How to Revitalize Track and Field

Great idea, but the logistics of the situation seem tricky. How would you get enough "elite" athletes so that people would want to go out and watch them?

HCRW wrote:

How would you get enough "elite" athletes so that people would want to go out and watch them?

I think it could def work. If more athletes coming out of college had teams to run for, more would stay in the sport. It'd take some time to build, but there'd be exponentially more opportunities for athletes who do well in college but not well enough to get a big enough sponsorship to pay the bills and let the focus on their training. And there's plenty of athletes in that exact situation. Especially throwers/ vaulters/ jumpers/ sprinters.

If we take a look at the success of the NFL, NBA, and the MLB, we can see that they draw fans by both their team and individual components. Fans watch games to see how their favorite team fairs, but more, maybe not as diehard, fans are attracted by the superstars of these respective sports.

Track and field most definitely has the individual stars, but the team aspect is not there. There needs to be more emphasis in the American distance running scene on this idea of a team. USATF needs to implement a more resounding and concrete running circuit that captures America's soft-spot for individuals coming together to strive as a team, and work together.

If you could make So Cal the permanent site for T&F events, it would improve the visibility of our sport. Imagine gang wars, shootings, stabbings before meets would get T&F noticed a lot more. Look at that pissy little UCLA/USC matchup of losers last weekend. The fights and arrests before the game got onto all the national news networks. No one would have known that these two football lightweights were even playing were it not for the ghetto shootings and stabbings that took place at the stadium before the game.

problem 1) how do you assign athletes to teams? is it sponsors? Is it region? Is it former college, or former college region? former high school state/region?

problem 2) how do you get athletes to comply with these teams? Are you going to convince Ritz to leave Oregon for michigan where he went to high school, or colorado where he went to college in order to train? or is it just for competition they would take up teams?

problem 3) how many track races are you doing to constitute a season? is it part usatf cc, part indoor and part outdoor track championships? In this case, you are working into the fabric of already established events, i don't know how much you'd change the event itself, other than what jersey people are wearing to race.

how I would enjoy this, could you create a dual meet/tri meet type system? I know professionals don't like racing much, especially for little money, but how much energy/training disruption does it take for your top 20 milers in the country to run 3:10/50.0 for a 400 mile run and be exciting? It would have the feel of a high school district meet, with athletes doubling and racing for strategy, rather than just time trialing.

Another question-does NASCAR have some kind of team championship set up? how does that work?

I think this could work if you assigned teams by sponsors-this would be a way of playing sponsors off one another to sign as many athletes as possible. yes, NIKE would crush most of the time, but so do the Yankees, as previously pointed out. You'd just have to limit how many athletes per event count, ie top 2 per sponsor per event contribute to team score.

In the sponsor case, your region/city affiliation would coincide with your training group. Northwest US, in Oregon, is Nike, Salazar and Schumaker. Southwest, in Flagstaff, is Adidas with McMillan. Midwest, in Michigan, is Brooks with Hansons. Maybe Reebok forms Enclave-part two in the east?

Now what would you do about non-athletic sponsors, ie Nissan or Strands?

BTW-you allow athletes to put more than one logo on their jersey. USATF is crippling a potential increase in sponsorship if more than one company could get their name out through an athlete during races.

The average sports fan wants to watch a more exciting sport\ than T&F. They like to sit in the stands, eat popcorn and hot dogs, and be happy fat bods in the sun. T&F is too dull. T&F is not a team sport and will never be no matter how hard people try to make in into a team sport. There are few non-involved T&F fans, instead 99% of T&F ticket sales are T&F people, i.e. to T&F coaches, T&F parents, T&F officials, ex-T&F athletes, and that will never change. Our sport is self-spectating sport.

First, I was at USA Outdoors this year @ Drake. That was awesome. Yes, it was mostly track people, but I had friends not competing in any events who drove 4+ hours from Minnesota just to sit in the sun all day and watch.

Second, the sport is dull because we don't have any personal connection. Many americans don't watch European soccer because they have no personal connection to the teams, but flip on the World Cup largely to watch Americans, and also because of the media hype.

