running is boring only when you have no personal stake in the outcome and when we have zero truly elite marathoners on the world stage, at least among the men, we have no skin in the game.
running is boring only when you have no personal stake in the outcome and when we have zero truly elite marathoners on the world stage, at least among the men, we have no skin in the game.
nvnvjajmskskskss wrote:
The difference in track is that no one in running is running for a team
the issue is that running is not a team sport
(and please don't mention high school cross country, please)
A few things:
I don't think Pat meant that he truly did not know who won the race. I think he was speaking rhetorically to demonstrate his point that no one cares who wins anymore. I think he probably knows who won.
I think you might be taking his comment "There used to be a slew of running writers who could contextualize those times..." as an insult. You are not the Mainstream Media. You do not write for average american sports fans. I have no doubts that he would agree that you do a lot of contextualizing. You don't have a reason to be defensive here.
Just my thoughts.
Nutella1 wrote:
nvnvjajmskskskss wrote:The difference in track is that no one in running is running for a team
the issue is that running is not a team sport
(and please don't mention high school cross country, please)
Do I get to mention High School and College track?
On that thought though, I really wish they set up track in the Olympics and Worlds as a team event as well as individual similar to what they do for gymnastics.
Do you even watch the mlb bro? wrote:
Mike trout, Chris Davis, Clayton kershaw, Zach greinke, Andrew mccutchen...the list goes on
Great players, sure. But none resonate beyond their fan base. If I stopped 20 people on the street and asked them who Chris Davis is, all I'd get is a blank stare.
[quote]Derderian wrote:
We all know about the NCAA XC nationals and how we are interested in which teams win. We love the team scores at checkpoints. That's what road races need. They need a team score and with that the possibility of a sudden change in a team's fate like an interception or bases loaded home run. If you need five to score and one drops out....whoa! where is the sixth runner? /quote]
I think teams is a great idea, but I think there could be an issue between sponsors. Does an Adidas sponsored race really want people talking about if team Brooks will beat team Nike?
I think the sponsors's best interest is to keep the focus on the "event" rather than the race or the sport.
Side note, does anyone think road racing could benefit from gamification? Like fantasy sports or march madness brackets?
RationalActor wrote:
Track does a crap job of educating people, even in OIympic years. The cover the human interest stories, but when was the last time you saw an infographic piece on 5k pacing strategies?
I think this nails it on the head. Whoever does the coverage for curling during the Olympics has to be the gold standard for educating "non-believers," because I always wind up watching, and somehow caring about the outcome and respecting the technique involved.
The Olympic Marathon Trials are in a couple of weeks, and I have yet to see NBC tease it during any of their programming (While FOX has been promoting the crap out of Daytona). An American is going to win all of the things during that race, but I know my "marathoner" (read: hobby jogger) friends could care less about tuning in and it's just kind of mystifying...until you realize that most people just really don't understand basic race strategy and a little chart porn from the graphics department could go a long way.
Patrick was in a pioneering time in the sport in which he was tasked to build competitive fields for the Hancock sponsorship into the Boston marathon.
Getting athletes to compete in Boston meant upping the ante and paying $ to get them there and once on the ground give them the best in support.
He was competing against other events but mainly London and if you didn't pay no play, that simple.
He was smart to bring along other developing athletes a part of a super elites training entourage and expose other track and road stars to the opportunity of running a Boston marathon. This paid dividends later on.
Federations started to use Boston as a trial for world champs and Olympic games teams selection process.
The loss of racing and of sport that Patrick speaks about is accurate in that marathons have become mass participation happenings that raises funds for charity. We have never seen more participants,we have experiencing though fewer real runners.
Im not so sure more prize money or rabbits will solve the ills of the sport today, it is what it is. The participants and charity theme will run its course and they will move onto something else with time. Purity of sport will come back and maybe at that time we can professionalize our approach and gain visibility beyond the click to this site or the back pages of the sport section of the paper .
look, if we had a single native born man or woman who could win Boston or NY or the Olympics, he or she would be quite famous and the marathon would get much more interest from the public.
But we don't.
Meb and Ryan Hall did some good work, but Meb has marketing liabilities for being born elsewhere, with a strong accent and not the best looking guy in the world. Ryan hall was a star and got some attention but he never won anything.
If shalane or kara actually won a race or two they and the marathon would get a lot of coverage.
but no one is going to invest time and money when 99% chance the winner is going to be another interchangable east african...the ugly fact is that it just doesn't matter who wins these races anymore.
