"____ is the reason why track and field isn't more popular in this country"

Luck

runn wrote:

Mark, track and field has the highest participation levels on any sport in high school and the amount of people who run dwarfs any other sport. It is not for a lack of understanding of the sport why it isn't popular.

And this is why the problem is simply- marketing. All of those 10k joggers and high school kids should be watching the sport.

Intersting- I asked one of my classes (15 yr olds) how many watched the Super Bowl- everyone raised their hand (23 students). I asked how many watched it for the actual game. 10 raised theur hands and the other 13 talked about how boring football is. But they watched- marketing.

Replace Superbowl with the Olympics. Marketing may increase viewership for big events but it wont create a lot of fans. Track is not a very viewer friendly sport. It's not exciting to a non-runner, how you don't see this is baffling to me.

This is a front running country and the US has not put out any champions across all events since the early 80's. The East Africans dominate the distances, Jamaicans win the sprints, or a drug user wins the sprints. "Back in the day" the US had a contender in nearly every event.

Pretty much any sport where we're not perceived as close to the best in the world will not be popular. Even baseball is starting to lose popularity due in part to the emergence of more foreign players.

T&F is more popular in the USA than in any other country.

In the USA every high school, every 2 year college, and nearly every 4 year college has a T&F team.

In places like Southern California there are multiple meets and road races every weekend of the year.

Precious Roy wrote:

In no particular order:

E. Africans

End of Communism

You can toss in a PED scandals and that's your answer.

I think the point was that they have no personality, and are arrogant snobs, but I could be wrong.

Scrawny men (are)

Racehorse wrote:

The problem is twofold. First, the female athletes are waaaaaay too thin, or look like men with tiny boobs.

This is 100% correct. Lack of busty women. If anyone doubts this, just compare the popularity of women's tennis in the 80s with players like Martina Navratilova (who wasn't much to look at, but who was an excellent tennis player) with the 00s and players like Anna Kournikova (who's hot, but actually kind of sucks at tennis).

It may take Kim Kardashian 4 minutes to run 400m, but she would definately get 100 times the ratings over some chick who could run it in 1/4 the time.

Replace Superbowl with the Olympics. Marketing may increase viewership for big events but it wont create a lot of fans. Track is not a very viewer friendly sport. It's not exciting to a non-runner, how you don't see this is baffling to me.

***********************************************

What's baffling to me is that people don't realize that it once WAS popular. Non runners enjoyed it and watched it. It could happen again.

NASCAR is popular, it's boring and individual (not a team sport).

Starting with those two facts you come to the conclusion that it's marketing, plain and simple.

Runners have to race each other and race more frequently- like they did when it was popular.

The athlettes have to me marketed to make them household names.

And, unfortunatley, meet directors have to stop filling fields with Kenyans all wearing the same Nike uniform simply because they are cheaper to get to a meet.

A fan base has to be created, starting with Runners World- they reach the "joggers" who can be the fan base to get other, non-runners interested.

vox cursor wrote:

"Not enough chance for serious injury-"

"Envy-inducing physiques-"

"The strategy is waaay too specialized and sophisticated-"

*i.e. "It's just running as fast as you can, right?"

"Did I mention envy?"

"Running is something most people think they cannot do themselves, and thus care very little about following, whereas football, basketball, and baseball...-"

"Seriously, envy, envy, envy--"

hahaha

Right, the reason noone wants to watch Alan Webb or hall or whoever, is because they Want to look like Aids victims.

And don't kid yourself you couldn't "make that pass" that's why we run.

Sell beer. Sell lots of beer. Sell hotdogs. Sell lots of hotdogs. You will not have a major popular professional sport in this country without beer and hotdogs. Golf doesn't count. No one cares about golf. Golf should change it's name to Tiger's Game because that is the only reason why casual fans watch or care. That and every former jock ends up playing golf and every rich kid ends up playing golf. Rich kids own everything. Rich kids own the TV stations. Rich kids want to see golf so it's on TV.

NASCAR is boring as hell, just as boring as TnF but people by the hundreds of thousands go to events every weekend. In fact they go and make every weekend a 4 days weekend: Qualifying on Thursday, Nationwide Series on Friday, Sprint Cup on Saturday, recover on Sunday.

Beer and Hotdogs...

Alan