Third, having professional teams could spur the sport to the point where even if T&F people were the only ones who watched, there would be a ton of T&F people because it was such a cool sport. Plus, like I said above, even T&F people don't watch any event but there own often because they have no reason too. You completely ignore the fact that people probably aren't inherently interested in watching five guys try to get a ball in a hoop, or a dead pig across a goal line, but watch because they see athletes doing cool things and they have pride in where they live.

I was thinking it could look something like current major professional sports. Rich people make private teams. In football/ basketball etc., Nike still sponsors individual athletes on other private teams (Lebron and Brees are both Nike sponsored athletes, but play for their own teams). Athletes would be signed to a team, which could be based on a draft process or something else.

Or they could be sponsored by Gang drug money, which would immediately incorporate the shock factor mentioned above, and bring a new consumer demographic into the T+F market.

ok, so we are limited to our own numbers. how do we best utilize them?

think about how exciting solinski's run at stanford the 10k american record was.

what if we organized a race at every distance to attempt an american record every year?

you spread the races out, for instance, you wouldn't do 5k and 10k in the same meet, but you might do 110mHurdles and 400m and long jump and mile and 10k in the same meet. The next race, you do 200 and 400mHurdles and 800 and 5k.

lets attempt to break american records on american soil, in front of american fans. this would generate more excitement than everyone waking up and reading at 6am that ritz just broke 13minutes somewhere in europe, finishing behind 13 africans.

why not line up an american red team and american blue team to go after the 4xmile record? if they agree to pace each other.

Simple, kick the white people out.

This is a fantastic idea, I say do it

USATF 2010 Des Moines was typical. Not crowded at all. Virtually 100% self-Spectating fans. NCAA 2010 Eugene had the same clique of people that make the Xc, Indoor, Outdoor circuit every year. I'm one of the ex-athletes ex-coach parents from a T&F family. There's 1,000 of people like me, but not 100,000.

Eugene is interesting since it has meth heads, hippies and bikers in the stands who know nothing about the our sport. They say the ushers at Hayward are all ex-con meth addicts but I think that's a joke. The local Eugene CoC tries to inflate 20K tickets into a major success which is shameful since it exaggerates T&F attendance and shows how desperate T&F people are for attention.

At the dozens of meets I go to every year, I don't see the critical mass necessary to launch a venture of pro meets. I wish there were that many interested. But they sure aren't showing up to the meets that what we have today.

I'm going to type this ramble very quickly so it won't read all that cleanly, but hopefully a few points are worth noting.

I've contemplated a variant of what you propose here in the past and since it's always coming up in my mind, I might as well dump it out here in print and let the posters tear it up, or perhaps it's not such a bad idea after all. Nothing ventured, nothing gained...

I like this concept of regional loyalty for an all-star cross country meet (and this can be carried over to track meets too, selected top few in track events although the depth is more uneven in the USATF club system for track). So how to accomplish that when a bunch of unrecognizeably named clubs go at it? (Some are some aren't, I know).

Have a number of regional USATF cross country (and track, but that may be harder given depth issues) meets designed to help select all star teams. This would quaify the top 7-10 open and masters men and women from each USATF regional association championship, to compete in a super club USATF national cross country championship.

This would also pave the way for events such as the Western, Eastern, Midwest, Southern regional meets, etc. These USATF Regional XC championships would be held to determine the top runners from each USATF region to represent that region at Super Nationals or whatever the heck it'd be called.

So from our association, the very strong Pacific Association, you might have 2-3 Transports runners, 2-3 Aggies, 1-2 West Valley TC, Chico State TC, Strawberry Canyon TC, etc. With the women you'd have 2-3 New Balance Silicon Valley, Impala Racing, Asics Aggies, Tamalpa, WVTC, Strawberries, etc.

Metro New York would have NYAC, Central Park New Balance, Westchester, etc. Boston would have Greater Boston TC, BAA, etc. The club scenes are strong all over, so this would showcase the strength of local clubs but the wrinkle is it would allow them to compete as part of a greater team together instead of being rivals in their region.

The one rub is not all regions are created equally. Some have depth and strong runners, while others lack much of a presence. So as noted perhaps a performance calculus could be applied to combine a few of these regions into a stronger entity. This could be a little similar to the number of seats in Congress allotted to relative state populations ratio applied in political electoral college voting scenarios.

