How is Ben True not signed?? maybe the best shape of his life

^ wrote:

13:02/27:14 ; grinding out workouts like below ; he’s gotta be on the short list of those that can make the OG Team ...

https://youtu.be/Yvan_4vemVk

^

he should get dressesd!

heartfoundation wrote:

he should get dressesd!

I beg to differ 🙃

I don't know how the signing of athletes works.

But a contract is ultimately just kindness from the companies, because there's no way people buy shoes based on who signs which athletes. They can very easily afford to NOT sign Ben True. If he wants 150k/yr to run 4 races and make 3 Instagram posts, they can and will simply say "no".

I wish there was a way for professional runners to make a secure living without the charity of running apparel companies. I wish everyone who wanted to put in the work got a sponsorship and was rewarded for fast times. But not enough people watch track/road racing to make that remotely possible.

Professional running is about a 30 hour/week job. It is pretty cushy--see any Youtube video about any pro runner's lifestyle. Ben rarely raced, and when he did, his entry and travel was covered.

The downside of pro running is that the contracts are precarious. You meet standards or you're off. This was the cause of his health insurance problem a few years ago. He almost got dropped from his contract (he wasn't, as suggested, only rewarded with health insurance based on his world ranking. Rather, his health insurance was tied to his contract, and his contract was tied to world rankings.)

At the end of your pro running career, you have to MOVE ON. You are in your 30s usually, and have few years left of potential in your chosen distance. Nobody wants to move in to the real world, which is why they cling to it a little longer than they should, or they move up in distance to continue being competitive. Ultimately, Ben True is trying to get sponsored for running a time trial in February.

Know that this is Letsrun.com - where 13:20/27:50 athletes are now considered sub-elite, maybe not even semi-pro. You need to run sub 13, 27, or 2:08 to be considered worth of a contract.

Oh, and all posters worth mention and consideration here must be conservative white males, PR of 14 or under, be incel or have trophy wife (renewables okay), Ivy League education, and $450K income.

I get your point but at the end of the day 13:20/27:50 isn’t what it was a decade ago. Two 19 year old NCAA runners ran that 5k time this weekend and those times no longer have any hope of making a world champ or Olympic team. They barely make the trials and would be lucky to land you top 10-15 in the US. Absent extenuating circumstances like a huge social media presence or running the time as a 19 year old and signing a pro contract it also won’t put very much food on the table.l either.

It’s hard not to call it elite but it also isn’t really elite. It is sad to even hear myself saying this but I think 13:20-13:25 is actually the threshold at this point...

I will personally buy the shoes of any company that sponsors Ben True or Noah Droddy

Ron Clarke ran 13:16.6 and 27:39.89 in 1965& 66 ... 50 years ago.

True is currently 13:02/27:14 .. much better than Hunter that is making 300k per year selling necklaces and Tshirt crap.

I won’t buy a single nykie or anything adidas from now until death.. but I’m saying True should be signed and able to make a living.

True makes the team and probably sucks up a bunch of that nykie money..at least i hope.

Bens raking I that coffee Money

Ok, I say this as HUGE fan of Ben True but I also understand the economics and realities of our sport...You think someone who runs a couple of races a year, stays silent on social media, is a humble, nose to the ground kinda runner DESERVES to get paid a good salary?? The fact that most people on this website and elite runners themselves think that their times should dictate salary is insane. Athletes are entertainers, they need to race, they need to build a fan base, they need to have a god damn personality. All you old timey dorks who think that the quiet humble types that get a diamond league scalp from time to time are deserving of contracts have no god damn clue.

I would never buy a pair of Sauconys no matter how fast Ben True ran in them, they simply do not project a cool image, which is a thing that matters in this vapid world, to deny that at this point is asinine. I will however spend $1K on a bunch of Nike shoes to run in for the next couple of months, because they dialed in their product AND they project a cool image.

Pro athletes need to entertain, that's their job, being humble and staying out of the spot light is literally the opposite of that. We really need to stop glorifying the hermit mentality of distance runners and stop hating on those who are "sub elite" trying to make it while documenting their journey. You don't need to be a world beater to inspire, entertain and have a fan base.

Definitely +1 on this. Whoever sponsors Ben True will basically be gifting him money for nothing in return. It might sound crazy, but only diehard fans of the sport have heard of him. I'll admit that I didn't know who he was for the first 2 years I followed this sport, and even after that I never really cared about him. It's hard to imagine anyone buying his sponsor's gear just because he wears it. If he wants a contract, he should start racing more, start a Youtube channel, post on Instagram more, just anything to get him more visibility. If not then there's no reason that he should expect a significant contract.

This isn't a knock on Ben True, just an observation. I'm rooting for him.

Is True still the only American to win a Diamond League 5000?

All of what you just said is total BS. That's all crap that big shoe companies want you to believe. Them giving out contracts shows that they care about the sport and want to contribute to it, not giving a guy like True a fair contract is an admission that they don't care enough about the sport. These companies even the smaller ones have a LOT of money and what athletes make in this sport is nothing not a drop in the bucket. Not only that but these companies don't even have that many athletes signed let alone big time contract earners. Not a single athlete in distance running has EVER made a significant difference in the sales of their shoe and apparel brands with the exception of those that created their own brands which is mostly a thing of the past. Gwen Jorgensen is now 2XU sponsored and I highly doubt that brands sales have skyrocketed in the time since that was announced. That isn't a knock on her, this site gives her a hard time but people need to realize the reality of the situation. In my 10 plus years in this industry I NEVER had someone come in and tell me they wanted to buy some Nikes because Mo Farah wears Nike and there is no one more famous in distance running during these times. All of that is total BS that companies are now using as another tool against athletes to reduce their pay. It's really sad and low of them to use that sort of BS social media metrics to reduce or eliminate the salary of a deserving athlete when the money amounts to peanuts for them.

