TRACK AND FIELD: why is it still losing popularity, look in the mirror

Popularity is not the number once concern for many, myself included.

In regards to your second point in particular, I would prefer to keep our sport pure and clean by punishing and exposing drug cheats as much as possible rather than concealing these cheaters just to get the average person to watch our sport.

You're very right. Sad thing about track is that its kinda like soccer, great to participate in, sucks to watch. I love both track and soccer when I did them, but they just aren't great spectator sports unless you really love and understand them. Soccer is just AWFUL to watch unless you have a real routing interest.

You do know that the World Cup Final is the most watched sporting event in the world, don't you?

I don't care if the highest rated event ever seen on television was a chihuahua humping a doorknob, doesn't mean its entertaining.

i live in santa ana ca and t&f is huge in so cal. mt sac is the largest relays in the world, held in april, using three tracks simlutaneously, with more entrants than penn, drake, texas, stanford, and kansas combined. i can't begin to tell you how huge youth, hs, college, masters, ultra, xc & rr's are around here. i don't know where you live but there's no problem getting people to run with or finding an all comers or 5k around here in so cal.

Let's look at MLB (baseball) Jose Canesco, Mark McGuire, and Barry Bonds all figured as drug cheats yet less than 3 yrs after the allegation each bounce back in popularity shortly after being labeled drug cheats. You don't think the NFL has less drug cheats than MLB; however, you don't see the NFL screaming every chance they get who cheating and if they did popularity would skydive.

I'm sure the MLB and NFL commisions are punishing the cheats yet the certainly do it with less public awareness than track and field. YOU CAN CERTAINLY PUNISH OFFENDERS without tainting the sport ever time you indentify a drug cheat. Our governing bodies seem to pride themselves in fingering out drug cheats even if it mean killing the sport of track and field.

I start by posting threads that state something like this: "WHO CARES: first white man runs under 10.00 in the 100m.". Then I go on a rant about how bad even the real fans are. Come on VIPAM! Normally you threads are decent. Lately your posting guilt-laden tripe that makes you look bitter. Come down from the high horse and enjoy the performances again.

Until now I never realized the broadcasting of our drug cheats could have on the sport, while other sports with more drugs cheats don't broadly publicize its cheats and continue to gain popularity. That in itself means there is something to be said about too much publicity when finding drugs cheats. I agree administer the usually punishment and there's no need to plaster it all for the world to see and taint our legitimate athletes because the general public gets more knowledge of our drug cheats than those who are clean and are great athletes.

vipam, you have a point that the emphasis on drug cheats in cycling and track is harmful to their popularity, whereas baseball skated by with no attention whatsoever to this until around 2003 and football gets a pass because of its quiet, automatic policy. However, cheating was more problematic for the NFL rookie of the year (defensive) this year, because it affected an award, and in track, an individual sport with time and performance measurements, the cheating directly affects all the performance and time standards. If the women's 3k top marks are all ridiculous times run by cheating Chinese and Eastern European women doped to the gills, it is pretty hard to get excited about a clean woman running 8:41 or even 8:34 as this past week.

The best way to make track and field more popular - Hold the biggest meets in the world where the best athletes are from!

Hold distance only meets (including distance relays) in Nairobi, Adis Abiba, Morroco; and hold sprint only meets in Kingston, NYC, LA, Dakar.

Only hard core track and field fans enjoy wathcing all events from Javelin to the 5km to the 110H, so save the complete meets for Eugene, Zurich and Brussels.

The fan support at the world XC in Mombassa was crazy from all reports, sure the IAAF would be wise to heavily invest in better stadiums in kenya and Ethiopa to tap into those markets.

say what ? wrote:

i live in santa ana ca and t&f is huge in so cal. mt sac is the largest relays in the world, held in april, using three tracks simlutaneously, with more entrants than penn, drake, texas, stanford, and kansas combined. i can't begin to tell you how huge youth, hs, college, masters, ultra, xc & rr's are around here. i don't know where you live but there's no problem getting people to run with or finding an all comers or 5k around here in so cal.

Here's one of the more frustrating problems that I've noticed.

Yes, it is true that track in socal is VERY big. HOWEVER, it is NOT the case for the professionals! All those other categories get attendance, media, and fans, but when it comes to PRO meets or athletes, they're less well known than the top high school stars!

How can we bridge this disconnect between massive fandom in youth/junior/HS and the lack of any sort of acknowledgement or promotion of our Professional track athletes?

I think it stems from the fact that local media does not cover any track events or professional athletes. There are tons of gold medalists in the sprints, and sub-4 milers in southern california (I chose those two because the public can understand those accomplishments the most), but when our heroes and professionals aren't even known among highschool participants, that shows a real large gap in reaching out. Yes, the absolute studs like Allyson Felix get coverage and are probably somewhat known, but that's pretty much it!

