Why does the general population not care about distance running?

EVERYTHING is about sex. (Except sex, that is about power)

Distance running does not appeal to the masses because distance running does not appeal to the sexual stereotypes that the majority of Westerners are conditioned to be attracted to. Women mostly desire large muscular men that look confident, strong, and commanding. Men are most drawn to larger breasts and bigger booties because this conveys fertility. Lots of studies have been done to confirm this. Distance runners are often 180 degrees removed from these stereotypes. Shorter, thinner, not heavily muscled, small chested, flat bottoms. The typical sports television watcher does not see anything traditionally athletic or sexually desirable about the distance runner build.

Add to this the fact that most top distance athletes are quiet, thoughtful, and rather introverted. Americans love brash and cocky. Sadly, when a 5' 8"and 125 pound distance guy acts this way, it comes off as disingenuous or as someone with "little man" syndrome but a football player does this and it is perceived as confidence and alpha male behavior. Most of our distance women come off as mostly nice on TV but, when combined with the successful body type, regular men view them like little girls ("I ain't no pedo!") and most women assume that they must have eating disorders to look like 13 year old boys.

We will have been and always will be a niche sport. Accept this and enjoy it on your own terms.

Yep, I kind of liken track fans to political hobbyists. If you follow politics you can name at least a couple Supreme Court Justices or know who Marjorie Taylor Green or Chris Coons is. The majority of Americans do not know these people.

The General Election (which usually favors the Dems because of the high turnout) is like the Olympics where everybody pretends to be a track fan. Or March Madness where folks who couldn't name three college basketball players are watching because they participated in a bracket challenge or something. Chances are they haven't watch a full college hoops game all year.

Political midterms and off year elections are participated in by only the hardcore political hobbyists. Just like only us hardcore track heads are watching Worlds let alone Diamond League.

Yeah, something wacky usually has to happen in order for a running highlight to be discusses on one of the ESPN shows like PTI or the old Highly Questionable or whatever.

For instance they'll show when a runner celebrates too early and gets passed at the finish line. Or when those deer crossed those XC runners and took out the one kid, they got a chuckle out of that. Or the dog that got loose at the track meet in Utah and sprinted to the finish line.

It seems like we need more hi-jinx and buffoonery to be talked about regularly on main stream sports media.

Umm... ever heard of LPGA?

Distance running is not interesting to the general public because it lacks obvious points of tension other than the finish. Any ball sport has several moments of tension that are resolved throughout the contest (the pass is caught, the putt is made, the serve is aced, etc). With cycling and auto sports, the tension is in the fact that a massive crash could happen at any time. With distance running, the only real tension is who will win. These moments of tension are what create suspense and hold our attention.

Depending on the length of a race, someone making a big move may provide a tension moment (can this guy who went from back of pack to the lead hold on..). But the longer the race, the more subtle this types of moves to the point that a “move” is barely perceptible in a marathon.

However, at the end of the day, running is just like every other sport in that the overall interest in the sport largely depends on the popularity of the individuals that participate at the highest level. If a charismatic American guy/gal with an interesting story is able to win NYC or Boston and gets booked on all the late night shows, does Joe Rogan, gets on some commercials, etc, I guarantee you that you’d see a surge in the popularity of marathon broadcasts. Look at golf broadcasts with/without Tiger Woods. Tennis with/without the Williams sisters.

As other people have mentioned, when a sport is dominated by quiet, non-English speaking athletes, you’re just not going to see much interest from the American public.

Running already is the Nascar of sports.

"I'm gonna run, I'm gonna go fast, and I'm gonna turn to the left sometimes."

Look at the Super Bowl last night. Thousands of hours of previews and billions of dollars of hype, and it turned out to be a dud of a game. Yes, it was close, but there was only one big play and it should have been called back on a penalty. Otherwise it was good offense against good defense with calculated drives, which isn't exciting for most fans.

I wouldn't want distance running to have that much hype, that would be stupid. But every race I have ever seen is incredibly thrilling, with nearly every competitor giving it everything they can to beat their competition or get a faster time.

I think a lot of it is that 98 percent of people get weeded out while they are young. They run the mile in gym class and see it is not for them, this will never be their sport. So they don't pay attention to it and act like it is a fringe sport, when actually it is the best endurance athletes in their city, in their state, and in the world, in a sport that everyone tries but few succeed. So a lot of it might be jealousy or bitterness about running that mile in gym class.

How many of these threads over the years? Sorry but track and field will never be mainstream popular. Just accept it and enjoy the sport and help contribute when you can.

