Superfan Daily: Track Fans, Be Heard

When I was young, one of the books that made the biggest impression on me was Horton Hears A Who!. If you don’t know the Dr. Seuss classic, then as far as I’m concerned you weren’t educated as a child.

Horton, an elephant with acute hearing, notices a speck of dust talking to him. It’s actually a tiny planet populated by microscopic Whos. The other jungle animals ridicule Horton, imprison him, and plan to destroy the speck unless they can hear the Whos too. Being told this by Horton, every Who makes as much noise as he or she can, but fail to cross the threshold of hearing…until one young Who discovered not doing his part finally chips in and saves them all from death.

The lesson to take from it is that you never know which person doing their part can get us all over the hump and to where we want to be. As track fans, it’s high time we all made some noise.

The other day Ken Goe spoke for all of us when he wrote the following.

Stephanie Hightower, president/chair of the USATF, issued her state of the sport report yesterday...she restated the USATF mantra, "The athletes are why we are here

I think that mantra encapsulates why the USATF is failing the sport.

Nowhere in her report did Hightower talk about the fans. If track and field ever is going to regain its foothold in the U.S. sports scene, somebody is going to have to care about the people who buy tickets and tune into televised meets.

That isn't going to happen as long as the USATF thinks of itself as an insular organization existing primarily to cater to participants in the sport.

Small example:

The teleconference advancing the USA Cross Country Championships took place last Wednesday, which probably made sense to the athletes and meet organizers.

The problem was, Wednesday was college football signing day.

The USATF could not have picked a day to attempt to publicize one of its national championships that was more guaranteed to marginalize the coverage it would receive from mainstream media outlets.

If the USATF wants to reach beyond its captive audience -- the small, dedicated group of U.S. track and field fans and the websites that serve them -- it's going to have to do better than that.
...
At the moment, track and field doesn't register in this country. To become relevant beyond Hayward Field, the sport is going to have to reach outside of itself.

Until it cares as much about the fans as it does the athletes, it's going to continue to fade from public consciousness.

I suggest all of you e-mail the article to USATF leadership to make the point heard. Whether you think it will accomplish anything is beside the point. Don’t be the Who that shirks his responsibility!

Here is the text that I sent.

As a USATF member and a track fan, I'd like to make sure that you have seen the following article written by The Oregonian's Ken Goe.
http://www.oregonlive.com/trackandfield/index.ssf/2011/02/oregon_track_field_rundown_the.html
His comments express my feelings on the matter very well. I'd also like to add that USATF would be better served by broadcasting VISA Championship Series events live, or by saving the money and not broadcasting them at all.

Addresses are below. Even if you want to be nasty, please don’t be. Besides a link to Goe’s article and a plea for making fans a priority, you might also add that televised sports events must be live in order to be worth watching. USATF’s habit of tape-delaying coverage is not good for anyone.

Stephanie Hightower (President) president@usatf.org
Jack Wickens (Vice Chair) runjackw@gmail.com
Bob Hersh (IAAF Rep) bobhersh@hotmail.com
John Chaplin (Men’s T&F Chair) jpchaplin@hughes.net
Sue Humphrey (Women’s T&F Chair) humphreyhj@aol.com
Brian Brase (Director, Events and Broadcasting) brian.brase@usatf.org
Glenn Latimer (LDR Chair) glennlat@aol.com
Jim Estes (LDR Programs Manager) jim.estes@usatf.org

Sunday Evening Decathlete: Special Monday Edition

The weekly round of track-centric Monday morning quarterbacking comes a day late, as I was on vacation in Toronto for the weekend.

What did we learn this week?

USATF announced its CEO job description. This is actually an important part of the search for a new leader. You can read it in a USATF release. What you think of it tells a lot about what you think of USATF's board of directors.

It was written by the search firm hired by USATF, Bialla & Associates. Their services come at no small cost. If you are of the opinion that their well-into-six-figure price tag is merely "ripping off a hopelessly clueless 'amateur' sports organization", as one TFN message board observer put it, then you come down squarely on the side of pessimism. You believe that either this particular board of directors is a bunch of self-serving fools in over their head, or you believe the government-mandated structure of the organization itself makes it essentially incapable of doing much well, if anything.

There is another voice, though, one of cautious optimism. Track writer Larry Eder, for RunBlogRun:

The search firm, Bialla & Company, (www.bialla.com) is one of the heaviest hitters in the world of sports, technology and softwear search firms. They have recently done searches as diverse as Electronic Arts, True North (ad agency), Zoot.com (footwear company) and Avenue A Razorfish, one of Nike's ad agencies (digital). That USATF has hired a firm with such stature should also give you, kind reader, an understanding of the increased level of scrutiny that the search for the USATF CEO position has been under.

