Track and field — going nowhere fast in the United States

grendel wrote:

Nobody's pushing rupp to do anything, he is (ostensibly) an adult who can chose for himself (or let salazar do it for him). What exactly defines a professional athlete? Professional runner?

I guess rupp gets paid to do whatever he feels like. That this is good enough for anybody is pretty sad. The reality is that actions like these in ANY professional sphere amount to a joke.

If I were Solinsky I'd stay far away from rupp/salazar.

But he only has to answer to the sponsors, not the so-called 'fans'.

It's an individual sport and the sponsors can pull the plug if they feel they're not getting their money's worth. If they're happy with it, he's free to race as and when he pleases.

T&F as a spectator sport in the US will never be what was in the early 70s; getting network coverage on weekends, front-page coverage in sports pages of newpapers, coverage in Sports Illustrated, big crowds for invitational meets and big college meets (USC v UCLA).

It is now like swimming or gymnastics. No media coverage other than for the Olympics, and even in the Olympics there will only be good coverage in the US if a breakout US star emerges.

That's not going to change, as it's to far down that road. Too bad.

Separately, as a participation sport you today see marathon and 1/2 marathon running, trail running, and triathlons all getting popular participation. That's good. But that's like bowling. Millions participate in it, but it's just not covered as a spectator sports, other than in running-geek websites. I'll bet there must be some bowling-geek version of LetsRun.com.

Here are some facts:

The Millrose games are moving to the armory because not enough people show up to justify holding them in Madison Square garden (9,611 this year, the lowest since 1925.) The most famous indoor track meet in the world just moved to a venue that holds 4,000 spectators.

"Tracktown USA" had over 40,000 fans attend the University of Oregon spring inter-squad football scrimmage on May 1st. Yet the stands of Hayward field were at about half of their 20,000 person capacity for the deepest 10k in world history on June 3rd.

The 2010 Drake Relays had 5,700 people in attendance. Yet 2 hours down the road, Iowa City (less than 1/3rd of the size of Des Moines) had a 70,000+ capacity crowd for every single home football game.

You're right, there are no dollars in running right now, and the sponsorship model is a joke. I doubt that Nike is recouping their investment in professional track athletes. Tthat's exactly why track and field in the US has never been worse. There's nothing inherently good about people running fast times. Sports are for the fans. These athletes are not splitting the atom or promoting world peace. Nike's not paying Rupp's salary so he can have fun and satisfy himself with good races. It's for US, the selfish fools who post negative crap. At the professional level, the sport exists for the people who want to watch it. If Nike and Rupp and USATF can't make people want to watch it, then they're failing no matter what times people run or how many medals they win.

trollism wrote:

mr cool Satch man of wisdom wrote:

USA track is fine, other areas of the world have gotten better. For example if you had a dual meet, all Olympic events men and women against any other country or continent ie Europe, US would win.

Would win against any country, but it wouldn't be close against the whole of Europe.

Europe would dominate the women's and probably quite comfortably edge the men's too.

Not saying this is bad, as the US are quite clearly the strongest overall nation on the planet, but I wouldn't take it that far.

Europeans have recorded better times than US runners in every track event over 400 meters (400x400m excepted).

d3 wrote:

I think you're missing the point.

Much like the tree falling in the forest, if an American runs a 3:42 mile, and no one is around to see it, does it make a world record?

The stands are empty, that's all that matters.

BINGO!

I think too many people here are too close to T&F to realize how few people care or understand it. And THAT is how you are funded.

T&F is not a birth right at the university level, if no body cares about the sport they can cut it w/o worry.

Anyone denying the that T&F is a sick sport is just whistling past the grave yard.

EZ10Miler wrote:

d3 wrote:

I think you're missing the point.

Much like the tree falling in the forest, if an American runs a 3:42 mile, and no one is around to see it, does it make a world record?

The stands are empty, that's all that matters.

BINGO!

I think too many people here are too close to T&F to realize how few people care or understand it. And THAT is how you are funded.

T&F is not a birth right at the university level, if no body cares about the sport they can cut it w/o worry.

Anyone denying the that T&F is a sick sport is just whistling past the grave yard.

How do you explain its popularity in other countries, particularly in Europe?

I guess one factor is that events are covered live by state funded TV networks, who don't have the money to cover the more popular sports.

