Why no college students at college track meets?

Agree with all your points except marketing. Take college track & field in its current form, market it all you want, and still, no one will want to watch it.

College track meets don't even try to entertain anyone. I'm a former college runner, and even I get bored watching college track meets.

There are WAY too many heats. People don't want to watch 12 sections of the 200 and 4 sections of the 800. Due to endless heats, too many events, and men and women competing at the same events, meets last entirely too long. Make a football game last 8 or 9 hours and see how many spectators retain interest.

As you mentioned, top competitors are held out of too many meets. Imagine trying to explain to Longhorn football fans that Colt McCoy will not play this week against Oklahoma State because he's practicing for the Big XII championship game. Not a perfect analogy, but you get my point.

No team scoring. Not only do invitational meets last entirely too long, at the end, no one wins. Who in their right mind would pay money to watch that?

Of course, college track will never change. Too many ingrained coaches and administrators. Therefore, the sport will continue to be played out in front of largely empty stadiums and be observed only by handful of parents and girl/boyfriends.

70s guy wrote:no, it's worse than that. i know many guys that ran track in high school and even college that quit being fans once they were done with it and don't attend track meets or follow the sport anymore, but go to lots of other sports as a fan. sad. I find that when I run into people from other countries, they know what's going on in the track and field/road racing world much more often than the avg American.

Starting in the apathetic 80s I think. More them being a fan of their own running not the total sport. Even in the paying fans now we see fieldfriendly folks who give only a glance at runners and ><. The sprint fans nap during LD events and everyone goes concessionville when the racewalkers almost always keep a foot on the floor.

I have no answers but on all levels if it were not for athletes` drivers, not a soul would befound in the stands at 87.57% of the meets.

Starting in the apathetic 80s I think. More them being a fan of their own running not the total sport. Even in the paying fans now we see fieldfriendly folks who give only a glance at runners and ><. The sprint fans nap during LD events and everyone goes concessionville when the racewalkers almost always keep a foot on the floor.

I have no answers but on all levels if it were not for athletes` drivers, not a soul would befound in the stands at 87.57% of the meets.

Confession: I'm an old college distance runner and I have ZERO interest in field events and only a mild, passive interest in the sprints.

Man, I can't wait 'til indoor:

"Mooooove!! Moooooove!!"

Could that be because field events are measured in meters, as are the distances in the sprints? There is little continuity of events from high school to college to the pros.

There are no heroes in track and field.

If it wasn't for the web, track and field would be totally missing in action (no longer any newspaper coverage and minimum tv coverage) and no one would even know.

Shorten the meets, make them competitive, keep score, separate men and women events so each group goes no longer than 2.5 hours and make it informative to the fans (imperial marks and distances that everyone runs).

Maybe its because most runners are condescending to anyone who cant run a sub 15 minute 5k. In football and basketball they welcome the casual fan.

Let me ask you this...would YOU go to a 6-hour sporting event with no system to determine a winner, and nothing on the line? I don't go to any college invitationals, and I'm about as rabid a T&F fan as there is. Dual, conference, regional, or national meets--I'm there. The rest of 'em don't give a damn whether a single spectator shows up and I'm happy to meet their expectations.

There's a generalization for you. That just isn't accurate. I am sorry those fast distance runners were so mean to you though.

abacus wrote:

Man, I can't wait 'til indoor:

"Mooooove!! Moooooove!!"

Don't you mean "Track! Track!" ???

"Dair You Go"

"Do what you have to do"

Eh, I wouldn't say that they would be that thrilled. In my experiences some fast runners I have tended to meet look at ex-runners who couldn't go D1 as a bunch of scrubs.

Thats not how I feel about it at all, but I've seen some examples of pretty smug athletes who wonder why the ex-runners even care or bother to come out.

I think its cool when ex XC athletes try to help out or do their own running on the side while being supportive. It helps make for a better sense of community.

DI school not on team wrote:

I would go to more but I sort of think that'd make me look like a poseur or a stalker. I'm sure the team have seen me running around and on the track.

This is how I feel.

