I firmly believe that it is the lack of USATF trading cards which has lead to the unpopularity.
I firmly believe that it is the lack of USATF trading cards which has lead to the unpopularity.
You people need understand that the reason track and field is unpopular is because it is a sport that your average person CANNOT do. People only want to watch sports they can go play with their friends. You can't just go run a for fun 1500 with your friends on any given Saturday. But you can sit on your butt for 25 years and go play a game of football, basketball, baseball, and soccer.
Best answers so far, in descending order
1. Too much down time at the meets. I sat for 4 hours in the blazing sun in Sacramento yesterday and didn't see much action on the track. The races were great.....aggressive racing in the distances, world leading time in the 110HH, a spectacular wipe out in the 110H (for those who say NASCAR is only exciting because of the crashes). The waits between the events were just way too long.
1a.To be fair, though, there were 3 solid, well contested field events (Men's LJ, Women's HJ, Men's PV) going on simultaneously on the infield + women's discus (which didn't have as much drama). For the casual track fan, following the field events can be tough. I took my son yesterday and he had no idea where to pay attention when. Once those were winding down, there was not much going on at all.
2. Lack of ability of fans to connect with athletes. There are no hometown heroes. Jeneba Tarmoh was getting tepid applause after winning the 200. It wasn't until she said something like "I'm from California and it's great to be back here and get a win", that she got a big response from the crowd. If the announcer would have said something in the introductions like, "in Lane x, a california girl from Mt. Pleasant High School in San Jose, she's won xxx titles and taken xxx places....Jenebah Tarmoh" The crowd would have been much more excited before the race even started. Not to mention that Tarmoh has a significant back story for anyone who remembers the debacle with her dead heat at the 2012 Olympic Trials. People will keep coming back to meets if they get an emotional response while at meets. For most people, even for those who know track, even fast times, high jumps, and far throws usually aren't enough to generate excitement.
Honestly, I wasn't that excited about going to the meet yesterday, but I'm glad I did. My son, on the other hand, will probably not ever want to go to another track meet again. He was, for the most part, bored out of his mind.
3. Here is a reason that has not really been cited yet. USATF does not do much to make things easy/comfortable for the fans. Go to a major league ball park and once you are inside, you can pretty much go anywhere you want (except for into the luxury boxes). Yesterday, despite the fact that temps were over 100 degrees by the time the meet ended, the only place with any trees that might possible provide some shade was blocked off as part of some sort of VIP section. When it was time to leave, the nearest gate to us, the one that happened to be nearest to our car and the one through which we entered, was blocked off. My father and law (who is the former Icelandic Record Holder in the Javelin and is a track fanatic) has terrible, arthritic knees and can barely walk. After getting stymied at the gate through which we entered, we back tracked to one of the seemingly only 2 gates that were open as exits. I ran back to the car and brought it over to where my father and law and my son were waiting.
USATF knew it was going to be hot as hell but the only "misters" or cooling off areas were 2 small mist fans provided by the local utility district. I couldn't take my son into the shaded "beer garden" because he wasn't 21.
From the perspective of a fan in the stands, that aspect of the meet sucked worse than any other sporting event I've ever been to.
So, what do I consider to be a good meet? For my money, the best track and field meet I've ever been to is the California State HS championships final day. The entire running event schedule takes well under 3 hours, the meet is contested in the evening so nobody is getting sunstroke in the stands, there is minimal time between events. One event finishes, they stand the kids up on the podium and give them their medals, maybe the talk to one or two kids on the stadium PA. Every race means something, there is a state champion crowned with every event. The kids are excited and you know you are seeing the best that the state has to offer...nobody decides to skip the meet because it is an off year. The stadium (Buchanan HS in Clovis) is comfortable with two large grassy berms on each turn and large bleachers. If you want to cool off, there is ample shade from trees around the stadium, but the meet is held in the evening, so the heat really isn't that much of an issue.
I went to the meet in Sacramento because it is basically as close to home as a national meet will ever get. Would I fly to Des Moines, Indianapolis, or Baton Rouge to see this meet? No Way! I might go to Oregon because A) it's not that far and B) the weather wouldn't be unbearable.
Oh, by the way, the dude at the gate made me go back to my car and put away my umbrella I'd brought to keep the sun of my father in law. I get the "not blocking sight lines" thing, but with the number of people in the stands on the visitors side, we wouldn't have been blocking anything.
Amen!
The Ump is back wrote:
The answer to the subject line is, at least in part, because even the so called fans of the sport seem to spend the vast majority of their time crying about some perceived injustice.
"he's cheating!"
"she pushed me!"
Well, they need to contest the women's high jump and women's pole vault right in front of the grandstand, not over in corners of the stadium where people barely know they're going on. Start the meet off with a pretty brisk women's high jump event, maybe six jumps total for each of four or five events. Telecast the whole thing.
Another Option wrote:
Meets take too long. There's too much downtime without meaningful action. Even when a race is going on, all too often there's nothing special about any of the performances, unless you are intimately familiar with the athletes involved - context is important.
The sport is very healthy as a participatory sport, despite rapidly rising fees.
It doesn't have the mass appeal of many spectator sports, and I'm not sure the changes necessary to give it that kind of appeal would produce a sport I would still like.
