thing is that there are nuances and subtleties to the concept of "trying". There never seemed to be a lot of humility and there certainly wasn't a lot of honest transparency. He could have said "hey I have an idea and want to use my platform to try this because I truly believe I can make the sport better. I've secured conditional funding which could be game changing for the sport but I have to make it work, come support me and the athletes and see if we can revolutionize the world of track (and field)". That's very different from what happened right down to the launch of the website where the first thing you ever saw was this massive write-up all about Michael Johnson the Olympic Hero (and I know this 100% was the case because I remember seeing it vividly).

To close out the "trying" - the tragedy for him at least in terms of public perception is that when it all imploded, despite everything else, if he had come out and taken some freaking responsibility and accepted that ultimately it was a failed venture, I really think people would have sympathized with him and understood. But he couldn't even do that - these BS press releases that clearly aren't even written by him that just insult peoples intelligence.

So unfortunately just commending him for trying takes a serious hit because of all the other nonsense surrounding it that he bought on himself.

There’s zero evidence that Johnson embezzled funds from GST. His net worth is estimated to be as much as $50M so why would he be willing to destroy his reputation in order to steal a few million out GST? Do people actually think he’s insane?

The issue is why GST was willing to accrue a sizable debts to the athletes against fund “commitments” that turned out to be unenforceable. In another thread, I made the case that such mismanagement could result in personal financial liability for the partners, but others believe filing for bankruptcy will get them off the hook.

What makes you think Merber knew what was going on? His job wasn't managing GST's financial books. His job was building fields with the budget he was given.

What makes you think GST needs to show anonymous people on a message board their receipts? What are you going to do if they don't? Say more mean things about MJ and Merber on a message board?

You're so ruthless with your judgement of people who tried to do a good thing for track in the United States. The state of the sport in the United States is bleak. "Track Town USA" can't fill its stadium for the national championship. The Diamond League isn't shown on Peacock anymore. The historic Foot Locker high school championship got cancelled. San Diego bungled the world road running championship. Michael Johnson tried to make things better. What have YOU done?

Whole things frustrating. First meet in a Jamaica was an unmitigated disaster from an optics level. It wasn’t surprising at all you lose an investor after that. Financially they were cooked but if you end the series right there, the league is assuredly done after the misguided 3-day format, excessive prize money, ghost town arena, and so on.

So they had to do Miami/Philly to save face and show they could sell tickets and at least put forth a good event/atmosphere. But they were broke and just made themselves even less likely to ever dig themselves out.

First impressions are really important, and posters here, the Brojos, Jon all were sharply critical of the 3-day format, 3k/5k groups (format and athletes), Jamaica meet, and excessive prize money. Just unfortunate that the early, visible missteps doomed this thing so quickly.

No surprise. What you have to remember here is that the BBC is a public broadcaster, funded by taxpayers, and hence held to higher ethical standards. Anything controversial and there could be questions in Parliament, embarrassed Ministers etc. This is to be expected.

You seem extremely agitated that people want to bring Merber into this. And that is why, exactly? What reason do you have to be so aggressive in defense of him? Im genuinely curious. I stand by my point that Merber knew. And Merber still got paid. And Merber did not quit after the disaster in Jamaica. His paycheck cleared. I’m sorry but I don’t see any way in which Merber was not at least, at bare minimum, aware of the financial issues and that athletes weren’t going to get paid.

As far as the show us the receipts or what comment you made - I’m not going to “do” anything. Like what? Weirdo. I will continue to question it though and ask why they aren’t showing us how much money they have made off of GST from their paychecks. It will happen eventually thru the mess that this is and with no doubt some sort of legal team getting involved, so it’s extremely suspect that they aren’t being transparent upfront.

Lastly - what have I done? I haven’t promised pro athletes $100k to run a pedestrian 5k and have a track meet over the course of three days without paying anyone including vendors, facilities, and oh wait, pro athletes who scheduled their seasons around this crap to end up with no money at all.

And who am I to not have “done anything”. I’m someone who’s actually willing to pay $400 for a premium seat, buy the VIP package, buy the merchandise at events. I actually show up to events and spend my money supporting not only the local tourism economy but also spend money on stuff at the events. I buy premium tickets and as much merchandise as I can as many times as I can. I travel for ncaa cross country meets. Like bro you got the wrong guy - because I’m actually a hardcore fan. So I guess screw me right? The track world in the USA could do with more people willing to spend higher amounts of money but my opinion means nothing to you so it is what it is.

My point stands. Merber knew.

I'm cool as a cucumber, pal. I just think it's weird that you're so angry at Kyle Merber for something you IMAGINE he knew but don't actually have any evidence or insider knowledge about it.

Question all you want. It's ridiculous to expect GST to post their financial records on a message board. Even a "world famous" one.

Pat on the back. You travel to meets and buy primo tix and merch. Me too! That in no way compares to the effort required to build a professional track league from the ground up. Yeah, Johnson messed up. We all know it. But you are waayyyy over the top with your venom against Johnson and particularly Merber.