It is obvious that the current USATF board has increased their level of focus in this current search. That is to applauded. The current head hunter firm has already spoken to many in the industry, first to get an appreciation for the nature of the business, and secondly to get an appreciation for the concern that many in the industry have on who will lead USA Track & Field. They have heard several earfuls, I suspect. (Bialla & Company, as is their practice, would not comment on current searches or their culture.) Those are all good things, and give comfort to those who are concerned about who will lead our sport's federation.

However well meaning, in my humble opinion, the most recent search for the recently deposed CEO had undercurrents of pressure. It has to be said that the USOC had considerable interest in the most recent CEO of USATF. That does not mean that the USOC has explicit influence on the most recent candidate, but the USOC needs were known and considered in the process. General requirements were; someone entrepreneurial, but someone who was not of the track & field ilk, and someone who looked the part seem have been part of the zeitgeist.

Looking for someone who spoke his mind should not be translated as someone who is incapable of taking advice or estranging every group within the sport. Those are not qualities of a CEO who will last in this sport.

Eder has been around for a while and is no Pollyanna. If he feels that even some signs are positive, we should have reason for hope.

In general terms, the new CEO should really split the difference between the USOC preference of three years ago and the presumed Board of Directors preference of that moment: outsider (no ties to USATF) but insider (within the track & field world). Note that USATF, and its predecessor track division within the AAU, have had just three leaders in the last 40 years. Only one, Craig Masback, left things better at his departure than at his arrival--and he fits that description.

Meets searching for an audience are turning to team competition. Earlier in the week, Athletics Weekly editor Jason Henderson wrote that cross country is in crisis in the UK and most of northern Europe. At almost the same time, northern Europe's only truly relevant cross country meet, the Bupa Great Edinburgh Cross, announced a fantastic idea. They relegated the African runners, who most of the British public sees as nameless and interchangable, to a 4k race. The featured 8k race is now a team competition between the UK, the USA, and the European continent. The UK will have the services of its two best runners, Mo Farah and Chris Thompson. The USA will send two of its best in Dathan Ritzenhein and Galen Rupp. Europe will have nine-time Euro XC champ Sergey Lebid. It should be a bang-up race and will likely gain a great deal of attention in England and Scotland.

Just a few hours ago, the Millrose Games announced that it will have a USA versus Jamaica component in both the men's and women's 60 meter races. The only star yet announced is Veronica Campbell-Brown, but her presence alone will likely excite New York's large Jamaican-American community. If they come out in significant numbers, Millrose will have its biggest attendance in a generation.

The Laverne Jones-Ferrette situation became both more and less clear. The journeywoman sprinter raised some eyebrows during the 2010 indoor season. Never a Worlds or Olympics finalist, she lept to the top of the sprinting world. She recorded the fastest 60m time in eleven years, traded wins with Carmelita Jeter, and took silver at the World Indoor Championships behind Veronica Campbell-Brown. Such a huge and sudden improvement for a 28-year-old is unusual to say the least. Then, she inexplicably missed the entire outdoor season.

A month ago it was announced that she is pregnant, and that was why she missed the summer season. But this didn't seem to wash, unless she quit very early in her pregnancy. She was announced as an entry into multiple April relay meets, and then pulled out.

Now we got a bit more information. On February 16 she tested positive for clomiphene. What is that? It's present in some fertility drugs. It also blocks the effects of estrogen and can be used as a recovery drug towards the end of a steroid cycle. In any case, it is classified as a "specified substance" under WADA rules, and the IAAF's rules are flexible in terms of penalties for this kind of drug. Suspension can be anywhere from zero to two years. Jones-Ferrette got a six-month ban from April to October, but also was disqualified from all of her events after the positive test. So she loses her Worlds silver.

Did she pull one over on the IAAF? Maybe. Note that if you're using a drug for a legitimate reason, there are "theraputic use exemptions". At the very least, you should declare the medication when tested. Jones-Ferrette did not. You be the judge.

Track is getting into the big-money advertisments. Haile Gebrselassie just filmed a commercial for Johnnie Walker (picking up a nifty $100,000 for his trouble). You can see it here. Unfortunately, it probably won't be aired in the USA, as it is targeted towards Africa, Latin America and Europe. I've always thought we've lost out massively by not somehow tapping into beer as a sponsor.

High school meets are upping their game. The professional level of track and road running in the USA has had little in the way of new ideas lately. College track's regular season until recently was essentially unwatchable (with the exception of a handful of relay meets) but has done a lot to make itself more interesting. But the most innovative, competitive level of track meet promotion is at the high school level. For proof one need look no further than the cross country war being waged between Foot Locker Cross Country and Nike Cross Nationals.

Yesterday I was contacted by the director of a prominent high school post-season invitational in regards to ideas for taking it up a notch. I appreciate the gesture and hope I can offer up some good ideas. It really appears as though he takes track and field seriously as a spectator sport, which is the approach you absolutely must have to succeed in today's sports marketplace.

