I will ask these questions again, as way too many people are blindly defending peripheral and/or mainstream points. Can anyone answer the following questions?
1. Who was on the panel to make this decision to call it "The Bowerman Award" ?
2. Who appointed these people to this decision-making panel?
3. Whose ideas was it to create this award anyway? (and do not say "the coaches' association"--someone had the idea and started pitching it around)
4. What level of transparency existed during this process of creating, naming, and establishing this award? In other words, what is the explanation for LetsRun folks NOT knowing any details of this?
Until these questions are answered, the critical thinker will see this award as highly suspect. Indeed, this is just another way Nike and Oregon are slowly bringing more and more chips to their corner of the table, pushing out other colleges and shoe companies like Wal-Mart.
This is no different than their recent monopoly of hosting the Oly Games, NCAA's, and USATF's. It wasn't like this before Vin and the Nike cash came along.
And look--I've been to Eugene numerous times. Yes, they run great meets. But...there is a reason one country doesn't host the Olympics every four years. However, Eugene hosts now thanks to American capitalism, where the Oregon Nike dollar wins out.
Except this year. New Mexico wins. Yay! But conveniently, this is the least important year--no WC, no Olympics, so...this was the best year Nike could make a pass and discourage any anti-trust laws from surfacing...
To repeat myself: there is a reason why the Olympics are hosted by a different country every year. It's about equity...not capitalism.