Wariner is way more successful than Meb. That is not even a fair comparison.
Meb's silver medal was 8 years ago. He also got dropped by Boston due to his insane demands.
The problem lies with him and his brother, not Shoe companies.
Wariner is way more successful than Meb. That is not even a fair comparison.
Meb's silver medal was 8 years ago. He also got dropped by Boston due to his insane demands.
The problem lies with him and his brother, not Shoe companies.
ps Learn to use the quote function. Your posts are a mess.
Lol, Hall is a 2:04 runner, Meb ran 2:08 something. Worlds apart.
the smartest letsrunner wrote:
Jeff Wigand wrote:Whose fault is it that Ryan Hall gets more attention than Meb?
NOW we're getting somewhere. I'm glad you asked this.
- Both have won a trials marathon.
- Since trials in 2007, Hall has NEVER WON ANOTHER MARATHON. You know that, right?
- Hall has time-trialled well in London (although 2:06:anything means fairly little on the world stage right now) and ran a massively aided time in Boston last year.
- Meb has won NYCM, which is close to Boston or greater in terms of domestic and global prestige.
- Meb has an Olympic silver, which is basically the currency of recognition for track athletes in the lay population (non-runners and recreational runners).
Back to your (very interesting) question: whose fault is that Hall gets more attention? Let's see: Asics was willing to sponsor Hall in 2005, the year he won NCAAs in, what 13:2x? He was impressive then, and since has done some amazing things, certainly had some down times, though. But his sponsor has stuck with him through the highs and lows that are INEVITABLE IN LONG-DISTANCE RUNNING. This in spite of the fact that his non-aided marathon and half-marathon PRS are now 4 and 5 years old.
Nike dropped Meb when he was actually running BETTER than his NYCM win - he basically tied his PR in Boston, then broke it the next year at NYCM, all to get dropped. (Your mumbling about his "age" or "injury trouble" ignore the simple fact that he is clearly still improving.)
If Nike is unable to market a runner with an Olympic medal and an NYCM win, who is still running PRs, that is pretty bad for a marketing department.
So, whose fault do you think it is? Meb's, for winning races and setting PRs at 36? I would really like to know your answer to this question. Clown.
Argument fallacy. Ending a post with an insult does not make you correct.
Notevenclose wrote:
Lol, Hall is a 2:04 runner, Meb ran 2:08 something. Worlds apart.
Meb has yet to run under 2:09, though he's gotten close on a handful of occasions.
Meb is without question the more accomplished runner at this point in their respective careers. It's hard to argue with a silver medal and a NYC win. But Meb's older, and Hall has the greater upside from this point forward.
People can disparage Halls "aided" 2:04 all they want, but you're forgetting his half marathon American record. No American, not even him, has come close to that mark since then. If Meb runs 59-something in New York next month, I'll be pretty surprised.
Whether Meb is a great runner (he obviously is) or whether Hall or Meb is better is beside the point. It's all just a matter Meb wanting more than Nike was willing to pay.
In this case, no one knows what Meb asked for or what Nike offered him, so how can anyone say that Nike offered too little or Meb asked for too much? However, it's not fair to knock Nike for not being willing to pay Meb anything he asked for however unreasonable.
I assume everyone would agree that if Meb wanted Nike to pay him $50 million a year, no one would argue that that would be a good business decision for Nike. There's no way that Nike could get $50 million in value from Meb. What about $5 million? Very doubtful. What about $1 million? Again, doubtful. $500,000? $400,000? $300,000? $200,000? $100,000?
My point is that there's some amount above which it made no sense for Nike to pay to Meb. Apparently, Nike thought that Meb's demands (or his brother's demands, which is apparently how it works), were beyond the point where it made sense to pay Meb that much. It's no different from buying a car or a house, or going to your boss and demanding a raise, or any other business transaction - in any deal, there's a dollar amount that's just too high to make business sense.
However, if Meb's brother shopped Meb around for 8 months to adidas, Asics, NB, etc. and no one else thought he was worth as much as he wanted from Nike either, that's a sign that it was Meb (or his brother) who was asking for more than he was worth.
Now as things have turned out, Meb has done better than any one would have predicted at his age, so good for him. Skechers probably got a bargain, as things turned out, but I don't think any one would have predicted that Meb would be PRing and winning the trials at age 37. I hope Meb had some big performance bonuses included in his contract with Skechers.
Nike with its own corporate greed issues doesn't even feel the pain of not having Meb on their team, however Meb can keep sticking it to them by winning big races.
It's clear that Nike made a mistake.
To the person who thinks he can't speak or how he took classes at UCLA. Let me tell you, Meb is very intelligent. Much more so than Ritz. Ritz is a whiner and although I love to see him run well his personality does not shine. Did you not read about Mebs NYAC sponsorship? They love him. Meb's brothers and sisters are doctors, lawyers and MBAs. Most people in CA can't get into the good CA schools. I could not question his academic or athletic achievements until you top them.