OK all things aside, Why the hell is Track and Field so UNPOPULAR?

Straight answers. wrote:

Trsef wrote:

As a participant sport, it is very popular.

^This^

Who cares how popular or not it is among the masses?

Agreed. When a guy says that he loves football, he probably means that he loves sitting on his butt and drinking beer while he watches other people play football. When a guy says that he loves running, he almost certainly means that he loves to get off of the couch, go outside, and engage in the act of running himself. I, for one, am perfectly fine with this.

Look at the range of events. If you're a fan of distance running but not of sprinting you're spending much of the meet sitting through events that you really don't care about. If you're a fan of sprinting but not of distance running you spend a half hour sitting through the men's 10,000, a bit more time than that sitting through the women's 10,000, another half hour or so spent on the combined men's and women's 5,000. If you're a field events fan much of what you want to see happens in a small area that may well be far from your seat. If you don't really care about women's events half the meet is spent watching something you don't care about.

Even if you're into every event, there always seem to be long stretches of time when you're waiting for the next event to start. If you're watching a distance event where athletes are not running in lanes and you either don't have great eyes or can't recognize all the competitors you can't really tell who is doing what as the events unfold.

And after all that, track is unlike every other sport I can think of except swimming where there is no single answer to the question, "Who won?" That's really what most people watch a sport to see whether it's a contest between two teams or a gold or tennins tournament.

TV coverage is awful. I wish they would drop the format of interviewing the winner after every event because it is mind-numbingly predictable: 1) thank god; 2) thank family, coaches and sponsors; 3) communicate 1 and 2 in the most boring possible way. Can you imagine an NFL or NBA game where a player is interviewed after every point scored? Ugh.

As someone else said context is everything. When watching T&F live at Hayward Field or on TV I wish there was an on-demand way (smart phone or tablet) to quickly retrieve current standings and athlete bios for events in progress. I would like to see odds on every athlete for winning or showing like horse racing.

On the subject of horse racing, perhaps there should be a XC series of meets held at horse tracks with betting and alcohol. Athletes qualify through local XC races at the beginning of a season, move on to participate in regional horse track races, and then the top 10 from each region participate in 3 National XC races at horse tracks in the quest for a triple crown and $1 million prize.

I think that is very difficult to watch a distance event and be entertained without having experienced racing on your skin and without having a pretty good knowledge of the sport. For someone that doesn't know the difference between 4:45 pace and 7:00 pace, or not know what time per lap means pushing or relaxing, it's boring as hell.

How do you get this knowledge to the non-runner? No idea.

Also, marathon spectators like the event, not the race. Also a VERY big percentage of the finishers don't know sh-t about who won.

Sprinting is more popular, but because of Bolt, but I think that Bolt-fans are not a sprinting fans. It's like saying that a J Bibier teenage fan is into music as much as he is into J Bibier, they love the pop star image, not necessarily music lovers. my 2 cents

My theory is it is unpopular because they make the 100m the premier glamour event. All the build up is for the 100m.

The 100m is really boring to watch. It's all setup with 10seconds of racing. No one really cares about the 100m either. How many discussions of 100m are there on these boards? Practically none.

They need to glamorize the longer events. If they can show a soccer game commercial free, they could show the 5000m commercial free.

3 words : Sit And Kick

Dwayne wrote:

3 words : Sit And Kick

They should do what cycling does for criteriums. Prize money for first at 1000m, first at 2000m, first at 3000m, first at 4000m. That would get rid of sick and kick in a hurry. With $1000 on the line at each marker, people would race the whole race.

chocolate bar to that poster.

theory. wrote:

If they can show a soccer game commercial free, they could show the 5000m commercial free.

I completely agree.

nbc sucks wrote:

theory. wrote:

If they can show a soccer game commercial free, they could show the 5000m commercial free.

I completely agree.

Bingo.

theory. wrote:

They should do what cycling does for criteriums. Prize money for first at 1000m, first at 2000m, first at 3000m, first at 4000m. That would get rid of sick and kick in a hurry. With $1000 on the line at each marker, people would race the whole race.

All supported by the massive popularity of cycling in the US.

When you go to a pro sporting event do you hope to see the woman's team out there every other play? If you know the players and sport woman's racing is great, but as a uninformed viewer your just watching a much slower version of the previous race.

Mike Honcho wrote:

Well first off look at the responses given from the first 4 or 5 individuals to this post. With douchebags posting like this, it's no wonder no one takes this sport seriously. I think it's the lack of sponsorship, the lack of promotion and the mental aptitude required to participate in this sport.

You can't blame USATF alone, but it's an entire different amount of reasons

I agree with your first point. Losers post carp and those same losers "promote" the sport.

Lack of tax subsidies. Sports such as football and baseball are popular because of tax subsidies.

What "things aside" ? You mean "apart from the reasons that track is unpopular, what are the reasons it's unpopular?"

webfoot wrote:

On the subject of horse racing, perhaps there should be a XC series of meets held at horse tracks with betting and alcohol.

Bingo.

Forget having lame 4-day snoozefest meets full of downtime and meaningless heats.

Let the top 8 qualify on time alone and have ONLY finals contested. One-day meet, three hours long. All action compressed into three hours. Every race a final. No pauses between races. As soon as 100 finishes, 10k gun goes off, etc. If dudes are still lying on track after pulling a hamming, the distance guys step over them.

Hold meet on Friday evening. Cheap tickets. 50 cent beers if you show up before first event, $1 after that. Betting on everything...winners, time over/unders, weather conditions, everything.

For the general person, it's hard to follow and understand over a dozen different disciplines. Football is just football, baseball is just baseball,ect... In one meet, the camera will switch to 400 hurdles, to shot put, to the 1500. It's very difficult to keep up with and understand the athletes and every event in a track meet. I think it can be very overwhelming for people.

No one 'knows' any of our athletes other than perhaps Usain and he is Jamaican. I go into every Winter Olympics knowing very little, but NBC (or whoever) makes sure I know as much about many of the athletes performing as possible. These human story vignettes they pummel us with, actually are effective. Next thing you know, I'm sucked in to watching some off the wall 'sport' I could care less about because I know one of them had lyme disease all last year & now is trying to come back (a la Donn Cabral) or whatever. Certainly not the only reason for lack of our sport's "unpopularity", but a big contributor. Growing up as a kid, I would read about Ryan, Decker, Liquoiri, (I believe I still have a Sports Illustrated with Dick Buerkle on the cover), Al Sal, etc…. all on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Again, just 1 cause of tracks demise. And while I'm at it, I am NOT a fan of turning meets into 3 ring circuses with 'novelty' events/races. Let's keep the 'gimmicks' to a minimum and start promoting the sport & it's elite athletes.

My name is irrelevant to a sport falling apart. If your trying to make a smart @$$ comeback, why even bother logging on this website. The site is called "Letsrun". Not "Letsbestupid"