Lukas Considered Turning Pro

Not White wrote:

He looks half-Asian with those slanty eyes and high cheekbones. The Baltics were civilized by the Vandals and Mongols who came from North Eastern Asia.

Oh, look the sicko who posts in every thread about how wonderful you think Asians raping whites 500 to 1,000 ago was. You're a moral abortion of a human being.

Fernandez and Derrick are collegiate athletes so I think there would be some sort of NCAA violation in them doing any marketing.

Jager and Verzbikas would be useful as one marketing tool assuming the targeted demographic is high school kids. You just need internet and word of mouth for that.

That being said, he shouldn't go pro right now. If he does want to go pro early, he should run some fast times to increase his worth.

GlenBeck wrote:

What do you mean by "more marketable"? Runners are not marketable in this country, at all! Every once in a while we get a commercial on TV but there hasn't been on in some time. I have not seen Fernadez,Derrick,Jager et al promoted or marketed ANYWHERE! USATF and other just flat out suck! They don't do squat to market the sport to mainstream America. Letsrun,Flotrack,Runnerspace et al are the backbone of marketing the sport of track/XC/Road racing.

As another poster mentioned there are plenty of nike running ads. However, I was thinking more along the lines of appearances their athletes do at big high school meets and road races. Nike's pro-athletes are a big part of their outreach to high school athletes (see NXN).

I'm curious about Schmacher's group. How did they select Bumbalough? Everyone else in the group is from U of Wisconsin. With Bumbalough not having won much in college (not bashing him at all; he had a HELL of a career, just not Teg/Solinksi/Bairu level), why was he signed to the team? Was it because of perceived upside due to his, from what I hear, lower relative training mileage? Good personality fit? Personal ties?

And are they going to continue expanding with folks like Derrick, etc, down the line?