I guess to be specific I was referring to US T&F.

Other countries don't have football to contend with, granted they have soccer, but we have that as well.

The #1 problem is really simple, it really really is. Americans don't want to waste their time watching a sport where our #1 guys can get beat by 10-15 Africans any given day. Sure there are many other problems but this is the number one far and away major problem. We need somebody that will 1) talk a good game or at least be interesting in a good way and 2) Will take it to the kenyans every single meet, does not mean they have to win but they have to compete every single meet. Until that guy shows up the sport will remain obscure. Like him or not, look what lance did for the sport of cycling in the US and the number of fans.

I have no idea why it's popular in Europe. Perhaps figuring that out could point the USA in the right direction, or perhaps we just need to focus on making it accessible and spectator friendly here.

Soccer is a much more popular sport in Europe than it is in the USA, but the MLS seems to be making some serious headway, at least in parts of the country. Will Soccer ever reach the same level of popularity in America as elsewhere in the world? Unlikely, but it's certainly doing better than track and field in this country (the Sounders draw about 35,000 fans per game.)

Making track more than a completely marginal sport is not the impossible task some make it out to be, after all, it's pretty incredible what these athletes can do. I'm preaching to the quire here, but this sport can be absolutely amazing to watch. All it takes is good announcing, compelling backstories, regular competition that means something (is more than a tune up for the olympics, or chasing a record), and athletes that recognize their fans.

I am not sure your Drake Relay attendance number is quite correct - 5,700 people, maybe on Thursday. But there is no way that was their Saturday number.

But anyway, the point the writer is making is valid, except across many other sports, they are become the same.

The NFL rests players before the playoffs. "Old school NFL" would never have sat out the last 1-2 regular season games. The NCAA Basketball season is 80%+ about the tournament and the regular season means less and less every year (Butler pretty much sucked all year, except the NCAA Tourney). The NBA is only about the playoffs. Those guys take at least 10-12 games "off" every year.

So yeah, there are two meets that matter - USA/Worlds. And every other sport is getting more and more like Track & Field every year. It is all about the Championships and being ready to win them, everything else is "pre-season", no matter the sport.

I don't know why a lot of people feel like we are all of a sudden going to get some guy who doesn’t work out and has never ran other than the mile in gym class interested in watching a track and field meet. The meets they do televise on TV are horrible to watch even to a track and field fan.

We have to always listen to horrible broadcasters and the music and graphics they show after commercials doesn’t look like it has changed since the early 90's. The meets on TV are only for an hour and probably more than half of that time is spent watching sprinters get into their blocks. You can not tell me you actually enjoy watching a track meet on TV. I could go on in on about how bad it is. If track wants more fans then they need to start trying to make it more exciting to watch at least for people who are interested in track.

A

just another Ftard wrote:

Congratulations to some blogger I never heard of making the front page of a niche sport forum by bashing the sport he is writing about. We all know you won't make headlines by saying NICE things about any subject. Sad that all the sheep fall for that kind of sensationalism.

Maybe he should be writing about how DWade is now twice the player Lebron is because he scored more points than him the last 3 games.

Alan Abrahamson is not some no name blogger. He has written Michael Phelps and Apolo Ohno biographies and covered Olympics for the LA Times.

Randy Oldman wrote:

trollism wrote:

Would win against any country, but it wouldn't be close against the whole of Europe.

Europe would dominate the women's and probably quite comfortably edge the men's too.

Not saying this is bad, as the US are quite clearly the strongest overall nation on the planet, but I wouldn't take it that far.

Europeans have recorded better times than US runners in every track event over 400 meters (400x400m excepted).

I don't think you're considering the relays in this. As we've seen in the NCs, a group of top sprinters can win a meet all by themselves. Relays are Olympic events and teams with dominant sprinters + depth can win 100, 200, 400, 4x100 and 4x400. Sprint depth makes the US dominant against almost all other regions. US vs Jamaica: Jamaicans just as good or better in sprint dominance and depth but they do nothing in the other events. US vs. Africa: Kenyans/Ethiopians great in distance but do nothing in other events. US vs. Europe: An all-Europe team would be totally outclassed (mens and womens) in the 5 sprint events as a whole. US vs. Asia: Blowout by US, no wins in any event for Asia except maybe men's 110 hurdles and women's marathon.

