Cue Kenny Powers. People see running as exercise and see the mile as the thing your PE coach made you do for a fitness test in middle school. People are more impressed by the fact that you eat 4000 cal/day without getting fat than they are by your 5k time. If you tell someone that you run a 13:30 5k they'll say "wow, you're really fit" and see you the same way they see someone who does 100 burpees in CrossFit.
CoeOvett wrote:
What sports fan doesn’t want to see 10 East Africans with the same build, skin color and haircut AND wearing the same color kit run 12.5 or 25 laps around a track?
^This, this and this!
Think about it:
there is no team concept. People like to affiliate themselves via city or state teams. What about relays? THere is not team concept.
In Europe, people care a lot more about trail races:
fisky wrote:
[quote]Raddison wrote:
They ignore the battle for 2nd and 3rd. The cameras often don't even show these competitors finishing, instead focusing on the winner jogging or standing around. They don't know enough about the runners and their style to provide meaningful commentary during the race.
Another good example: watching the Pre classic and the announcers from NBC not once even mentioned there was a 17 year old in the race. Not during athlete intros. Not a few laps in. Not once he kicked. Not once he set the U18 world record. How can they just completely ignore Ingebrigtsen?
Over the years I’ve heard reasons why track is suffering. Some people say track needs drinking and gambling, others say it needs a league with teams and points, or it needs introduction songs with highlight reels and dancing in the background.
But various meets have tried solutions like these with minimal to no success. So why does it fail?
Track isn’t telling a good enough story. People watch football and don’t understand a first down, people watch basketball and don’t know what goaltending is.
The story that goes into the event almost needs to be better than the event itself... “game seven of the western conference finals, win or go home. The splash brothers vs the beard.” I don’t need to understand the rules of basketball to have my curiosity piped up about what is going on.
Honestly track needs to see itself more like performing arts than a sport. With 20 differnt events and hundreds of athletes. It is a spectical of athletes competing in the simplest form of human competition. No politics, no referees. And as you peel back the layers of the sport you can begin to learn the dynamics and rules. But I think for a new fan to apppreciate it from the beginning, they need to see it as they would see dancing. And we need to see the same way.
1--after college the top American and Women hardly EVER run cross country. the top africans do, one reason they are so much better as a whole.
2--too many top American athletes not in robust training groups
3--we go to commercial 2-3 times or switch to 2-3 other events DURING a 3k-5k Race
There are some relatively quick fixes that could be implemented to make our sport more exciting. I know they've been mentioned time and time again.
1) Gambling - 170,000 people attend the Kentucky Derby at it's highest attendance to watch horses run around a track. They know almost nothing about the jockeys and usually not much about the horses (outside. Despite this, it's a spectacle with history that people want to attend, drink, and bet.
There are so many great betting lines to be had and an abundance of races: first/place/show horse racing style, over/under winning time, overall winner odds, first lap split time.
2) Alcohol. Sell alcohol and meets, as well as offer premium box seats with included alcohol and food. Most people will watch grass grow if they are fed well and offered booze. Some track & field schedules are barely above that, but nonetheless, a sporting event with some of the worlds best athletes? It's a no brainer.
3) Sponsorships for athletes. Every sport is cashing in by allowing their athletes to brand themselves. NASCAR drivers are walking billboards, golfer's have several higher profile sponsorships, and Roger Federer makes sure to put on his Rolex before the awards. Yet, Track & Field is above somehow about letting athletes have individual sponsors outside of their apparel on race day. This opens up so many doors for athletes, as well as many other companies to get involved in the sport at a cheaper level than being an outright USATF sponsor. This also takes care of the uniformity issue of having every athlete look identical.
4) Cut the dead weight. Sorry, but shot put and several field events are never going to be popular. They are completely draining to the broadcast. Either find a way to liven it up or cut them from the broadcast altogether to focus on the prime events.
