Larry,
I appreciate your candor and your input to this in general. Who cares that he served his country and was in the investment business? Nobody cares if he was president or the Queen of Sheba or a surgeon or a janitor. It has no bearing on what he did in the announcer's booth. You seem to be implying that since he was a soldier and then a successful business person that he needs to be respected as an announcer. Maybe I am wrong? But this is like saying I have to respect Carol Lewis and her ability in the booth because Carl is her brother and she used to be good at the long jump. I don't.
I have been watching track since 1978 when I was in elementary school and I remember Rawson doing commentary even way back then back then mainly on indoor meets (he did outdoors too). They were usually on at very odd hours ... like 12:40 AM and the shows were usually just 30-60 minutes for a meet like the Sunkist Meet or Millrose. They were packed with commercials also. I didn't "abhor" the hum int stories ... it was just that they ate up a bunch of time and then they would show ONLY 15-45 seconds of a great 2M or 5k. I realize this was not LR's fault at all. But if you say that without LR, there would be very little TnF on TV at all, well ... he must have had some say on whether they show the Men's 3000m or whether we hear more about this female hurdler's relationship with God.
I also questioned why they could not ever show a full 2 hours of an indoor or outdoor meet if they were going to show it at 1:00 AM anyway on tape? They usually had competitive bass fishing or a Monster Truck festival on before and after, and the show would be usually :30, and preempted if the game before that went long.
I guess it all boils down to money. Now that I think about it maybe those 1 AM and 2 AM meets I saw were shown 3 hours earlier on the west coast? Not sure.
I am sure that I love the sport, and I do thank Larry for any part he played in putting track on the air, that has been great. I still didn't like his style though. And that does not make me ignorant.