One thing that has long occurred to me is that for gambling purposes, cross country might actually be the "sector" of track and field with the most promise. Laying bets on the NCAA cross country meet might actually have tremendous appeal.
Many years ago when he was still running professionally, Nick Symmonds said track needed a couple things to make meets more interesting.
Betting and beer.
Imagine betting on finals! Heats would be problematic as people don't always put out their best or care about placing.
It could be like horse races! I'd get into that.
The beer part I could get into. In fact I save mountain dew bottles to put beer into before going to track meets.
The gambling part, I'm not so sure about that. We've already got doping allegations and "cheater shoes." The last thing we need is to have someone being accused of "taking a dive" in a high profile track meet. A scandal like that at the highest level might kill pro track'n'field for a good long time. Not to forget mentioning what happened last night in the mens 110H DQ.
There is just too much wrong with T&F for it to ever be popular. Just imagine if there was a thing called Racketsport and they had a huge football field and competed in 5 matches in tennis, pingpong, badminton, squash, and padel at the same time.
I think it's boring as a spectator sport and I think efforts to push it as such are misguided. I love running (and field events...sometimes) but I've no interest in turning it into a high ratings bonanza.
People knew who runners were in the past because there were like 4 tv channels, no internet, no videogames, etc. The public wasn't interested as much as there wasn't any competing information that was more interesting.
I was always impressed by how popular our sport is in Europe. The fans there followed many of the events and were knowledgeable. The world champs in Germany was truly a field and track event as much as it was a track and field event. The German and European fans seemed interested in the throws and jumps as much as the running events. Hopefully its still thr case.
Perspective: I'm in my late 50s. I can recall the days of big meets televised on Wide World of Sports in the early 70s. When everyone knew who the world record holder in the mile was (as well as the unified heavyweight champion). Yet as I read all of the commentary on these Boards about what ails the popularity, promotion, and economics of T&F, I'm wondering if those of us over 50 yrs are looking in the rear view mirror through rose colored glasses. The more I objectively assess the popularity of the sport, the more I accept that it was never more than a fringe spectator sport. In other words, it hasn't retreated from being "a semi-major sport to a niche sport". Rather, it's retreated from being "a niche sport to a rounding error of a sport".
Clearly, the opinions on this site are biased because so many of us want to believe otherwise. But as the decades roll by, I find myself asking: "was T&F ever really popular?"
I'm in my early 30s, have been following the sport for about 15 years, and even in that much shorter time period it feels like it has lost a dramatic amount of popularity. Not that it was much back then, but it's really at a low point now.
Like how baseball fans have complained about baseball was once better since the day after the first game was ever played. Track fans have been saying the sport is dying for decades. This thread pops up once a month.
Keep in mind, the people that run the sport have no interest in making it popular. If they did, they'd force head to head battles between big rivals, require frequent racing, require media participation, and make changes to beta test popularity enhancing ideas. But they don't. It's working for them, the way it is.
Keep in mind, the people that run the sport have no interest in making it popular. If they did, they'd force head to head battles between big rivals, require frequent racing, require media participation, and make changes to beta test popularity enhancing ideas. But they don't. It's working for them, the way it is.
If you are a world boxing belt holder, you can be stripped of your belt if you continuously dodge top contenders.
I don't think this would work with track. Maybe someone who is good at "thinking outside the box" could come up with a solution.
This is exactly it. Audiences are bound to be smaller; there are too many sources of competition for our time now and taking a day or two off to watch track seems like quite the luxury. But the people actually running track has gone up (#1 U.S. high school sport) and so there's a healthy base of people who are interested in the sport.
Keep in mind, the people that run the sport have no interest in making it popular. If they did, they'd force head to head battles between big rivals, require frequent racing, require media participation, and make changes to beta test popularity enhancing ideas. But they don't. It's working for them, the way it is.
If you are a world boxing belt holder, you can be stripped of your belt if you continuously dodge top contenders.
I don't think this would work with track. Maybe someone who is good at "thinking outside the box" could come up with a solution.
Those are little tweaks. I don't think they'd change the sport. I think to a large extent, you just gotta convert the crowd of people who like road racing into being in awe of the people who run very fast. That's how I got into it. I was just a low 19:00 5K runner in high school but i was amazed at the people who were able to run those courses in 15 minutes and I just started reading about them. David Torrance's Bay Areas Club or whatever it was called used to do road races in SF with the pros running on relay-type races with ordinary road racers. I'll bet that did a lot. A teammate of mine in HS, Tony, briefly ran on the California Berkley team and Torrance did such a great job of getting the campus and even Tony's friends like me enthusiastic about Torrance's performances, that we wanted to see him do well.