Come on man, Ben True deserves it. I am not a Droddy fan personally but you run a top ten time in american history and get dropped? Get real. These companies are making more money than ever before with the popularity of running shoes being used as casual wear, this was not something people used to do ten years ago. They'd just wear their Vans or converse whatever and suck it up. Now they want to complain about athletes contracts. Ridiculous. When people come in to get shoes they care about what the damn thing feels like and what it's going to do for you. If you come out and make a running shoe and slap LeBron James name on it if the shoe sucks it won't sell at all. Period. Puma put Bolt on their ads for a distance trainer and it sucked no one bought it. If Bolt can't sell your shoes on name recognition why should I as a company care if Ben True makes only 5 Instagram posts a month? He doesn't have the ability to sell shoes no matter how much he posts. They're just penny pinching in the worst way. It hurts distance running, it hurts the sport.

Wejo or Rojo if you guys see this try and do some sort of deep dive into how these companies try to determine if athletes really can be a driver in sales. I personally have never seen it be the case. The way these companies negotiate contracts seems very unfair from the outside looking in.

Well said.

Does his activity in the sport contribute to raising the profile and visibility of a brand? Sure, fans talk about him, his workouts, his races here on occasion but how often is he getting attention in the media and on social media with posts going at least semi-viral? I know it hurts Pearson Morgan's tuchus to acknowledge it, but performance matters little if it's basically a tree falling in a forest with nobody around to hear it. Another ex dumped by Saucony, Noah Droddy, ran a fantastic mark in December yet if you didn't pay to watch the coverage, didn't read about it in running-specific media, or don't already follow and engage with him on SM then you probably also don't realize that it wasn't a major race and he didn't even win, forget having any awareness of what brand he might be endorsing at the time. That's a really small audience for a corporation to be paying to reach, and people are probably increasingly disengaged with his SM accounts with every tweet complaining about not being sponsored or other sausage ingredients inside the pro level of the sport. He could help himself simply by switching to a more fun tone on SM rather than an angry one, and maybe post less narcissistic stuff.

People who complain that True has no personality are full of it. First off, I'm sure he has a personality, just like we all do. What you mean by "no personality" is that he doesn't document his every move on social media, post photos of his breakfast on Facebook, taunt his rivals, make outrageous claims, etc. So what you are really saying is, he doesn't have a specific type of personality that you associate with the ability to gain notoriety.

Galen Rupp has even less "personality" than True in that sense of the word. But Nike doesn't hesitate to sponsor him.

Do you really want someone to try to mold themselves into someone they are not? Does everybody who dreams of Olympic glory or whatever need to come to terms with also having to be an obnoxious semi-celebrity who posts a non-stop barrage of garbage on social media to stay "relevant"?

I think I know the response to my questions: "hey, buddy, you may not like it, but that's the reality, so deal with it." Maybe, maybe not. But that doesn't mean I can't/shouldn't complain about it, and point out that not everybody feels that way.

Call it Quenton Cassidy Mythology Hangover Syndrome. It's remnants of a bygone era that (fewer and fewer) people are clinging to and remain vocal about. Even MJ had to do silly commercials with Spike Lee for Nike and LBJ has long surpassed him as a marketing commodity. Hell, back in the '70s both Shorter and Rodgers founded their own brands to capitalize on and extend the reach of their profiles based on performance. I don't dislike Ben True at all, would be thrilled to see him make the team for Tokyo, but he doesn't do himself any favors and it's not like the knowhow for capitalizing on SM is any big secret or has a high barrier to entry in 2021.

Shabadon't wrote:

Galen Rupp has even less "personality" than True in that sense of the word. But Nike doesn't hesitate to sponsor him.

Terrible analogy, Rupp has made many US teams and has multiple world level medals to his name. That sells itself. True has made two US teams for World Cross (very low profile team to make) and one for track World Champs. Zero world level medals.

His competitive profile is much closer to that of Sara Hall, who still competes well in high level events, has been highly available and approachable to any and all media outlets, and has built a relatable, inclusive personality on social media. It's not super difficult if you get out of your own way. Who is True's agent, by the way?

I fundamentally disagree that the social media crew is more marketable for shoe/apparel companies. I actually think they are significantly less marketable, mainly because they are mostly genuinely uninteresting/uninspiring people who have no "story". E.g., what's Spencer Brown's story? He is a somewhat-talented upper-middle class 23-year old Georgetown grad from CT. As John Oliver would say: "Cool." He works hard, but so do all distance runners, and when he is in some non-Diamond League race, there's literally zero interesting things that a broadcaster can say about him besides "his training seems to be going well I guess, and he eats a lot of chipotle". Ben True definitely has a personality, and a far more interesting/marketable story to tell in my opinion. He's a lone wolf (he's got one training partner now) and a 35 year-old veteran gunning for his last chance for a spot on an olympic team. He's just objectively more interesting/inspiring, which makes him more marketable if anyone were actually trying to market him. Not to mention he has a famous wife, coffee company, baby on the way, has a storied past in the sport, etc., just lots of other interesting stuff going on in his life. Meanwhile Zach Levet flips his hair. Cool.