5) Prevent Broadcasters from cutting away from live races. Can you imagine if it's the second quarter of the NBA finals and instead of showing the game they cut away altogether to show a 3 minute interview? Similarly, sports bettors would lose their minds if they went to leave in the middle of the Belmont Stakes to "Check in" on a subpar race from earlier in the day. Yet as Track & Field fans, we are subjected to missing out on large portions of even shorter races like the 1500m (and always in the 3k, 5k, 10k) for commercial breaks, boring interviewing, or to "check in on the shot put" (which should be gone from the broadcast as mentioned above or in the undercard).
Bob Schul Country wrote:
Think about it:
there is no team concept. People like to affiliate themselves via city or state teams. What about relays? THere is not team concept.
Are you sure about?
Floyd Mayweather, Conner MacGregor, Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams, Tiger Woods, et al.
Because Alan Webb retired.
kmaclam wrote:
Aktion T4 wrote:
You might be on to something. We need a final solution to the East African problem.
LOL, As soon as we get a cool, interesting, literate T & F athlete around here (Phoebe, Merber, Symonds,...) we immediately disparage them. Pathetic!
I'm being misquoted- Didn't I mention Bayi? I also remember Keino and Jipcho, and Boit, and Shahanga, etc
My point was that when you watch a race there are often 10-12 East Africans with the same Nike uniform.
Americans cannot identify with them.
Race fields were also smaller back when track was popular- it seems a lot of the European races have way too many in the 1500-5000.
runn wrote:
I'll tell you another reason:
There is another thread- RIP Dick Quax.
He was cool.
Dixon and Walker were cool.
Liquari was cool.
Pre
Nick Rose ...
The Black Socks Brits were all cool.
They were cool and the sport was popular.
Bayi comes along and is a front runner without rabbits (which were not "legal" at the time- they had to finish the race and look like they were racing).
There were more personalities. NOT a field full of anonymous East Africans in the same uniform.
There DO seem to be a lot of personalities that can be marketed, from sprinters to distance.
It's up to meet promoters and the IAAF/USATF to do it right.
ya right.
today's athletes, you would not want to make a statue out of, they don't look the part nor have special charisma.
they pop in person, they pop on vid, they jump off the page in a photo.
kiwis gods, viren, the magic list goes on and on, from 72 to 82 you had coghlan, van damme, juanteranau, juantorena, coe, ovett, cram. kenio, yifter and jipcho, bayi , ryun, these people were electric.
then the end, times went down with drugs, better training especially in africa, but the quality of athlete is not there at the top.
https://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/20/world/africa/catch-him-if-you-can-bayi/index.htmlprobably a lot of people go into football, (soccer) now, and why not.
I will ask again: How many people who saw Drew Hunter win the 2018 BAA Road Mile live bothered to watch him in the international mile at the 2018 Pre Classic? How many people who saw Craig Engels win the $1,000 "halfway prize" at the 2017 5th Avenue Road Mile watched coverage of any of his races at any point after that? How many fans of Ole Miss athletics have continued to follow Craig? Have fans of USC sports been following their 4x400 this year?
I've chosen these athletes to focus on because they, unlike many, do not lack for relate-ability or interview skills.
I can think of several outcomes that did not lead to any of these things happening:
1) Most of the people watching the road mile live DIDN'T CARE who won. The mile is an annual spectacle for them, akin to a ball drop on new year's eve. They just saw that a white guy won the race in a really fast time (to them). Next year they'll be back out for the BAA road mile, and even if Drew is racing again they'll have no idea who he is (even when he is introduced as the defending champ). If Craig races in New York again, it will likely be the same story.
2) Most fans of Ole Miss athletics DON'T KNOW that Craig Engels went to Ole Miss. Ask any semi-serious fan of college basketball to name all their school's current NBA players, and they'll be sure to rattle off a pretty comprehensive list. The same cannot be said for track and field.
3) People whose interest in these athletes was piqued by watching a live event WEREN'T ABLE to watch them in another format. Let's say you are a USC sports fan who actually decided to show up at their annual dual with UCLA. You see your Trojans killin' it out there, and think to yourself "hey, I'd watch these cats again". But to do that you have to a) have been informed of their next contest and how to watch it and b) assuming you do find that out, you will run into a FloTrack paywall, and probably decide not to subscribe.