Probably heresy to say this, but sitting around all day watching a track meet is pretty tedious. Much more so when the announcing is poor, as it usually is. Too many participants and events and heats for anyone but the most hardcore fan to be familiar with, and often the times/results of races are not immediately available. A good announcer can add a lot by announcing the leading runners, meet and state records, etc, and, in the longer races, actually giving some commentary.

Here's my suggestion: start featuring single headliner track events in the context of other major sporting events. Hold an attempt at the mile world or US record at the Super Bowl or whatever. A lot of people will watch a track event in the context of watching something like olympics, but are not interested in seeing a whole meet.

That is actually a great idea. Most people appreciate something when they here "This 18 year old kid ran 3:53 for the mile" and would have appreciated seeing Webb's HS mile record run. So showing that one race on its own tied into some other event would have been a great idea. People appreciate Usain Bolt, but no one except a die hard track fan is going to watch the 100 women's hurdles, the shotput, hammer throw, long jump(a terrible event for TV, especially when they show 75% fouls, same thing with pole vault, ESPN wouldn't show two hours of nothing but baseball errors or incomplete Peyton Manning passes) just to see him run. But, put it where the public can't miss it, and they would appreciate it, but not a whole meet. Cut out the fat, put only the best most interesting stuff forward, and get peoples attention.

First of all, track meets are definitely NOT tedious, and we don't need to start becoming some sort of halftime show for the masses.

If you know any elite athletes, they LOVE to watch track meets. Why? Because they know the competition, in a variety of events. They know the matchups, they know the gist of the season everybody has been having, etc. I have yet to meet a pro track athlete that thought watching a track meet is "tedious". The reason for that, is simply knowledge of the sport and the players in it.

I guarantee that the NFL, NBA, and MLB would ALL suffer from ratings, if their stars were marketed how OUR stars are marketed.

With that being said, the meets should be no longer than 3 hours. Anything more than that, and there's just no way we can have people stick around. However, to say that the sport is boring or that there's too many events is just misinformed.

If our announcers stopped being so terrible, and took a page out of British announcers' books (or hell, take the whole thing!) then I think we'd see a much bigger interest in the sport.

I'm in Europe right now for the summer, and I happened to catch the Gateshead meet on Television. The commentary was crisp, clear, and precise. The announcers informed people of the athletes running and why to look out for certain people, and then called the race. It wasn't just the leaders, but moves people made in the back, and also where their own UK athletes were. On top of that, there were NO sentimental stories, or human interest pieces that moved the focus away from COMPETITION and towards this sort of "aww, isn't that nice" type feeling that the US tries to give, and still fails miserably.

All in all, if we just look at the format of how European track meets are broadcasted, and adopt their system while adding our own unique twists (with the help of a hollywood sports marketing director), I think those simple steps ALONE would improve the sport by LEAPS and BOUNDS.

lol wrote:

Popularity is not the number once concern for many, myself included.

I'm with you. I follow the sports that I enjoy. Other people follow the sports that they enjoy. I'm not going to try to get other people to like track any more than I want other people to try to get me to pay attention to the NBA.

OP: Too bad you can't type in Green colored font.

Seems you are a little jealous of malmo for starting the Solinsky and Franek threads and getting some of your attention.

I like George's threads better anyway. They are substantiated with fact and statistics that are meaninful whereas you are more like soap box street corner mail order ordained reverend telling us things that are obvious while you get worked up by your own self-riteous indignant fever.

Please get back on your meds.

This is not good wrote:

Seems you are a little jealous of malmo for starting the Solinsky and Franek threads and getting some of your attention.

I have no idea what I have to do with VIPAM's post?

Yes, it is true that track in socal is VERY big. HOWEVER, it is NOT the case for the professionals! All those other categories get attendance, media, and fans, but when it comes to PRO meets or athletes, they\'re less well known than the top high school stars!

say what ? So Cal is where 1/3rd of USA T&F\'s WC medalists & Olympic medalists prepped. Many great preps went on to have great NCAA and int\'l careers: Ryan Hall, Brianna Glenn, Lashnina, Deena, Meb, John Smith, Joanna, Fleshman, Acosta, Flo Jo, Blood, Billy Nelson, Torrence, Shaunte, Matusak, Carmelita, Johnny Gray, Don Babbitt, Ramona,... we have had thousands of T&F greats come out of So Cal high schools.

Why does track need to be more popular? I enjoy the meets just fine as they are, I am not sure why it needs to be more popular.