1) The hate towards Merber has always being not just idiotic but f--king idiotic. No disrespect to Kyle, but what exactly did people think he was doing in this venture? He was given a budget (with no way for him to know if it was liquid or not) and told to sign athletes and assemble fields. Johnson pulled in all these idiots from the NFL and the "events" world to handle all the alleged unique value of the series and people think Kyle Merber was getting up there and challenging their POVs on anything? I've said this before, guy was probably making a great paycheck doing something he liked in the sport he loves versus selling high interest savings accounts at AMEX. You think he was rocking the boat? No. He is just as caught up in this as the majority of athletes and non C-suite employees.
2) You can't be so black and white and pragmatic about separating whats happened in GST and this commentating gig with the BBC. No "technically" they aren't related but that's not the point. The point is that Michael Johnson carries some serious baggage with him right now that is just not worth getting involved with. Even though it's doubtful he's actually defrauded anyone, that is what the sentiment is - just read your messageboard! Sure some opinions might be extreme but they reflect the sentiment that right now he is a failure as businessman and have left a bunch of athletes high and dry with money he said he would pay them. And you think it's fine to put him on TV to potentially commentate on some of the very athletes he possibly owes serious money too? Why would you ever do that? The optic of that is terrible and people aren't stupid because he's not doing that BBC gig for free is he?
3) So with all that being said, is he so good commentating that you overlook all this? Of course he's not! There are multiple former athletes out there that could do the same thing and not like he holds all these awesome insights. He is actually not very good at all in that role, kind of boorish and uninteresting anyway. He got that gig on the back of being recently retired as a "legend" of the sport back in the early 2000's (2001) when there wasn't really anyone else around. Move on, get someone else. The BBC will survive.
Final thing, stop with the "from day one were told it's a startup" BS. That narrative only came out when the venture was teetering and about to implode - in fact unless I'm wrong it only came out for the first time when they announced they were cutting the Philly meet from 3 days to 2 and then reinforced when LA was axed. When this series was created and sold to athletes and agents, the narrative was "it's the new dawn of pro track and field with the money the athletes finally deserve" and "unrivaled this" and "never been seen before that". All he did was chirp about his 30 million dollars in backing - I never ever heard him say it wasn't guaranteed or it was a startup and things might not be guaranteed. All I heard was how awesome it was going to be and how he was saving the sport of track running. It's easy to say "well the agents should have been on to it and understood the pitfalls" - based on what? They have never had to confront this before - what are they going to do when their athletes are like "hey we finally have a chance to make serious, career changing money" - go back to them and say "hey I don't think you should do this because it's a startup and you might not get paid"???
I do agree that the world will still turn and the athletes will be big picture be fine. If the worst thing was that they got to fly business class to a venue, stay in a 5 star hotel for 5 days and run a few races without being paid, then given the hardships some people face in life it's not all that bad.
But it doesn't exonerate Michael Johnson who let's be honest now, was using this as a vehicle to promote himself and his ego (and his bank balance) just as much as he was "saving" a sport that doesn't need saving to begin with. And right now he doesn't deserve the privilege of being paid himself to offer up his opinions on that sport so the BBC have done 100% the right thing here. There is zero case to be made in his support on this one.