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.