Rick Allen is the one person on earth who's testing how bad someone can be at their job and still be employed.
Rick Allen is the one person on earth who's testing how bad someone can be at their job and still be employed.
Shouldn't there be some multi millionaire/billionaire out there who enjoys track and would fund a new league?
Make a league that’s based around cities, not nationalities.
Have a draft.
Each team wears a different singlet for their city, with the names of the athletes on their backs a number.
Have seasons like other team sports, with 8 or 12 or 16 dual meets per team.
Each meet can have different events, but the top 3 or 5 placers in each event score point for their team during each meet and the team with more points wins the meet.
Have elimination rounds and a playoff, followed by a championship.
Do it this way and people will stop worrying about all of the nationality crap and just follow the team with their favorite athletes. It’ll also spread out the ridiculous depth of talent from east Africa in the distance events and America and Jamaica in the sprints and field events...which will make people more likely to root for athletes from another country.
Also, allow betting.
Also, every athlete doesn’t have to participate in every meet...allowing for more recovery time and more jobs for track and field athletes who aren’t at the very top. This makes it more of a team effort and less of an individual sport. Also allows for athletes to participate in non-league events.
Occasional voice wrote:
Rick Allen is the one person on earth who's testing how bad someone can be at their job and still be employed.
Do you know he was a walk-on that became a 3x All-American in the decathlon at the University of Nebraska? 7707 points
Real name is Rick Schwieger
The sport needs records and was at its peak ( within the last 60 years) when we had regular world records.
Drug testing has eventually stopped this and we now have to cheer performances that would not have made finals 30 years ago.
Testing has killed the sport and this was so predictable.
This does not mean that a drugged sport deserves not to die but cleaned up it is dead.
runn wrote:
Sand Dunes wrote:
How to make track and field great again:
1. Put a emphasis on betting, like horse racing.
2. Stop drug testing, we need freaks in our sport.
3. More mainstream limelight, you almost never hear about track and field on ESPN.
Market the athletes as house hold names- Hobby Joggers should know all the top runners just like duffers know all the top golfers.
It's all about marketing the athletes..
Who will pay for this "marketing"?
A lot of great ideas here. I do think that the athletes themselves need to actually market themselves and race more at a local level.
For example, the Hansons group trains here in Orlando for several weeks in the winter, but there were no appearances at any local events. No one knew they were here unless you followed them on instagram and put 2 and 2 together. We need a grassroots movement and it starts with the local athletes and events.
Also USATF.tv, NBC, and FloTrack need to figure out how to bring T&F cheaper to those willing to pay for it. When you sum up these three services, it totals over $300 a year. NBC Gold is the cheapest and I think the best bang for your buck (you can also watch on an app and use chromecast, etc.). It's frustrating to not be able to watch our national championships.
Just throwing this out there: dual meets are exciting. There's a lot of strategy and part of that strategy is that athletes who have to race weekly can't race all out or double every week and still be at their best when it matters most. That adds an element of interest to otherwise lopsided match-ups.
Another random thought but baseball games can be really long: 3+ hours. I actually really enjoy when they show edited versions of the game the next day where the action is compressed to 2 hours. With intelligent editing and tricks like picture in picture, a multiday track meet could be compressed into two hours or so of compelling TV.
@runn wrote:
runn wrote:
Market the athletes as house hold names- Hobby Joggers should know all the top runners just like duffers know all the top golfers.
It's all about marketing the athletes..
Who will pay for this "marketing"?
Mexico.
NASCAR lost me when they created the playoff system. The champion used to be whoever was best over the course of an entire season. Now, they have wiped out the law of averages (which is rather essential in a sport where crashes that are not your fault, blown motors, etc. happen). A NASCAR championship doesn't have the same value as it did pre-2014. There is a much greater element of randomness now and the model is just incongruous with the nature of the sport. In short, track & field should stick to excellence and not sacrifice it for the sake of entertainment. Gimmicks might work for the short term but true fans can easily see through them over time.
Another huge problem with TRACK and FEILD is the endless flow of super fast E Africans, who are briefly here then gone forever. You have to be a huge follower of the sport to have any idea who is who, then somehow have excitement with no real basis.
I went to an E-Sport competition. I had no idea who anyone was, who was on what team, and what they were actually doing in the game. This is exactly how T&F appears to the everyday viewer. It's simply an oddity for weird people. At least when Battle of the Network Stars was on, I knew who everyone was. If the NFL had 75 percent new players every three weeks, would you really care?
Run meets like a dual meet, one event after the next. Why have 15 min deadtime between events. Boring.
there is no major races on tv anymore. in the 80's we had a weekly show about road racing on tv. track was on all the time. track anf field and road racing missed the boat whwn sports tv took off. you would think that cross country running was made for tv.
johncocktosten wrote:
If the government ever wants to get serious about climate change, the first thing they should do is ban NASCAR and all other forms of auto racing.
Yes because the environmental effects of racing sports is the problem. You're probably the person who walks outside on a hot day and says "it's hot today because of global warming ".
Racing sports are a drop in the bucket compared to manufacturing, construction, transportation, and transit of goods.
There are a dozen or so ocean freighters that create more pollution on earth than every car put together. These companies electrifying cars and trucks would serve us all better by electrifying ocean freighters. That said, the future of NASCAR or "stock car" racing will be electric cars such as the Tesla, with contests involving drifting and cornering/handling, not just left turns.
The Fast and Furious franchise was a clue NASCAR missed.
Things such as the Tesla Racing League and Electric GT Championships are along this line, and much like the early days of NASCAR. They're drawing eyes, and may have enough attention to survive in this all-sports, all-the-time world.
Running-wise, consider the weekly television show we had in the 80s (someone already mentioned), about the road racing scene. It's ridiculous that in many ways, we were more connected and informed 30 years ago. And today, why can I see motocross live on ESPN Saturday nights in the winter months, and watch all sorts of niche sports on Redbull TV LIVE and on-demand, yet I have to pay outrageous fees to see low-powered track meets that were free on broadcast decades ago? You've heard of cyclocross, that niche sport? Trek pays so that I can watch live World Cup streams from Europe. Track struggles to have an audience in the US. No wonder.
intentionally bad wrote:
NASCAR is lame because they intentionally limit the performance of the cars. If you started a track league where runners had to weight at least 185 lbs and the spikes were intentionally designed to give athletes unnaturally poor control, then track would be analogous to NASCAR. So, just don't do all that and we son't go down the same road as NASCAR.
A better comparison would be to not allow athletes to use anything that would enhance performance (PEDs).
So, exactly the same.
You're an idiot.
Eliminate TF and CC scholarships for foreigners to US DI programs to allow development of US stars.
The largest market, the USA, only becomes interested and opens the wallets when gold medals are won by Americans.
We are training the Olympic teams of our competitors - the NCAA TF championships looks like just another stop on the Diamond League Circuit.
Frank Shorter, Jim Ryun, Bill Rodgers, Bob Hayes, Bob Beamon, Al Sal, Jackie Joyner, Mary Decker and on and on were household names in the US because they had the opportunity to develop and then won big events.
And, do something about Title IX which has led to the closure of countless mens' CC and TF programs.
It's hard to develop the next Dave Wottle when his college program no longer exists.