Shameful: LSU, Texas A&M, Florida, Arkansas and Kentucky all skipping Penn/Drake this year to run at LSU

I agree with all of the comments about Penn. Your basically locked in a cage for a half hour before your race so you are running effectively cold. IMO one of the worst run "major" meets.

Don't know about getting it done in three hours but they will score it.

I think it's a smart move. Sucks for penn and drake.

There is a big push in the college Track and Field world to go back to more meets like the LSU Invite (fewer schools, shorter schedule than an all-day event, scoring) which will allow these meets to be finished in a limited time frame, and at the highest level of competition, get on TV. These huge, all-day events can be tough, disinterest some kids on people's rosters, and are not appealing for people attending. The return to scoring is great, as we've been having too many non-scoring meets. If you want your administration to treat you equally with the other sports, you have to act like the other sports. I'm sure that an AD who might not know the sport as well as he or she may know others, but is genuinely interested in your program, can't relate to an event that they just spent a few thousand on so the team can attend and then get told that there wasn't a score. Penn had its time, but it's not as appealing as it used to be.

The SEC Athletic Departments are copying the world leading technology of the PAC-12 Conference dreaming of the day when they can dump ESPN/FOX/NBC/CBS/ABC and keep 100% of TV revenues to themselves. The PAC-12 may soon divorce into the PAC-8 and Holywood Quad, consisting of USC, UCLA, Califonia, and Stanford

I'm sorry, but this sounds like something someone came up with ina business meeting. Penn and Drake are often (always?) on the same weekend. Why detract from these classics by not going? If the meet model you espouse is so great (and maybe it is, I'm not really arguing that) you have the entire rest of the year to do it that way.

Where you really lost me was saying that spectators do not enjoy these types of meets. I couldn't disagree more.

As for televising meets, I would say that any meet can be made palatable to a TV audience through editing. Many meets aren't shown live anyway, so why not broadcast it in an appealing format? No need to show false starts (if there's an empty lane just explain that there was a previous DQ). Nobody watches sports for the special interest stories, cut them out. Highlight the favorites at the line; there are even things called computers which can aid you in this process by showing who someone is using graphics. Finally, and they are getting somewhat better at this, but use a split screen. Instead of cutting away it's possible to show more than one event at once. It would also be nice to have a small on-screen ad for Tide detergent or something sponsoring a segment rather than cutting away from the race and coming back to a much later point.

quote]College Coach wrote:

There is a big push in the college Track and Field world to go back to more meets like the LSU Invite (fewer schools, shorter schedule than an all-day event, scoring) which will allow these meets to be finished in a limited time frame, and at the highest level of competition, get on TV. These huge, all-day events can be tough, disinterest some kids on people's rosters, and are not appealing for people attending. The return to scoring is great, as we've been having too many non-scoring meets. If you want your administration to treat you equally with the other sports, you have to act like the other sports. I'm sure that an AD who might not know the sport as well as he or she may know others, but is genuinely interested in your program, can't relate to an event that they just spent a few thousand on so the team can attend and then get told that there wasn't a score. Penn had its time, but it's not as appealing as it used to be.[/quote]