Let's make track even more unpopular: Florida will now be announcing HS jump marks in meters - not feet and inches

Graham or gram? wrote:

The only people in the US fluent in metric is drug dealers.

And engineers, scientists, doctors...

Jasmin tea wrote:

Thanks for keeping our sport in the 18th Century.

Just because you are used to one system it doesn't mean it's the best system there is.

So you think that a system where you have 12 inches to a foot, 36 inches to a yard, is more adequate than one using the decimal system where things are much easier and straightforward to calculate?

4 yards, 7 feet and 1/3 of an inch. Divide that by 5.

Now try the same using the metric system.

Look. Sports have to pander to their audiences. Insisting on using measurements that your audiences doesn't understand is not going to do any good. The average american couldn't tell you if 3.65 or 4.35 or 5.85 meters is terrible long jump or a good long jump. They sure as hell can tell you if 12 feet 15 feet or 20 feet is a good long jump. They can relate to it and have an idea of how long it is. Few Americans have an idea how long 3 or 5 or 28 meters is.

There is a reason Hockey changed their rules to get rid of ties. Why football changed their rules to emphasize passing (and by extension scoring). Why NASCAR doesn't cut down on the number of racers to making racing safer. Because it they pander to their audiences.

It is the same reason that the NCAA requires that results and announcers have both metric and imperial. To assist the audience.

OP is Dwight Stones. Retire, you useless old fart.

Everyone who actually gives a snot about HJ watches Diamond League and knows that the 2.2x's are getting there, the 2.3x's are the endgame and the 2.4x's the record chase.

If you are not used to metric, you are not into HJ and have no right to an opinion. If you have trouble figuring out how high your kid jumped, too bad. Your kid will have no trouble at all. Kids learn fast.

Niche of a niche...... wrote:

All of the great technology we have and we can't post the distance in both metric and imperial?

That's just idiotic.

Remember last year when I made NUMEROUS posts about how very few people understood metric? Who knows how high a 1.73m high jump is? Why don't they just announce all the meets in French? We've been teaching French in our schools longer than we have been teaching the metrics.

call 'em both wrote:

When I officiate NCAA meets, I always make it a point to call out the metric (required) and then flip the tape and call the imperial. I think it's especially important if the crowd is seated within earshot of my calls. A shot putter will immediately know 18.29 is a helluva throw but to the crowd it means nothing. They hear "60 feet" and they know it was huge.

Haha I love Americans.

Sometimes watching you lot is like looking at a gorilla in a glass enclosure, trying to workout a puzzle game where the different shaped blocks go through different shaped holes.

Who knows what 1.73m is? Nobody I guess. Haha

[quote]Niche of a niche...... wrote:

All of the great technology we have and we can't post the distance in both metric and imperial?

That's just idiotic.

Who knows how high a 1.73m high jump is?

[quote]call 'em both wrote:

I do. The rest of the world does.

doody wrote:

[quote]Niche of a niche...... wrote:

All of the great technology we have and we can't post the distance in both metric and imperial?

That's just idiotic.

Who knows how high a 1.73m high jump is?

[quote]call 'em both wrote:

I do. The rest of the world does.

Yes, you do and the rest of the world does. But almost no Americans do (other than lots of posters on this thread.) As I pointed out before, a real effort was initiated when Carter was President to convert all interstate highway signage to metric. It was assumed then that people would learn and adjust. I thought - and hoped - they would since I agree that it is foolish for us not to do so. But they didn't. I still say this will just marginalize our sport further. So far no one has countered my point that TV sportscasters and newspaper sportswriters will not learn metrics just so they can cover Track and Field. They will just ignore it even more than they do now. Is that what you want?

so not the 5000 meter or the 3200 meter or the 1500 meter or the 800 meter.. wtf

18m in feets-ish wrote:

This little simple method gets me as close as I need to convert. Times 3 then add 10% of that number for a reasonable guesstimate.

I just noticed that conversion is almost the same as the number of miles in a 5k. Interesting coincidence.

Economic psychologist wrote:

Are you serious Letsrun??? All measurements for track should be meters and cm. Its absurd watching olympic shot put or Lj and NbC is telling me results in feet.

Heres an analogy you might make: Should NFL europe have field measurements in meters??? That was a great 10m field goal!

No such thing as 10m field goal inNFL.

Dingler wrote:

Graham or gram? wrote:

The only people in the US fluent in metric is drug dealers.

