Please tell me USATF is kidding!

Did you apply for the job?

I agree. It's time to bring in some professionals to run USATF instead of just hiring former professional athletes and coaches.

does anyone know how this is going? good hire, bad, what?

He's been there nine days now. Don't you think you are a little early to ask that?

Gotta admit that I wondered about this hire as well. It is quite a jump from his experience to what his job description is describing...he can handle the event portion of the job, but the broadcasting portion of the job might be interesting....

The only qualification this guy needs to have is a thick skin that he is going to need in having to put up with all the bullshit Hightower and Chaplin will throw his way. What an absolute clown show from top to bottom!

I think he is a very qualified person for the job and as Men's Track & Field Chair I will do what ever I can to assist this young man. At least until he pisses me off.

Apparently you don't really know what the job entails, or what it pays. If you read the story, it's not like this person is the producer/director for the freaking TV shows. The position is designed for someone who is a MANAGER of complex operations. Just reading what they wrote about the guy, I don't see where he is underqualified to manage stuff. That's what an AD does at any level.

This is clearly someone involved in hiring this guy!!

Awesome hire! I bet the New York TV execs are crapping themselves knowing a former high school AD is coming to town to demand more T & F coverage.

The guy has worked his ass off, including this year at USATF nationals, managing a large part of the on field operations.

He's qualified for what the job calls for and has experience.

Plus he's actually a well spoken, not a good old boy, guy.

His job is not to run the TV production, but to coordinate the on-field staff and meet management w/ the TV crew so as to make sure that everything is ontime and done correctly.

Being from a T&F background he will, hopefully, be less of a yes man and spend more time making sure that the sport is portrayed properly, rather than using the SOS that we have been force fed for the last 20+ years.

Read:

"While at Brebeuf, Brase served as President for the Marion County Athletic Directors Association. He has also served as event director for several major events, most notably the 2005 USATF Track and Field Junior Olympics, IHSAA Track and Field State Finals for boys and girls, IHSAA Cross Country Tournament Series for boys and girls and Marion County Cross Country Championships.

Previously, Brase was appointed the Executive Director of the Governor's Council for Physical Fitness and Sports by Governors Bayh and O'Bannon. A four-time letter winner at Indiana University as a hurdler, Brase also coached collegiate and post-collegiate track and field athletes and is a certified track and field official.

Brase received his Bachelors in Business Administration in 1982 from Indiana University, and his Masters in Recreational Sports Management Emphasis. "

He's just your usual management guy. That's all he is going to do. Manage a lot, run nothing..:)

Alan

Hey, if they can take a guy who was the commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association (and forced to resign from that post) and make him the head of FEMA, this doesn't seem like much of a stretch at all.

This is really pretty scary. The irony is that this past year has probably seen the best coverage of Track and Field on TV in at least five years - and that is without a full time Director. In the absence of a full time hire, USATF managed using existing staff "acting up" to cover the position - and there was live coverage at more meets this year than I can remember. Kudos to the staff that pulled this off - sadly, another thread indicates that most of them have since left. How long USATF can continue to hemorrhage young home-grown talent is another question.

Does this new guy know what he has got himself into? Working with TV is unlike any other job in the world - not harder, not more demanding, just different. You have long periods of inactivity joined togeter by moments of blind panic, and all of it in the public eye. It takes a special mindset and understanding of the constraints you are operating under. Negotiating with NBC and ESPN is not a job to be undertaken lightly, and most TV professionals really don't like people ignorant about the medium coming in and trying to dictate terms.

USATF already had an Event Manager, what it needed was a Broadcast Director, what it hired was a small prep school Athletic Director.

Despite recent drug-related setbacks, this country still has the most successful Track and Field program in the world, how it could entrust its "public face" to someone with no broadcast experience is baffling.

Maybe the goal is to get as little TV exposure as possible, in the hope that the viewing public won't realize that there are junkies winning national championships?

I have to agree with Mr. Cosell. It's amazing that people can justify a hire for the Director of Events and Broadcasting when the individual has no broadcasting experience. The National Office needs to realize their strengths and weaknesses. The sport needs strong, experienced, and quality people in the national office, especially with recent events and facing an upcoming Olympic Trials.

JPT wrote:

I have to agree with Mr. Cosell. It's amazing that people can justify a hire for the Director of Events and Broadcasting when the individual has no broadcasting experience. The National Office needs to realize their strengths and weaknesses. The sport needs strong, experienced, and quality people in the national office, especially with recent events and facing an upcoming Olympic Trials.

I doubt he will have much to do with the Olympics. The USOC handles that. The USOC usually uses NGB staff for some activities (like press releases).

I was quite honestly taken aback when I read that release, especially since his predecessor, David Raith, actually _had_ a TV background (working for Turner Sports in Goodwill Games). Raith parlayed his time @ USATF into a gig as the executive director of the US Figure Skating federation!

It's my impression that many staffers use their time at USATF to position themselves for bigger/better gigs down the road, either in private industry or somewhere else in the Olympic movement (i.e. USOC or another NGB).

Did David Raith even have the power to do anything? Did anything change while he was there? Did his staff leave with him? Who did his job during the time he was gone? Is he doing well at skating? Didnt USAT&F have someone else go to skating? This post seems strange.