The USATF is not a professional organization.

"Hey everybody, we landed on the moon!"

Why do you need the standards to be posted 4 months in advance? At the end of the day, the accepted entries are a descending order list. Go out, run fast, look at the standards when they are posted.

I should add - I don't disagree with you, USATF is bullshit. The CEO gets paid more than what they put back into running. And, they really only care about sprinters.

Yeah that's how it works with the playoffs in other professional sports. People just play the regular season, have no idea how many teams will make the playoffs, how they advance, etc. That seems about right.

The "decending order" list that you refer to goes about as far in each event as whatever Nike athlete that they want into the meet. Kind of like the "decending order" list that was used to get Adam Goucher into the 10,000m at the 2008 Olympic Trials.

How about they just post the freakin' standards and make it black and white. None of this "A" and "B" b.s. you might be in, you might not. Good luck making travel plans. Just set a single standard per event and a qualifying period and leave it at that.

Gosh forbid we have some clarity and transparency with this sport.

Other team sports have a fixed number of participants. No correlation.

Descending order is what it should be. What they should publish are not time standards, but how deep they will go. If 50 people go sub 3:50 in the mile, then the standard should drop until there's a X number of semi's at nationals.

Set the time standard at 24th best time in the last 9 months three months out. Plenty of time to make travel plans.

There's a lot wrong with USATF but frankly this isn't a top 10 issue. You don't need to make travel plans to the the exciting venues they have nationals at more than 4 months (or three months) out anyway. They aren't the trials.

Where is polevaultpower to the defense? Sad, sad, sad.

USA Swimming has 2011 Nationals and 2012 Olympic Trials standards right on the website right now:

http://www.usaswimming.org/_Rainbow/Documents/bed6792a-f1d9-48e3-a1d5-4f6e5c2dfa6e/11_sum_nats.pdf

USATF exists under the Amateur Sports Act to provide the teams that compete in the Olympic and Pan American Games, period. They need to get rid of bullshit volunteer operations like Masters and Long Distance Running and get back to the real reason they exist.

Under Ultra wrote:

Where is polevaultpower to the defense? Sad, sad, sad.

Polevaultpower agrees that standards should be posted way in advance, but also agrees that at the end of the day it usually ends up coming down to descending order list and/or the whims of John Chaplin (on the men's side), so published standards don't matter _that_ much in the end. They also don't vary _that_ much from year to year.

Buy your plane tickets on Southwest Airlines. If you don't qualify or get injured you can cancel and you have a year from when you booked to use the money you spent on another ticket. Hotels are easy to cancel. Rental cars are east to cancel.

Life is full of uncertainty. Elite athletes learn how to deal with it.

Do we deserve better from USATF? Yes, absolutely. But should athletes let this affect them in any way? NO.

I lost all hope when the best candidate out there informed me he received an email saying he was no longer in the running. Knowing Steve Miller was part of the process, I lost all respect for him that day.

My hope is that the US Congress intervene when the new CEO is named (if it is a bad choice like Hightower, Drummond, Willie Banks, etc. i.e. ghetto squad) because if the rumors are true that a few congress-types are eyeing the possibility of getting the whole thing disbanded and starting anew.