And engineers, scientists, doctors...

As an engineer, I can confirm we do most stuff in imperial. My mechanic goes nuts when we get a part in and he has to get the metric tool set.

Doctors in US weight people in lbs and oz, measure people in ft and in. measure people in dF. The do use the semi-metric system with Calories for food energy and mmHg for blood pressure. Go to Europe and they use kg, m, dC, and kJ.

At least we can still get our two liter pops. Thanks Reagan!

Sara Palin wrote:

Dingler wrote:

And engineers, scientists, doctors...

As an engineer, I can confirm we do most stuff in imperial. My mechanic goes nuts when we get a part in and he has to get the metric tool set.

Doctors in US weight people in lbs and oz, measure people in ft and in. measure people in dF. The do use the semi-metric system with Calories for food energy and mmHg for blood pressure. Go to Europe and they use kg, m, dC, and kJ.

At least we can still get our two liter pops. Thanks Reagan!

Depends on what you are doing with engineering. I'm in med devices and if you are working on an old product that started in the 70's or 80's it will likely use English measurements but anything that is from the last decade is done in metric.

Doctors might weigh and measure people in imperial units but that is just to tell the patient. BMI calculations are done from metric, x-ray or CT scan measurements are done in mm, all drugs are prescribed in metric.

Sara Palin wrote:

As an engineer, I can confirm we do most stuff in imperial. My mechanic goes nuts when we get a part in and he has to get the metric tool set.

What kind of stuff are you doing? Any engineer doing complex heat transfer, mass transfer, fluid flow, etc. calculations will absolutely want to do those in metric.

Part dimensions, yeah typically those are in imperial.

This isn't going to affect the popularity of field events in Florida, which currently sits at absolute zero. I live in Florida, go to a lot of high school track meets, and spend most of my free time following track.... and even I don't watch the jumps.

The only people affected by this change are the parents of the athletes, who are really the only ones following these events. Anyone else who follows the sport is already familiar with metric measurements.

Raysism wrote:

This isn't going to affect the popularity of field events in Florida, which currently sits at absolute zero. I live in Florida, go to a lot of high school track meets, and spend most of my free time following track.... and even I don't watch the jumps.

The only people affected by this change are the parents of the athletes, who are really the only ones following these events. Anyone else who follows the sport is already familiar with metric measurements.

So you are fine with interest in field events being at absolute zero? And want to be sure it stays there by adopting this policy? I, too, attend track meets but pay little attention to field events. But that is largely because spectators rarely know what is happening. Only big Invites have signs showing heights of jumps. No meets of which I am aware have ongoing status of events with leaders' performances or with the result of the latest jump or throw. I believe fans would pay far more attention if they knew what was going on. And the athletes deserve it. This policy won't help in that regard.

+10

You're conflating two totally unrelated things: the announcing/production of the event, and the units of measurement. I totally agree with you on the first of these; fans usually have no idea where the event stands, and there's very little enthusiasm from the meet director towards the event. But the units have nothing to do with this. To wit:

-- Fans don't even understand the significance of imperial measurements. I was at a middle school meet where an 8th grader long jumped 22 feet, and when I told this to one of our parents (a very experienced and knowledgeable runner), he just said, "oh that's nice". I could've said 12 feet and he'd be impressed.

-- I could announce a long jump contest in parsecs, and if I did it well enough, the fans would stay interested.

This is a point I have been making for years, not only in Let's Run, but in newspapers around the country.

We have never been metric in America, and we never will be. The metric system is not better than the imperial system...it's just another way of saying the same thing.

Field events, in particular the throws, are suffering now. Using the metric system will not help them become more popular. This is a Captain Insano move!!!

Popularity of our sport should come over conforming to some standard.

Graham or gram? wrote:

I was just mentioning the other day how nutritionists tell you now many grams of such per lb you should have in your diet. I doubt most older people know what they are talking about or would look up the conversion. It's like speaking another language and makes their advice useless. The only people in the US fluent in metric is drug dealers.

Um, wut? The nutrition information on the packaging reports measurements in grams. If I know that I need X grams of protein, I don't need to convert anything. I don't even have to know what a gram is in order to comply with a dietitian's advice.

If someone told me that I needed to consume Y ounces of protein, though, then I would need to convert units.

This will not make track & field more popular in America. Will it help the rest of the world catch us down the line?