Larry Rawson Retires from TV

As someone has already pointed out on this thread and still hasn't been answered yet, do you flip on broadcasts of tennis, golf, gymnastics, or swimming and hear the announcers trot out insultingly dumb analysis like what's been the hallmark of Rawson's career? No. I'd say that over the past decade he's done at least as much to stunt track's appeal in the broadcast medium with his asinine Rawsonisms as he has ever done to promote it. The average sports fan knows t&f well enough, you don't hold their interest by insultingly talking down to them.

As a friend once said "How difficult is it to understand? You shoot off a gun, first one to the finish wins."

The Big Ten Network is saddled with a Rawson-type for gymnastics coverage. The other announcers just ignore him.

You may have won a few debates on the mid school debate team. Albeit ,you are a dope.

rekrunner wrote:

Sorry, I misspelled "otherwise" (dropped an "r").

"Acknowledgment" can also correctly be spelled "Acknowledgement".

and lastly,

"... and all posters agree to, no?"

Did I actually write "right a book"? That's not what I meant.

While we're at it:

Is "spellcheck" a word? Is it one word, hyphenated, or two words?

Is "Spellcheck esquire" even a sentence? What does that mean?

Is it correct to start a sentence with "And"? It looks debatable at best, but probably acceptable in an informal forum, but surely only when using complete sentences in the first place.

Can you put a space before the period in a sentence?

naked running wrote:

Spellcheck esquire. And don't end sentences with prepositions .

Rawson "dumbed" it down to much.. Wasn't very good for expressing the passion of the sport.

" You Try to run a 800 in 3:00 at your local hs track".

Larry Eder wrote:

2. Rawson tells the stories that you, serious track fans, abhor, were done to attract the coach potatoe, who comprise the sports fans that all of the stations love. Without those fans, advertisers do not support sport programming. Putting up with Rawson's quips was a small price to pay for having TF on cable for the past twenty-five years.

Larry Eder

American Track & Field

Runblogrun

Eder's way off on the issue. Rawson's contributions to commentating on the sport were weak, independent of his contribution to the sport in general.

You can't attract sports fans by having the commentator constantly explaining the sport. Sounds counterintuitive, but I think it's true. People watching need to be convinced of a sport's legitimacy, and that isn't going to happen when the commentators are constantly converting distances, making analogies, and issuing empty challenges at the local track. It makes it sounds like there isn't already an educated fan base, that track is just exercise for other sports, and that all track athletes have a chip on their shoulder because we couldn't succeed in the big 3.

I think a big improvement to track coverage would be if commentators used track lingo like we do amongst ourselves. We've got some great phrases like "getting walked down," and "rigging" that are totally our own, and we should be using these on air to give our community a little bit of character and a sense of history.

everyone here is faster than me and I'm usually in the 99.5 percentile in races, so letsrun captures essentially, say, a share of one-two hundredth of the group that actually runs races in the United States. And that group is, what?, five or ten percent of the population? So, maybe one/two thousandth of the population is going to be knowledgeable about the sport and not need anyone to dumb it down to the level of that would be like geb's world record would be like running a lap of your local high school track in 71 seconds and then doing it again another 104 times without stopping. So much for the principle. There is nothing wrong with explaining your sport when next to nobody knows anything about what they might be watching.

Then there is the application. And Rawson, while amiable and a fast runner back in the day, did not apply the principle well. He did not seem to know the sport that well or be able to keep up with who was doing what and why it was important in any given race. But from that 1/2000 th of the population, there are some who could do better. And a legacy of covering the sport should not dictate lifetime tenure. He is no Supreme Court Justice.

jj, while i agree with most of your post on how rawson's application was wrong, i got to go against your sentiment that explaining racing is good. it's not. it's an incredibly easy to watch sport, it's just boring. like the post above said: gun goes bang, first body to the line wins. no amount of "hey maybe this looks easy, but you can't do it" comments will help. never when i watch football, does the commentator challenge me to carry a loaf of bread through my local zoo's bear cage in order to help me understand how tough a running play can be. one of the biggest improvements to football broadcasting, in terms of increasing the interest of casual viewers, it the first-down line. we need simple, engaging advancements like that in track.