DI school not on team wrote:

I would go to more but I sort of think that'd make me look like a poseur or a stalker. I'm sure the team have seen me running around and on the track.

This is how I feel.

Funny that you should mention that. The line between track geeks who are always at meets and dirty ole het and homo guys is not very fine at all.

Most people, if they went to a track meet, wouldn't know whoany of the runners are. Go watch a race where you don't know who anyone is: it's not even a little bit exciting, just a bunch of guys running around the track. It's only interesting when you have a storyline to follow, when you can say "there's Mike, in 4th place, that's a good position but he's gotta change gears soon, etc." The trouble is, each race has a dozen different storylines, and each meet has dozens of races: how does the casual fan pick up on enough of these storylines to be interested? In team sports, all you really need to know is one storyline, this team vs. that team, and it can be entertaining. Track is only fun to watch if you're a complete running geek with an encyclopedic and slightly creepy knowledge of all the runners in your area.

The "true team" scoring system that was developed (in California?) back in the '90s is certainly a start toward making track a team competition again. This same system could certainly be used in high school invitationals, though there are often fans (family/friends) at those.

But I think that I am being a bit harsh toward the college teams in demanding a return to a dual-meet season. Two reasons:

1. The number of full t&f/xc scholarships in DI was cut to 12.6 for men and 14 for women, IIRC. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) No longer could schools field full teams of scholarship athletes. So: do you dilute your scholarship money, giving quarter-rides and half-rides to get a full team that can win a dual meet, but not do much at a higher level? Or do you give full rides to a few "prime beef" athletes who, if things break just right, can win your conference and maybe get you on the podium at Nationals?

Or do you say "screw it" and put all your resources into getting distance runners, insuring a top finish in your conference xc meet and a good shot at going to xc Nationals; then go through the motions during track season (avoiding dual meets, given that your explosive-event athletes are either lame or absent altogether), and hope to get an all-American or two in the 15/SC/5/10? (Bear in mind that this saves your school the expense of maintaining a high-quality track and field facility.)

2. Absolutely tied in with this is the early-start, early-finish academic calendar. Believe it or not, Penn Relays used to mark the end of the "relay season" and the *beginning* (or at least the early part) of the "dual-meet season"--during and after which there would be some major invitationals, followed by conference and national championships.

With the calendar that most schools follow now, Penn conflicts with some conference championships or immediately precedes them. In the Northeast, this leaves just a couple of weekends (before Penn) to try to get qualifying marks for Nationals in decent weather conditions. Dual meets? Out the window.

Miss Ter Chest wrote:

You mean girls don't fawn over puny pipsqueakes with concave chests?

Ha ha hahaha.

You would think that there would be more guys at track meets. Women track athletes have some of the finest figures on campus. (of course with the miracle of plastics guys are chasing the enhanced skanks who live on cigarettes and diet coke and who have never broken a sweat in their lives).

But maybe the campus muscle-heads don't have to go to track meets, the hotties come to them.

"Ahem-Zeigle-cough-cough-ahem."

ummm wrote:2. Absolutely tied in with this is the early-start, early-finish academic calendar. Believe it or not, Penn Relays used to mark the end of the "relay season" and the *beginning* (or at least the early part) of the "dual-meet season"--during and after which there would be some major invitationals, followed by conference and national championships.

With the calendar that most schools follow now, Penn conflicts with some conference championships or immediately precedes them. In the Northeast, this leaves just a couple of weekends (before Penn) to try to get qualifying marks for Nationals in decent weather conditions. Dual meets? Out the window.

Agreed. Through '71, the NCAA meet was on the third weekend in June and most conference meets were two or three weeks before that.

How many college wrestling meets have you gone to?How about swim meets? Volleyball? At my school no one went to baseball, or soccer either.Outside of Men's basketball and football MOST sports at most schools aren't getting a lot of support.

collegiate track fan wrote:

Why is the typical collegiate track meet lucky to get a hundred college students, where a number of other sports bring them out by the masses?

What is track missing right now with college students?

discuss...

If scoring was kept so the spectators could easily see what teams are in what position, better commentation, and serve alcohol at the meet I think that would help quite a bit.