Stephen A Smith issues full apology to Noah Lyles: "He was probably more right than he was wrong."

Nice!

Lol

Come on Noah, run something crazy in Zurich today while the sports world is still talking about you

Incredible publicity. Unfortunately conditions don't look great for a 200m record attempt

"“From the world side, I’ve gotten a lot of support,” Lyles said. “I know actually quite a few basketball players because my massage therapist works on them. She’s actually working with the French team right now at the World [Cup] and a lot of them have the same idea as me. When they go back home, their countries aren’t celebrating them as world champions, they’re celebrating them as NBA champions.

“I’ve gotten a lot of football players as well be like, Hey man…I agree with you 100%. It’s funny because in the US, they’re against it, but when you look at the whole world, it’s like oh, wow, a lot of people agree with what I said.”"

Noah - show the messages or else I'm thinking you're inflating your support.

Bring back the old Superstars competition.

^this!

If he loses there will be fallout and his popularity / presence will not be improved.

If he wins he will maintain his current popularity / presence.

If he breaks his own MR of 19.52 that will create some nice buzz to add to his current popularity / presence.

If he can perform another AR (19.31) there will be an obvious jump in popularity / presence and it would taper off after a week or so while still leaving him with major long term popularity gains.

The WR (19.19) seems so unlikely that it's not worth speculating about but if he did break it there would be a momentary skyrocket eclipsing Bolt-era popularity / presence. And if he somehow continued to perform well and win in Brussels and Eugene he would really make his mark world wide. And with his already released tv show / documentary I think he'd become a permanent household name.

LFG

This right here! ^^^

And have Crouser & Kovacs versus the entire USWNT in a tug-o-war!

this is the dumbest drama and ultimately hurts track

we aren't going to gain more fans by trashing Americas most popular sports.

individual sports and team sports are totally different, there is no comparison.

You've got no idea what sells. Running barely makes money as it is. Trash talk, controversy that sells. Gotta stop being all loners.

Put Aaron Gordon vs Lyles in a 200m like suggested and you'd fill a stadium.

Even take the top sprinters from every sport. Do a pro-stars type thing and boom money.

Noah Lyles got ESPN to talk about track & field more in two days than they have in the entire time since Gwen Berry last made a Team. 😄

I just wanna see Aaron Gordon line up for a 200.

They should do something to make it an actual competition, too. Perhaps Noah can start 20 meters behind? And/or they could invite sha'carri? I think it goes without saying that gordon would be destroyed in a straight up race by Noah while sleepwalking.

Aaron Gordon couldn't even make the women's finals of the 200m. Noah would beat him by 3 seconds at a bare minimum (I'm guessing Gordon couldn't even run faster than 23 seconds)

Stephen A Smith is an edgelord. He realized that it would be edgier to agree with Lyles, so he reversed course.

Shericka Jackson would smoke any NBA player in the 200.

you mean the American sports world. Track stars are treated as God's abroad. America isn't everything! The world is much larger than one single country!

A good performance from Lyles at Zurich would be nice to have, but he's thinking more about the big picture next year at the Olympics when the world's attention goes to track and field above everything else. He's directing that attention toward himself and track in advance.

Yeah but it doesn't help track. They would show up to see their favorites sprint and ignore the track people. They aren't going to grow to appreciate the race