The Japanese do a nice job with their marathons in that vein, they have a rolling odometer on whomever is on the screen to go along with the clock and they highlight the major splits and compare them to previous splits. I don't understand the announcing, but I'd imagine they do or at least could go further by comparing those splits to the CR, NR, WR, WC/OG qualifiers, etc. Plus they typically have multiple cameras on the course to cover not just the leaders but the chase packs. That's what makes football so tv-friendly, the changes in scenery dictated by the action. They have the game action and then multiple camera angles. If you switch between different packs of runners at the front of the races then you get more of a changing scenery effect than if you're just showing the runners from head-on for miles and miles.

granted that it's simple to figure out what's happening, unlike baseball or football for the uninitiated, but what I mean is that explanation of tactics and articulation of just how fast they are going (which is not very evident on tv, particularly in the distance running, which is covered typically with angles that foreshorten the distances) would be useful to the lay audience. If they use moving cameras on an inner or outer track, as in some track meets, that really gives you a sense for the fact that they are flying, but otherwise, the explanation would impress the audience that has no clue how gifted the runners are.

Which is really going to wow an audience that has seen athletes who run 4.2 40's and cars going 200+ mph. Let the battle of the race tell its own story.

I'm chiming in a little late on this one, but will go ahead. Personally, I like Larry Rawson and what he brings to the sport and the TV coverage. That's not to say that I don't cringe once in awhile at some of his comments. Many of those who are so negative about him have no idea what it is like to try and cover races on TV or radio. We would all make some inane comments if we were in his position. For those who complain about the lack of TV coverage of track, they should realize that, in order to get more coverage, it needs to appeal to the "average" spectator. I think Larry does a more than adequate job of trying to appeal to the masses and the "uneducated" spectator. If you need to put up with comments you'd rather not hear in order to see the races on TV, you should be thankful for people like Larry. As an elite athlete, Larry Rawson was always very good to me. He went to the time and trouble to find out what was going on "behind the scenes" and appreciate the efforts of the competitors. Then he had to try to bring this to a TV audience. It's not an easy job, and it's easy to criticize.

It's a lot easier for those who are competent.

3200guy wrote:

However, Larry seemed like a really nice guy who was just trying to explain things that didn't need explaining to track fans but were helpful to the casual sports fan.

We met him while he was just walking the streets, in Boston, prior to the 2006 race. He was down to earth and had time for our questions. I didn't feel cheated when he provided his commentary during races.

While I think Larry is noble to try and educate the casual track fan, I also think he has always been off-base in this idea.

I don't think that there are ANY casual track fans. I think that's a myth Larry made up.

Let's face it. If you're sitting down watching a 1500, you already know something about the sport. Otherwise, you would find it boring and switch channels. Someone who is looking for a football game will never stop and watch track on his way through the channels.

But now that Larry is gone, can we get rid of everyone else too? I'd like them to bring in those British commentators that I always hear online who actually know something about the sport.

Are you lanced ? Those English are the worst announcers. They don't know shit.

We're never going to be satisfied. That's a given, but it would help if the announcer did it "professionally." If that is what their survival depended on. It can't just be a hobby or something you do once in awhile. It has to be your job and be one that you are passionate about. You have to know and understand the sport and know and understand the competitors. You then research the race, the course, the conditions, detailed factors which may affect the outcome of the race, etc etc etc. That's what we never get. And we really can't demand that either, it's not a big money sport.

Someone with a broader experience in the sport, not someone who's been a lifetime media member. Rawson was out of touch because he lacked recent on-the-ground experience. Eder is clearly the same way. These long-time media members can get stuck in their own world view and never really have their ideas challenged. It's the type of mentality that gets lampooned with Jackie Harvey in The Onion.

Whatever retard was talking about numbers and how not many people in the population would understand running because not many do it, how many people play football? A hell of a lot less than those who run. You can watch a broadcast and not know much about a sport and be drawn in by the enthusiasm and knowledge of a broadcaster. Rawson never did that, I'd usually rather just mute it because at the end of an exciting race he'd make some stupid comment or announce that it was the wrong person.

If I'm watching a basketball game, it does no good and would make me want to change channels to hear:

"Well to understand what these guys are doing, go down to your local park, tack up a hoop 10 feet, get a ball and then try to jump and push the ball through with your hands"

I agree that the British announcers are absolutely terrible. I don't know where this myth of their greatness got started.