You'd be right, but tons of these guys do DO track. Football is a fall sport, and most of the most athletic football players compete in track in the spring. Check the wikipedia of nearly all of the guy speed demons, or athletic freaks. People are acting like football is a year-round sport and we don't see the best athletes like Tyreek Hill, Jalen Ramsey etc. compete in track which is just false. Christian Coleman WAS a football player, and so was Grant Holloway. They were good football players too who could've played in college, but faced much longer odds to earn an NFL contract, which by the way is a longshot for anyone but four-star recruits and up. And up until recently it was pretty much NFL or bust.
Ayn_Ran wrote:
I do believe that sports like football and basketball recruit away a large portion of talented athletes who would be successful in the professional ranks of track and field, however I think some discernment between the events is important talking about the issue with any specificity. As has been mentioned by previous posts, Christian Coleman is not the same type athlete as Matthew Centrowitz, just as LeBron James is not the same as Rafael Nadal.
Ultimately, I think it comes down to determining which athletic variables are central to success in the big 3 sports, and how many of the athletes who excel at those variables are being pulled into different arenas at developmental ages (lets say 12-18 YO). For example, a young athlete who exhibits excellence at explosive movements, who could potentially become a great long jumper/hurdler/sprinter, is very likely to be attracted to a more lucrative sport (even if the athlete doesn't eventually make the professional ranks, the immediate benefits of being on the HS football team like popularity, excitement, or possible scholarship offers would all contribute to the term "lucrative") at an age when sprint skill would ideally be developed. So, the pool of great sprinters, jumpers, and hurdlers is certainly being weakened.
That said, I am not convinced that this phenomenon is occurring across the board in Track and Field. It seems unlikely that such a large portion of the pool of potentially great distance runners are being lured into big sports, mostly because there is such little cross over between the primary athletic variables that determine endurance success, and success in the big 3 sports. The low body fat, long legs, and, most importantly, aerobic power that contribute to success in distance running simply don't offer an advantage in any other sport, other than maybe soccer (which is not a big 3 sport in the US), and I don't believe that the United States would be that much better in the 5000m if football were to become banned. The sprints/jumps/hurdles would, on the other hand, likely see a complete transformation, and it would be questionable if Christian Coleman and Noah Lyles would even have professional contracts if the entire NFL had been seriously pushed into track and field at a developmental age.
I will admit it is interesting that, despite the diluted pool of talent, the US still finds most of its international success in the sprints discipline. Nevertheless, I would still attribute this success to the incredible excess of explosive athletes born in the States, rather than it being any sort of reflection of Track and Field's ability to recruit top national talent.