It will always be a questionable side show, either in its present form, or in the various "innovative" forms that get bandied about (no fouls, lasers instead of cross bars, new time limits to kill dead spots in broadcast, bring in football players and other curiosities, etc.). If it changes a lot to appeal to "new" fans - to pull on the Ninja/corn hole/pro tag markets - everyone who loves the sport in its current form will say it's become an absolute side show. If it stays the same, it will limp along as it has since the end of the cold war.
T&F doesn't want to be popular. They're in a mindset that anything that is done purely to attract fans is below them. It's a purist, elitist attitude.
Fighters walk out with a loud rap song banging.
Basketball players wear bold and brash outfits in public and talk trash on social media.
Football players do dances in the end-zone.
Major sport require coaches and players do press conferences and participate in media.
Popular sports have leagues and seasons where players must commit and reliably show up without being able to go into hiding for months or years on end.
Popular sports work to invent, support and grow a subculture that sustains and builds their sports.
Track and Field wants to be secluded, isolated and elitist. All of their actions prove that. I'm personally okay with that. But let's not pretend they're trying and just can't catch a break or aren't trying hard enough.
Based on what I saw in person at Hayward Field yesterday, T&F is alive and well. Full house, enthusiastic fans, spectators of all ages, and great competition!
T&F doesn't want to be popular. They're in a mindset that anything that is done purely to attract fans is below them. It's a purist, elitist attitude.
Fighters walk out with a loud rap song banging.
Basketball players wear bold and brash outfits in public and talk trash on social media.
Football players do dances in the end-zone.
Major sport require coaches and players do press conferences and participate in media.
Popular sports have leagues and seasons where players must commit and reliably show up without being able to go into hiding for months or years on end.
Popular sports work to invent, support and grow a subculture that sustains and builds their sports.
Track and Field wants to be secluded, isolated and elitist. All of their actions prove that. I'm personally okay with that. But let's not pretend they're trying and just can't catch a break or aren't trying hard enough.
They're just plain not trying.
How can it be elitest if you're got people from Kazakhstan and Ivory Coast and Ethiopia winning medals? As Governor Brown of Oregon said when she opened the games, this is the most accessible sport in the world. With the exception of high and long jump and three of the four throws, you just need a pair of sneakers usually.
If anything correlate this to tennis which is extremely elite and most people can't get court space in winter time.
I think it's often odd when track stars try to have swagger. Like Noah Lyles is trying to do dances and stuff and there was something small of a beef with Knighton, and I get that it's an effort to try to enliven things, but I don't know, something about it doesn't work.
T&F doesn't want to be popular. They're in a mindset that anything that is done purely to attract fans is below them. It's a purist, elitist attitude.
Fighters walk out with a loud rap song banging.
Basketball players wear bold and brash outfits in public and talk trash on social media.
Football players do dances in the end-zone.
Major sport require coaches and players do press conferences and participate in media.
Popular sports have leagues and seasons where players must commit and reliably show up without being able to go into hiding for months or years on end.
Popular sports work to invent, support and grow a subculture that sustains and builds their sports.
Track and Field wants to be secluded, isolated and elitist. All of their actions prove that. I'm personally okay with that. But let's not pretend they're trying and just can't catch a break or aren't trying hard enough.
They're just plain not trying.
How can it be elitest if you're got people from Kazakhstan and Ivory Coast and Ethiopia winning medals? As Governor Brown of Oregon said when she opened the games, this is the most accessible sport in the world. With the exception of high and long jump and three of the four throws, you just need a pair of sneakers usually.
If anything correlate this to tennis which is extremely elite and most people can't get court space in winter time.
I think it's often odd when track stars try to have swagger. Like Noah Lyles is trying to do dances and stuff and there was something small of a beef with Knighton, and I get that it's an effort to try to enliven things, but I don't know, something about it doesn't work.
Thinking more about it, I think it's that some of these feuds seem extremely small and we barely know these guy. I'm not sure if there was a Rowbury-Simpson fued but I seem to remember people trying to talk it up and it might have been nothing
Based on what I saw in person at Hayward Field yesterday, T&F is alive and well. Full house, enthusiastic fans, spectators of all ages, and great competition!
I love track and field. But it's popularity compared to other sports is flatlined.
...trying to do dances and stuff and there was something small of a beef with Knighton, and I get that it's an effort to try to enliven things, but I don't know, something about it doesn't work.
Different athletes have more natural showmanship than others, for sure. But Usain Bolt seemed to make it work.