Question for wejo: Why do you care if "our sport" is a complete joke?

ltfd wrote:

Why would we even want professional running to become popular?

for starters, so somebody would actually care about televising events like the marathon trials.

running is so strange to me. i played other sports growing up & it was a given that i could talk to my teammates about a big upcoming game or a player who was doing amazing things. but when i got into running in college, i could never talk to my XC/track teammates about current happenings in the world of competitive running. they didn't know who the best guys were, they didn't follow the big meets, etc. it was so foreign to me that people participating in a sport did not even have a clue about the happenings at the top level of their sport. so frustrating...if the guys who participate in the sport can't even comprehend & appreciate amazing things that the elite athletes are doing, what is the general public going to think? guys i play pick-up basketball with now can easily engage in a conversation with me about college hoops or the upcoming NBA season, but if i tell john & jane doe hobby jogger that i'm a runner, they are more concerned with asking me "how many marathons have you ran?" or "do you ever run barefoot?" than talking about NCAA's or who's going to make the olympic team.

in other words, i feel that the things that Bekele, Mutai, Rudisha, etc. do athletically are on par with what Rodgers, Durant, Pujols, etc. do in there respective sports. but beacuse our sport gets limited coverage, those accomplishments are never recognized or even able to be appreciated & comprehended by the general public who follows sports. This in turn leads to less coverage & and less caring by the general public. And this sucks for true fans who follow the sport & want to see more of it on TV, covered on ESPN, etc.

i don't want to be part of a "niche" that the general public thinks is all about running marathons, wearing vibrams, being a skinny weakling, wearing a fuel belt for a 5 miler, etc. i want out sport to be recognized for what it really is, and not what appears on the cover of Runner's World or Outdoor Life or whatever.

I would say that 90% of my college team followed elite and professional running. Not sure what kind of guys you went to school with.

I would say 88% of my college team had no clue about professional running.Not sure what kind of guys you went to school with.

I stay in contact with many of my ex-HS runners as they run in college and it seems that most of them know more about elite/pro runners in college.

One thing- I remember reading, a long time ago, that running gets decent enough ratings but it's more expensive to televise. You need more announcers, more cameras and that's a track meet. A road race is tougher.

It seems cross-country can lend itself to decent coverage- watch the NXN or FL coverage.

Maybe if runners would unite and stop the complaining (as you pointed out) things would change.

Maybe if runners would actually compete against each other things would change. Rupp, Solinsky, Meb, Hall, Ritz, race each other!