We (as a sport) need to bring back the long indoor races. Do marathons around the track were people can see what a 70 second lap looks like 105.5 times.
notracist? wrote:
aquafina wrote:Complete and total BS. Try to unhinge your PC brainwashed mind for a second and thing about any sport any where, where the fans cheer for a team or individual that is not from their home country, region, city etc.
...
The complete and total domination by the East Africans has been terrible for the sport. They do not make for good tv, interviews, pre or post race press conferences. They are not from here
hmmmm
hmmm what?? Notice how you deleted the part where I said sports fans in general DO NOT PULL FOR PEOPLE OR TEAMS THAT ARE NOT IN THEIR CITY, STATE, OR REGION.
Just try and think, dont be a PC Bro.
The real reason wrote:
The major reason for the rapid decline in the popularity of elite distance running among potential fans in the past 40 years, is due to one thing and one thing only....racism.
No it doesn't.
What a stupid comment.
smd wrote:
Summary: Old guy thinks things were better back in the day.
Sheila, is that you?
reader of the forums 2.0 wrote:
The real reason wrote:The major reason for the rapid decline in the popularity of elite distance running among potential fans in the past 40 years, is due to one thing and one thing only....racism.
No it doesn't.
What a stupid comment.
Isn't rather.
And there are many reasons why the sport isn't as popular as it used to be. Racism ain't one of 'em.
Sit back for a moment and think to yourself: Why is golf a popular spectator sport and running isn't? I'm not a golfer, There's no way you can convince me that golf is inherently more interesting as a spectator sport than running, yet hundreds of people can make very, very good livings from golf but not road or track racing. Why?
First and foremost, golf is packaged better. There's a natural narrative over the course of the season through the majors and the top second-tier events. If you're on a course, you can follow a golfer or you can watch how different golfers approach the same hole. On TV, cameras are placed with great care and the commentators are generally pretty good at providing play-by-play and color. Especially now with computer graphics, you can follow what's going on and stay engaged with the competition despite cutting from one competitor to another.
Second, golf has been engineered to an aesthetically pleasing environment that looks good especially with all those graphics.
Third, yes, race matters. Top golfers predominantly look like the people watching them, and that's an audience with a lot of disposable income. While people appreciate the extraordinary athleticism of black football and basketball players, the audience cheers for them because of the colors on their jerseys, not the color of their skin. But a white audience is going to feel way more comfortable watching a bunch of white athletes on a golf course than watching a bunch of black athletes there or anywhere else. Look at the crap Serena Williams gets in another rich person's sport.
But running can be packaged and produced. The action is at least as compelling as a round of golf. You can have courses in gorgeous locales. You have a built-in audience of middle and upper class participants who can appreciate the competition.
So if someone invested the resources to produce a race that they invested in producing a golf tournament, you could have an exciting and appealing spectacle. It would be tricky, and maybe very difficult, to do it with a predominantly East African field, but is certainly possible. But if there were a circuit designed for American athletes over the course of a spring and summer with several culminating moments of interest, broadcast with the same production values as major golf (even European track can be pretty close to that), and marketed appropriately, then there could be something.
But the four major sports aren't the model. Golf and tennis come close.
automaticslim wrote:
Third, yes, race matters. Top golfers predominantly look like the people watching them, and that's an audience with a lot of disposable income. While people appreciate the extraordinary athleticism of black football and basketball players, the audience cheers for them because of the colors on their jerseys, not the color of their skin. But a white audience is going to feel way more comfortable watching a bunch of white athletes on a golf course than watching a bunch of black athletes there or anywhere else. Look at the crap Serena Williams gets in another rich person's sport.
Race matters not. Golf reached the height of its popularity when a young Tiger Woods was dominating the sport, and did not suffer when Vijay Singh overtook him as #1. Baseball did not suffer when Barry Bonds broke a white man's home run record and the NBA and NFL have reached unprecedented levels of popularity with their many black stars.
As long as the majority of competitors are relatable, English-speaking humans, then American sports fans do NOT care about their skin color.
Precious Roy wrote:
Only one US runner has won a major marathon in the past 20 years.
Three, actually.
If you're not a minority, then your opinion matters not. Richard Williams would disagree with you;
http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/story?id=99759&page=1Also, there's many, many more people participating in golf than there are competitive running. There's also no "hobby jogger let's just finish" mentality in golf. It requires some golf-specific skill and not much athletic ability just to finish a round in a reasonable period of time.