I believe our efforts should be on running well-organized first class events for athletes, coaches, and the spectators who are already likely to attend. There's much to do to just accomplish that.
In my opinion, trying to make track and field a sport that appeals to the masses is a fool's errand.
Pretty much what I was going to write.
I love track but didn't bother trying to watch it this weekend.
It's too spread out over the weekend.
A compressed schedule would be nice.
Get all of the prelims out of the way early.
Have all finals one day and with very little time between races.
It's a good sport to follow online, though.
T & F can be exciting & popular. Check out video of this British 'grass roots' club 10,000m with 1,000 spectators in lane 3 with beerz in hand.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTJH8fZcWPM
bubba smith jones wrote:
Looking at the stands at USATF they are nearly empty. Even all my friends who do not run cant stand Track, they said it reminds them of their struggles in gym class.
Is their any hope?
It seems more like a hobby, than anything else.
It's hard to say - there are many small reasons which combine to make track an unpopular spectator sport, some of which also act to make it a very popular participation sport.
There is a LOT in the fact the 100m is comparatively popular, and one of the most-watched events at the entire Olympics. The 100m 'gets' many things 'right' the 10,000m does not, for example.
1) It doesn't lend itself to excitement at any point apart from the start, and the finish. Runners are generally too spread out for the layperson viewer to understand who's gaining on whom and by how much - it seems static until a point of reference is provided.
2) There is no innovation in the presentation. Look at football, baseball - quads with mounted cams providing amazing views of the action, vectors, stats, on-the-fly comparison. They do SOME with track, but not nearly enough. Why not have HR monitors and GPS modules on each runner, to provide stats commentators can use and laypeople can interpret? Instant pace readout, linked modules so rates of gain between runners can be plotted and compared on the go. The 'hot' runner for this section is runner B, he gained 33.34m on the frontrunner in 3.24km. Now, let's look at his HR as we go to the eye-in-the-sky view. How's his cadence looking, Fred? Well, if we bring up the biometrics panel, Tony... the possibilities are endless.
3) Runner's aren't attractive people. Sorry. People want powerful-looking athletes, girls with booty. Give ME a runner any day, but most people watch the Kardashians and football. Runners are skinny runts. They look ridiculous with their toothpick arms folded trying to look mean in pubicity shots. Lets be real here.
4) Lack of sponsorship. Precisely why a runner can have only ONE sponsor for shoes/apparel is beyond me. Look at any other sport, more or less - other racing sports such as F1 or stockcar are an excellent example. There's a reason they have no profile - no non-running companies really have them on-board. Why aren't I seeing runners sponsoring sunscreen, with their face on tubes in every supermarket? Cheese singles? Freaking Dollar Tree, I don't know. Fact is they have no profile. Allowing more sponsors in will change that. Companies WILL use them, just as proxies for grit and determination if the name is unknown. Insurance companies, whatever, you get the picture. They'd be cheap.
5) Again, just trying to be real - look at the discourse here in LR. Runners are snarky, maladjusted and awkward, generally speaking. Hobby joggers are lovely, usually. As soon as someone gets fast they turn into an elitist a$$hole. In what other sport is the amateur side reviled and mocked? 'Hobby jogger' is a swear word. Don't hear golfers reflexively bitching about pitch n putt moms, soccer elites putting down the Saturday afternoon leagues.
And so forth.
real talk wrote:
3) Runner's aren't attractive people. Sorry. People want powerful-looking athletes, girls with booty. Give ME a runner any day, but most people watch the Kardashians and football. Runners are skinny runts. They look ridiculous with their toothpick arms folded trying to look mean in pubicity shots. Lets be real here.
5) Again, just trying to be real - look at the discourse here in LR. Runners are snarky, maladjusted and awkward, generally speaking. Hobby joggers are lovely, usually. As soon as someone gets fast they turn into an elitist a$$hole. In what other sport is the amateur side reviled and mocked? 'Hobby jogger' is a swear word. Don't hear golfers reflexively bitching about pitch n putt moms, soccer elites putting down the Saturday afternoon leagues.
And so forth.
^^This
roller.derby.
mix in some fun events with a small number of straight up serious premiere event - our top folks take themselves too bloody seriously!
>> last man standing 5000
>> more and varied relays with affinity teams representing something the fans relate to (states, sponsors, favorite beer)
>> fill the steeple pit with mud or pistachio pudding
>> wheelchair long jump
>> out of discipline cameos - distance guys throwing the shot (we already have the lumberjack 1500 at the end of the decathlon) - allows some personality to show through here!
more, different racing kits
season-long competitions with identifiable contenders (a la the TdF jerseys)
simultaneous (visible) events. compresses schedule adds spectator options. the track is wide - could be sprinting while the 5/10K is using inside 2 lanes. the backstretch is open for straight sprints.
Who cares if it's popular among viewers? What difference does it make?
Wheelchair Long Jump is a no-brainer. An absolute show stopper. There's the traditional "Tee-Off" method, using a fixed runway barrier, but no reason why you couldn't innovate with the addition of a ramp event. Go one stage further and award extra points for each competitor you manage to clear. Forget about popularity problems, you'll be packing in fans so tightly that they'll be swinging from the rafters.