Fighting is allowed during the race!!
Fighting is allowed during the race!!
Participants compete naked
Problem solved
Yeah. STFU. You are full of shit. Can't get enough volunteers to help out with XC this weekend we have so many kids and their entire families that want to run.
laker wrote:
Participants compete naked
Problem solved
sure about that?
A grass roots movement needs to be started.
There needs to be a track series of about 10 or 20! meets over the summer (20 considering the size of the united states) in as many of the major cities in the united states.
bring the track meets to the people. they will come if you promote the f*ck out of it.
--> not to sound like an a$$hole, but i support the idea of banning african competition in the United States only series. The average joe at home sees chris solinsky on the starting line... maybe even identifies with him, but when he's in 6th place running 13:05 in a 12:55 race (Pre last year), i think interest is lost.
Or bring some africans over that we can romp on.
There needs to be an allstar for every event. Something to keep the public watching from the 100m all the way to the 10,000.
another thing.
Larry Rawson's comments about going to your local track and trying to run a 67 quarter gives the football fan at home a chance to identify with it.
Know why? because they are on their bar's softball team and at 32 6'0 and 200 pounds, they think they are just as fit as they were in high school.
However, when they burn through a 35 second 200 and their puking their guts up at 300 meters, they give a bit more respect to a 67 second quarter and the women's 4:08 1500 it produces or the college guy's 13:50 5,000.
Why not STFU wrote:
Yeah. STFU. You are full of shit. Can't get enough volunteers to help out with XC this weekend we have so many kids and their entire families that want to run.
No one's disputing that. Participation levels in US high schools are great. But how many of them watched the World Championships last month? There's a complete disconnect between the great scholastic and age group participants and the professional world of track and field.
make real legitimate teams that actually accumulate scores and compete. make several teams. have a draft, like in other pro sports. make it all americans, no offense, im not racist, but seriously it would make for better competitions even if its not the fastest in the world. make teams from specific cities. bring meets to cities around the country. i have hundreds of friends that would love to go see a pro race, but none of us can afford to go out to Oregon, i live in New England. seriously, i would love a well established track league.
bangalangadanga wrote:
A grass roots movement needs to be started.
There needs to be a track series of about 10 or 20! meets over the summer (20 considering the size of the united states) in as many of the major cities in the united states.
Set up the opportunity for American athletes to earn more with meets in the US and that's where they'll go. And by that, I mean more than $1 million per meet. But they won't get many points for world rankings if they don't compete against any of the world's best. And it may not adequately prepare them to compete against the world's best once the major championship rolls around. In China, winning the National Games is arguably in the same league as winning a global championships. I don't know if you can replicate it in the United States, where there's already a history where the Olympic Games and World Championships are what matter most. It rings of giving up on the international scene, and that any US-only championship would automatically be hallow, given that it would be obvious that there are superior athletes that weren't in the competition. It's not like baseball where it's purely subjective how the Yankees would do against the Cuban team. If the top US 100m runner in 2025 runs 9.86, but Jamaica has four guys under 9.75, it would be clear that the US champ is inferior to the world champion.
Then STFU you idiot.
Jeff Wigand wrote:
bangalangadanga wrote:A grass roots movement needs to be started.
There needs to be a track series of about 10 or 20! meets over the summer (20 considering the size of the united states) in as many of the major cities in the united states.
Set up the opportunity for American athletes to earn more with meets in the US and that's where they'll go. And by that, I mean more than $1 million per meet. But they won't get many points for world rankings if they don't compete against any of the world's best. And it may not adequately prepare them to compete against the world's best once the major championship rolls around. In China, winning the National Games is arguably in the same league as winning a global championships. I don't know if you can replicate it in the United States, where there's already a history where the Olympic Games and World Championships are what matter most. It rings of giving up on the international scene, and that any US-only championship would automatically be hallow, given that it would be obvious that there are superior athletes that weren't in the competition. It's not like baseball where it's purely subjective how the Yankees would do against the Cuban team. If the top US 100m runner in 2025 runs 9.86, but Jamaica has four guys under 9.75, it would be clear that the US champ is inferior to the world champion.
Where does the 1 million dollar purse money come from?
errrryep wrote:
make real legitimate teams that actually accumulate scores and compete. make several teams. have a draft, like in other pro sports. make it all americans, no offense, im not racist, but seriously it would make for better competitions even if its not the fastest in the world. make teams from specific cities. bring meets to cities around the country. i have hundreds of friends that would love to go see a pro race, but none of us can afford to go out to Oregon, i live in New England. seriously, i would love a well established track league.