Lack of a comprehensive and robust "Club" system. Once out of hs or college one is almost completely on there own except for pro training groups. While in hs in the late 70's/early 80's this was discussed. Yeah, here and there is a club. My local "club" is pretty much meet for easy runs and recruit volunteers for road races. How often does the subject come up about open tracks in "my town, usa", fence jumping and obese walkers, bikes or kids in lane 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7 (when there is an open track). Track participation numbers are huge in hs, but not everyone is d1 material or wants the commitment to college track/xc. We need more participants at all levels of ability and ages. About the only "coaching" one gets here is some sage advice. I'd love to have a sometimes coach, in person evaluate, discus and layout a plan for races...but neither exist, coach or races (they come and go in my area).
I don't really know we can get some sort of nationwide club system going, but I think it has a better shot at increasing participants=fans than stupid gimmicks like gambling ("he FAKED rigging, threw the race for money")
That's an easy answer, all they show are the track events. There is virtually zero coverage of the field events on TV, but you get to see all 5 heats of the 1500 and 3 heats of the 10k. I'm not saying I don't appreciate those events, but who wants to watch an entire race like that, multiple times, when there's other events going on? If I wanted to watch that, I'd follow NASCAR. Show more than the winning throw/jump/vault. Maybe show a round of each, something. In Europe they do show the field events, especially the throws (ie Indoor Discus with flames or Hammer Throw over a river), people love it.
It's not popular because it always goes off like the Prefontaine meet did last weekend. I had high hopes for that meet, being Diamond League and all, and it bombed. I haven't seen rabbits get that far ahead since Byers brought it home in the 80s.
And all the headliners were pathetic, apparently never getting the memo that they were the show. And other than Diffey, who has no reason to know track, the announcers who do "know" track were pathetic as they always are.
I said last week I was looking forward to the World Cup Cross Country mountain bike race in the Czech Republic last weekend, too, and that did not disappoint. It was, in a word, epic, across four races I watched over two days.
It's maybe telling that the mountain bike race was on Redbull TV in its entirety (free), with replays available now (free), and track not so much. One outfit seems to understand the current demographic attention span, and the other is doing everything in their power not to exist. Guess which is which?
No need for a deep analysis. First, it's absolutely and mind boggling boring to see a bunch of skinny Africans run around in circles. The fatties don't care. The hobby joggers don't care. Their interest in running stops at their selfie and the finisher's medal.
Are you serious? Cut the Shot Put and field events? Cut what? They don't even show it on TV, lucky to see the winning throw/jump if they do. If they cut those events, they wouldn't lose much coverage wise. The problem is they don't cover them at all, so nobody knows about them. The Men's Shot Put this year, is arguably the best it's ever been. Yet, outside of people who actually follow it, you'd never know, because it's not covered.
Teams, named after cities, uniforms, scrolling score. Anyone in the world can run for any team hiring. Prize money only to teams, % of gate part of the bonus formula.
Johnny DeepPocket$ wrote:
4) Cut the dead weight. Sorry, but shot put and several field events are never going to be popular. They are completely draining to the broadcast. Either find a way to liven it up or cut them from the broadcast altogether to focus on the prime events.
.
Agree with the dead weight.
Funny thing though, hanging out at CO state meet last week I couldn't help notice the 400 or so people packed in to watch throws. And going nuts
Meanwhile, like at all meets, the real deadweight that causes the whole crowd to collectively yawn in unison is the 3200 meters, mens and women's both but especially the gals. Nothing brings a meet down for the rest of the non distance track fan (in the majority, btw) like a multiple heats of 32s.
Of course they don't run 32s in international comps but still......
THE MOST BORING EVENTS IN TRACK AND FIELD ARE 5K AND 10K!!!!!
Except for LRC wing nuts, about .0000001% of the population wants to actually watch a track 10k. Period. No one cares if it's a 27.xx pace. It's excruciatingly slow on TV and there are many more interesting things on TV than distance events at a track meet.
....like the Watching Paint Dry Channel.