Kraft Family Gamer wrote:
Rojo, do you think a NASCAR driver races when he is sick? Doing so risks his life and the racing field around him.
Football is not track. Football is not NASCAR, NASCAR is not track.
In football there are 10 other players in any offensive play to take the load off of Brady. He can be off and still be a leader. Do you see the difference?
Lol Nascar is a joke though. It requires zero athletic ability and it totally irrelevant to this discussion.
I think it is a bit of a disappointment for Centro to scratch out though. Mo Farah still ran at this meet 4 years ago when he was sick and got outkicked. Kiprop made the trip to run this race at 40% fitness and bombed out, but hey he still actually came and ran it. This kind of does make me think that's he's afraid of his competition a bit. Man up dude, stop being a p***y and do your job.
Centro is exactly the perfect cover boy the sport either. Off colored hand gestures after wins etc. He isn't exactly Adonis either. Just saying.
MurderDubs wrote:
Why does it matter wrote:Why do we even care if our sport is popular? I like the sport and that is enough for me. I don't care if other people don't like it, why should that matter to me? It's dumb how obsessed runners are with getting people to like their sport. Our sport is not popular and it probably never will be, move on, enjoy running for what it is.
Well, if it loses enough popularity it will cease to exist and then you will have nothing left to appreciate in solitude. There's that.
Track is like marching band. As long as people want to do it, and parents come out to watch, it will continue to exist.
rojo wrote:
Of course I see the difference. I'm tired of being asked every 3 months - how can we better promote our sport? Sure we can improve the marketing but marketing didn't make the NFL or soccer popular.
And yet this site was consistently negative towards the event that has easily promoted professional running the most since Rio (the Sub-2 project).
Agree or not with the way it was set up, that moved the needle so much more for the average US non-track fan that any DL meet could.
To me, it's far more disappointing to see Kiprop show up and run poorly than for Centro to scratch due to illness. It's not like Centro's never going to race again this season.
rojo wrote:
Think about it. Do you think Tom Brady skips a regular season game because he's not feeling well 100%? Of course not.
(Now in the NBA, where there are a ton of games like in track, people are skipping games and that's why few pay attention to the regular season. But I think a DL meet is the equivalent of an NFL regular season game).
And I"m not hating on Centro. There really is no reason to run if you are sick because you will get smoked. It's actually probably a really smart thing to do as you ensure you don't get into a whole and lose a month.
I think we largely need to accept that there are inherent aspects about our sport that make it less popular than others. There is little randomness in track. No fumbles, bad bounces, etc. And there is no financial reason to care about anything but the championships.
The only thing that truly matters are the championships but the "championships are everything" aspect of our sport is what makes USAs/Worlds/Olympics so special.
I understand what you are getting at but it's not why our sport is not popular. Face it, the general beer guzzling deficating public will never care. I'm hapy they don't.
huh???? wrote:
dsfsadfs wrote:Dude, how much money do you have to spend to see a top level track meet? How much does it cost you to fly to Eugene or Paris or whatever? Unless you live in Oregon it's got to be more than NFL tickets.
Huh???? Maybe rethink this example and try again.
I'll try again: The ticket to the event itself may be cheap, but the events are so rare that they're expensive and difficult to get to.
If I want to watch MLB, NFL, NHL, Tennis, Boxing, etc., I can afford to buy a ticket in my city or an easily accessible one, and I can watch top players play.
I think Tennis forms a great comparison.
Tennis is a mostly European sport, like running, but they have almost-mandatory tournaments (Masters 1000-level) in California, Florida, Cincinnati (3 out of 9 1000-level tournaments), and a grand slam in NYC (1 out of 4). Top ranked players (top 30) are required to play 8 out of 9 of the masters 1000-level tournament, plus other minor tournaments. If they skip one of those 8 tournaments they get a rankings penalty (and people care about those things). Some of the older players are exempt from 3.
The IAAF is trying to work on that kind of model. Winning the diamond trophy (acquiring the most points in your events in diamond league meets) gives you $50,000 prize money and a wild card entry to the IAAF WC.
I think that's a good start by the IAAF, but why not give out multiple wild card entries? Why not give a wild card to the top 5 or top 10 in each event (limit 2 per country, I'm fine with having 5 Kenyans in a race)? It would guarantee more racing by the top competitors (one preliminary round might be required). Throw in a bigger/deeper pot of prize money too.
At the same time you could have some more minor competitions contribute a smaller number of points.
Basically I'd want to encourage athletes to do SOME racing SOMEWHERE before the WCs or OGs.
I get that there are often appearance stipulations written into athletes' contracts, but the fans have no idea what those stipulations are. I have no idea if Centro dropping out of the Prefontaine 1500 or running slowly in the B-heat of the Payton Jordan 5k has a real effect on his salary. Is he making a real sacrifice to drop out of meets to stay healthy, or is he just partying too much and facing no real consequences? I have no idea.
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