It would also (ostensibly) foster more localized regional identification and interest. Anyone with a passing local interest can get behind Boston or NorCal, vs. a randomly named club. It may also be a little easier to find some sort of corporate sponsor for a region's teams vs. a randomly named club. They would (ostensibly) get behind sponsorship of the all-star runners from an all-encompassing geographically identifiable region rather than Joe's Road Runners or what have you.

Also a small note, perhaps combine a few of the smaller associations using a population calculus. This is just an idea which would need to be hashed out and organized.

I'll show up to what you propose, but the general public are interested in seeing the races with world class athletes. Pre is packed and is doing well. Home Depot failed since it was held at a stadium under perpetual construction. Home Depot only lasted as long as it did since there are hundreds of Oly and IAAF athletes that went to local high school a few miles down the freeways. NYC GP is held on a wreaking trash dump. Millrose is 3/4 HS filler races and has-been filler races now. Brutus Hamilton has nobody in the stands. Card Invite has 1,000 locals. Mt Sac distance carnival has 1,000. USA Hi Perf had 100 fans. I hate to sound like a party-pooper but there's no fans except for a few guys like me and my wife.

You just noted that the Pre Classic is doing well, then you tell us that the sport has no fans. Fact is Eugene can sell out for Pre every year, and they can put 6,000 fannies into the seats for dual collegiate meets, and sell out 8 days of Oly Trials (with high ticket prices). If it can be done consistently in Eugene, it can be done in Fayetteville, Des Moines, and elsewhere.

That noted, I do think it is a losing cause at certain places like So Cal because those people are not interested in paying $40 to watch a track meet, when they can watch major league football, basketball and baseball. The poster excused LA because of a crap venue (Home Depot), but what is so great about Hayward Field? It isn't a large site, it isn't a new building...it just has fans of the sport who feel connected to the athletes. This can happen elsewhere, but Track and Field will never be a major spectator sport (other than for Oly Trials) outside a limited number of venues. We should at least be supporting the development of the sport in those sites, and not making up crap that can do nothing but hurt the sport.

compression Rx socks rock em

Our sport of T&F in the USA is not about one small town or one big city, it's about the entire USA. So success in one isolated, obscure small town doesn't help the rest of the nation. I want you to widen your passion to encompass the entire United States of America, o.k. ?

A Self-Spectating Sport wrote:

I'll show up to what you propose, but the general public are interested in seeing the races with world class athletes. Pre is packed and is doing well. Home Depot failed since it was held at a stadium under perpetual construction. Home Depot only lasted as long as it did since there are hundreds of Oly and IAAF athletes that went to local high school a few miles down the freeways. NYC GP is held on a wreaking trash dump. Millrose is 3/4 HS filler races and has-been filler races now. Brutus Hamilton has nobody in the stands. Card Invite has 1,000 locals. Mt Sac distance carnival has 1,000. USA Hi Perf had 100 fans. I hate to sound like a party-pooper but there's no fans except for a few guys like me and my wife.

It seems like you're pretty interested in keeping the sport small, you fail to recognize that the reason that people aren't watching the sport is because they find no REASON to, unless they are specifically fans of the sport. The same reason that I never watch a game between The Bills and The Texans, unless someone is going to throw for 400 yards or break some kind of record, but I watch the Vikings because they're my team. This idea isn't just about getting a bunch of athletes a system to compete, they already can compete, its giving fans a reason to care.

First of all, So Cal doesn't have a football team to watch. NorCal has two.

Second, there are a ton of runners in So Cal who probably would love to get behind a team from So Cal and cheer them on and watch them. You guys are just talking about why people don't care about track now. But when elite athlts have a chnce to go somewhere after college and people can get behind that becaue of regnl connectivity, that changes the sport.

How many highschool kids in the northwest love rocking an Oregon TC shirt w/ the pinetree?

Consider this:

1. When you were in high school, how many students went to the football game against your big rival school?

2. When you were in high school, how many students went to the track duel meet against the big rival school?

Allegiance isn't the issue.