This topic does come up a lot but it’s pretty short-sighted to say it will never be popular in the mainstream. Especially when T&F was a relatively popular sport in many of our lifetimes. If you ask someone over 40 about Carl Lewis, Flo-Jo, Micheal Johnson, Prefontaine, they’ll at least recognize one or two of those names as a track athletes.

While watching short track speed skating, I wondered if indoor track races could be more appealing to casual fans with only two lanes (or even one lane) on the track. That will force a runner to go through traffic to pass someone, and it creates more possibility of "tension" as another poster called it. The finishing time will be slower, but the casual fans don't care about it unless it is the new record.

I mean you didn't even get his name right, so it's not like you care either.

In L. A. T&F, running, marathons are very popular. There's millions of active runners in L.A. Legends such as Rafer, Allyson, Dalilah, JJK, Seagren, Carl, Usain, CK Yang, FKG, Ato, Evelyn Ashford, VBH, Joanna Hayes, Toshihiko, Jet, etc. are household names.

It's a positive feedback loop. At least I think that's the best way to put it. People don't find distance running to be that exciting, so it gets very little coverage, so people end up caring even less, and the cycle goes on and on. We have fallen far into irrelevancy.

1. USATF revenue: $35 million, NFL revenue: 9.8 Billion (280 times USATF)

2. Running around a track is not very exciting for the average sports fan, most distance races tend to be tactical at a championship level. If it weren't for the fact that you would be handing the race over to the person with the best 400m time almost always, athletes would literally save as much energy as possible and then just do a 1 lap time trial.

3. No major crashes on the scale on cycling or auto racing

4. Prospective athletes that are talented at other sports will pursue those ($$$)

5. No real leagues or team

6. Olympics/World Champs are main focus, any other league at the moment would need a huge cash incentive for it to be worth it for top athletes

7. Could try getting a vertical K or mountain race into the X games idk

Great, Sage is back!

Welcome to the mad house again.

No sport, no activity is necessarily exciting to humans. Baseball has been losing market share to Football and Basketball for decades. Basketball faced its own relevancy crisis during the 1970s and again in the early 90s, when Michael Jordan and the Bulls were needed to counteract the constant (and constantly boring) foul-and-shoot-free-throws tendencies of teams like the Knicks and Pistons. The NFL has been favoring offense over defense for decades now, because offense is sexy.

There was a time during the late 60s to mid-80s when distance running and track were much more popular and in the public eye than today. The major arbiters of 'serious' sports journalism- Sports Illustrated in print and ABC's Wide World of Sports on T.V.- would regularly feature cover stories and top competitions. A decent number of Americans had at least come across mention of Jim Ryun, Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, Joan Benoit-Samuelson, Mary Decker Slaney, and Steve Scott. It all culminated in the 1984 LA Olympics, where Slaney's collision and subsequent drama with Zola Budd in the 3000m Final reached People Magazine levels of coverage.

As I see it, a persistently major problem with running and track and field is that its leadership has perpetually been clueless about how to best market and finance the sports. Human interest sells. Most colorful and attractive personalities sell. Exceptionally smart and yet relatable announcers who know how to teach the sport so that the average couch potato or hobbyist can appreciate interest-inducing nuance matters (think Madden and Summerall in Football, Vin Scully in baseball, Liggett and Sherwen in cycling). Cycling is a good example of how running coverage could succeed here: Do more interesting up-close-and-personal stories and interviews, highlight personal team/school/individual rivalries more, find more engaging interviewers (like Liggett and Sherwen), and focus more on the last portions of distance races longer than a mile/1500.

Athletics are the oldest sport on the planet, most likely. Every human being on some level can relate to running, jumping, and throwing. Instead of just giving up on it, be more like baseball and celebrate the history, intricacies of an activity played on similarly beautiful green playgrounds. The problem here is a lack of imagination and will, not with the sport itself.

Yesterday Grant Fischer set a American Record in what was basically a time trial. Worse, there was not much of a crowd. My high school conference meets had bigger crowds

Grant Fischer is the type of athlete the USATF needs to publicize. Obviously very bright, good looking, and has the potential to compete with the best in the world.

The old AAU used to get rightfully criticized, but they knew how to put on a track meet.

Because it is incredibly boring. No one has time for that except for those who simply do not have the innate ability to run fast. It's like that old cliche of "those who can do, those who can't teach".

That's not the case at all. So Cal has 200 miles of beaches and 340 days of T-Shirt and Shorts weather every year. So Cal has produced more running stars than the rest of the world combined Meb, Deena, Ryan, Jordan Hasay, Steve Scott, Mary Decker, Jenna Prandini, Johnny Gray, Tosh Seko. the 1932, 1984 and 2028 Summer Olympics are hosted by USC.