Alan Abrahamson wrote:

Frankly, the sport needs a lot more TV and, at the same time, a lot less TV. That is, it needs to be on the air a lot more but in shorter blocks. It needs to be on regularly but for, like, an hour. That’s all. An hour. It can be done. You don’t need to watch every prelim, every throw, every everything.

I wonder what Abrahamson would cut, considering that on TV we already usually only see ~2 min of distance events and even less of field events (and rarely see prelims except in championship meets).

Personally, I think that this article was dead on in terms of the state of T&F, but completely off in terms of how to fix it.

That was an excellent article that highlighted most of what is wrong right now. We're headed in the wrong direction and need a massive makeover.

The reason why T&F isn't doing well has nothing to do with lack of winning or records or stars.

I disagree, we should all not read this article. As the reporter clearly did not watch the rest of the meet.

I'm refusing to read this article.

Are we really this egocentric? When a race with more sub 27 10kers then the last two years combined can be considered noise or unworthy? Just because the Americans weren’t all there did not detract from the meet. Some of the world best were there and put on a great show. The meet IMHO was one of the best meets outside of the Olympics and Nationals that has ever been hosted on USA soil. In my opinion this illustrates T&F resurgence in the USA and Eugene’s claim as “Track Town USA” The fact they can bring in this much talent from around the world for an early season meet and produce these times/results made this meet anything but a meanless event.

I love how reports who don’t follow the sport can pick up on one thing, the USA 10kers dropped out and lump the whole meet as a failure. Did he not watch on Saturday as Oliver, Jeter, Lagat and mean other Americans put up some of the beat performances so far this year not too mention the foreigners like Kaki, Sinclair, Farah, Ostapchuk & Mullings who also had WL performances. This is what the USA T&F really needs is the best performing before great crowds on our soil to encourage and provide interest for the younger audiences.

Give it arrest on how dead T&F is, we aren’t going anywhere. T&F was here long before this reporter's great great great grandparents met and it will be here long after his uneducated corpse is worm fodder.

A big part of this issue rests on the shoulders of the athletes themselves. Building a fanbase involves actually interacting with the fans. And while I know that being social isn't the strong suit of many of them, that is a big key. Whether it is showing up for autographs, using social media or whatever, you have to be willing to do the extra work to get fans interested in what you are doing. But these guys have been trained to believe that they are precious flowers and that anything that detracts from their regimen will affect them in a race, so they won't make that extra effort to get people interested in them.

I'm a big fan of Indycar racing, and one of the reasons that series has had a resurgence is that Randy Bernard encourages drivers to be active with the fans. Lots of the drivers routinely interact with fans through Twitter and Facebook, and they are more than willing to spend an hour somewhere on race weekend to sign autographs.

If you aren't a big-time sport like football or basketball or don't have huge network or media exposure, going (almost literally sometimes) fan-by-fan and getting people excited about your sport is the next step. It just doesn't seem like anyone in the running community is interested in doing that.

Hall. Meb. Wheating. Solinsky. Cox.

These guys are doing it and willingly. You just don't hear about it because there is no $$ marketing it other than their personal Twitter, FB or occasional sponsor.

Hall is everywhere. Meb was just signing autographs in my area at the local high school. And some of the women in our sport are beautiful.

The access is there. The participants are there. We just need some organization.

Les wrote:

US vs. Europe: An all-Europe team would be totally outclassed (mens and womens) in the 5 sprint events as a whole. US vs. Asia: Blowout by US, no wins in any event for Asia except maybe men's 110 hurdles and women's marathon.

Fully agree with the fact the US would dominate the sprint events.

Europe would win most of everything else though.

Mens 800/1500 pretty close. Mens 3000sc/5000/10000 wins for Europe. Mens Jumps HJ/PV/TJ probably LJ Europe. JT/HT/DT Europe SP close but probably USA. USA would have to raise their game to beat Dai Greene in the 400H at the moment too.

Women's is less close than this. All distance events to Europe. All throws to Europe. HJ/PV/TJ Europe, LJ close.

Haha, all walks to Europe too. (yep, they suck, but the orginal criteria was Olympic events, so thats about 5 more.)