Did the NBA or MLB need to bar non-Americans to gain popularity? You don't think New York City (in particular) would love to have Bolt run for them? Is Dirk Novitzky not thought of us the hero of Dallas because he's German?
As long as the Olympics are the goal above all others, teams won't work. Athletes won't give up their individual priorities for a professional league, simply because they can make more money being Olympic Champion than they could from their team winning the national title.
Wisenheimer wrote:
Where does the 1 million dollar purse money come from?
It's not a million dollars in prize money. It's prize money, appearance money, travel, production, promotion and so on. Canova gave a good break down a short while ago, estimating a top meet in Europe has a budget around $2 million. I believe the prize money for one diamond league meet this year is around half a million dollars alone.
I honestly just don't see it ever getting any better. Unfortunately as more and more knowledge about racing tactics came out, somewhere along the line it backfired on the sport.
In the past, you used to have kickers, and you used to have front runners. Kickers always had an advantage, but it wasn't uncommon for front runners to demolish fields (Pre for example). On top of that, even aside from kicking and front running, there was much more excitement during the race, people would throw in crazy (and by what we know now - stupid) surges to try and break people mentally and physically, and then we could see how it played out.
Nowadays you have 2 things and they're completely predictable - you have either a rabbited race where the only thing people care about is getting a good time (many don't even care how they place), or you have a slow ass championship race w/ no rabbit and you just see no one pushing the pace, and you just see everyone following the one who got stuck as leader (who will eventually lose guranteed). There's no point in even watching the race until the last 400 meters (which is what you usually see when they air distance events on the t.v. because they realize this too).
In short it's predictable as hell, a leader will be sacrificed and never win, and then the pack decides to race with 400m to go and whoever is the best sprinter wins. And if it's not a championship it's the same story except you don't care about the rabbit because that was his point.
Legalize PEDS. There's really no choice.
World Records mean more press/attention only now every WR is greeted with skepticism.
Otherwise track and field won't even be able to compete with Crossfit.
Anybody know what the budgets are for Zurich, Berlin, Rome, Paris??
I think it's fair to say that if you could sign Bolt, Blake, Gay, and Powell; Felix and VCB, Jeter and Fraser-Price; maybe Jenny, Morgan, and Jamal...to race on the Icahn Track in New York next summer, you would get coverage.
You would probably need to raise $5+ million, but if you could do that, I don't think there would be any question about NBC or somebody covering it.
So I think the question is not how to popularize track, but how to pay the bill.
Naked Olympics, like the original version.
It seems to me that, like everything else these days, advertisement=funds. I'm sure a track league with appearence fees and cash prizes could be set up, if it could be demonstrated that advertisers could generate revenue by it. But how could we track enthuseists make this happen? Any insight from business-types out there?
The sport does not lend itself to TV. Yeah a bunch of us think watching races is cool, but the average viewer is simply not going to sit still for more than a few laps of a race, so anything longer than a 1500 is not good for TV. And I think the average viewer thinks there is something "all the same" to these races. It's not like watching a football game where maybe you see a 99 yard TD or watching somebody in the NBA drive down the lane and dunk over 2 people. Yes there is a high degree of athleticism to run a sub 13 minute 5K but there is no dynamic explosiveness such as you might see watching Chris Johnson, Elway, MJ or Shaq in his prime. Or if you're into soccer pull up some highlights of Zidane, Christiano Ronaldo, Ronaldo or Ronaldinho and compare them with the video footage of watching Rupp run.
I would never say that Rupp isn't an awesome runner, but how can you say watching him even comes close to watching Zidane pull off some of his crazy moves? Now maybe you could say it is beautiful watching Bekele or Rudisha run but the average viewer isn't going to see that.
In all seriousness distance running is a snoozefest for the general audience. on TV. Finally in a track meet there are are a lot of breaks and downtime, not too many will sit still for that long. So you can't say it is much better in person than TV; you can't get home viewers or sell seats to it.
USATF could probably fail at selling catnip to a cat.
But given that T&F is one of the top 2 or 3 watched parts of the Olympics, I wonder if USTFCCCA combined with USOC might be able to go to people like Fed Ex, Coca-Cola, and other companies that are big sponsors of the Olympics and sell them on funding 1 or 2 high profile meets with the idea of making their investment in the Olympics have more impact.
Compared to Olympics sponsorship, even $10 million for a couple of big meets would be pocket change.