Just this week, Brooks announced a new national indoor invitational for the fastest high schoolers in the country. Called the PR Invitational, it will be held in late February at the University of Washington and will be live on Flotrack. And its promotional video is one of the most bizarre things I've seen in a while.


Track is everywhere. Just like Mojo Nixon says about Elvis.

My wife and I went to Toronto for the weekend to celebrate her 40th birthday. We did all the touristy things and had a great time. On Sunday we were searching for one last thing to see, and settled on Casa Loma. All the travel guides said it was a must-see, and it did not disappoint.

Casa Loma is a giant mansion built between 1911 and 1914 on a high hill overlooking downtown Toronto, and at the time it was the largest private residence in all of Canada. The man who had it built was one Sir Henry Pellatt, a prominent Toronto financier and soldier who, among other things, electrified the city. Owning it eventually left him penniless, and it is now a museum open to the public.

The house should really be called a castle, as that is what it was built to look like. From the inside, it is best described as the Boddy Mansion from the classic Clue board game come to life. It has a billiard room and a conservatory and all the other rooms in the game, a pipe organ, several suits of armor, secret passageways, and everything else you can imagine from prototypical country-house whodunits best ridiculed in Murder By Death. Touring it was thoroughly entertaining and informative, and I can only imagine the fun they have there at Halloween.

The third floor is rather plain in comparison to the rest, as it was the servants' quarters. These days it's set aside as space reservable for private functions, as well as a repository of historical artifacts relating to The Queen's Own Rifles, a still-existing military regiment in which Henry Pellatt played a major role.

Tucked away in display case in a quiet corner of one room are a few items belonging to Pellatt from his early military days. Most, like a saddle and a pommel, are related to horsemanship, so most observers would think this photo and two medals are related to racing of the four-legged kind.

(Forgive the quality; all I had available was my iPhone.)

Both the left and the right say Pellatt won championship mile races, and I immediately knew they could only be footraces. The clothing in which he is pictured was common running garb of the time, which is one clue. The other is the engraving on the 1879 medal: "N.A.A.A.A." That's the National Association of Amateur Athletes of America, the governing body for track and field in the USA from 1879 until being muscled out by the AAU in 1889. Pellatt, a Canadian, was able to win the US championship because virtually all 19th-century meets were open to any amateur. His time, 4:43.4, was fairly competitive for its time. You can see Pellatt listed at Track and Field News' archive of US champions (scroll waaay down). A recent biography of Pellatt says it was a world record, but don't be fooled -- the amateur record at the time stood at 4:24 1/2, the professional at 4:17 1/4.

Keep your eyes peeled. Track is everywhere and it is in everything.

What to make of all of it

Just a few hours ago on Twitter, Martin Bingisser wondered why the track community wasn't talking about Brooks Johnson's blog about Doug Logan.  In it, Johnson discussed the man with agent Mark Block and talked about arrogance, mistreatment of athletes, and the same Project 30 Task Force that still remains part of the discussion two years later. I said my response couldn't fit in the allotted 140 characters.

Before I get into this, I want to say two things. First off, I don't want to go into endless post-mortem on the Logan issue. If I ever bring it up again, it will be in regards to future occurrences. Secondly, I'm a track fan. I like watching track, analyzing it, and suggesting ideas for its improvement. I don't like looking behind the scenes with the agents and the meet promoters and the officials doing their work. It's seeing how the sausage is made and I like to keep that to a minimum.

The mistake most people make when reading this stuff (or pretty much anything news-oriented) is to only consider the words on the page. They don't see things in a broader context. You must always look at the perspective of a writer and his intended audience. Even if there is no overt agenda and the author is attempting to be unbiased, some will still creep in because all writers have different experiences. I alluded to this in my latest Sunday night post. Phil Hersh is an Olympic writer and he's used to seeing all kinds of ineffective national and international governing bodies, and USATF sticks out to him as being especially so. On the other hand, Larry Eder is a track insider and is always talking to agents and managers and meet directors and others, so it should be hardly surprising that his writing about Logan's firing was oriented towards their concerns.

More important is to recognize that USATF is primarily a political organization. People are not selected to positions of power by merit but by election. The previous name of USATF was The Athletics Congress for that very reason. And, by the way USATF is set up, it's not direct democracy either. Any elected official's words should be looked at critically in terms of how it targets a particular constituency.

On to Brooks Johnson. I cannot speak for the sprint, hurdle, jumps, or throws community, but in the distance running community Johnson is seen as mostly a joke. Ohio State head coach Robert Gary, while speaking at a 2005 USATF coaching seminar in Las Vegas, called him "crazy ass" to his face.  Joetta Clark Diggs, the 4-time Olympian, 2000 team captain, and daughter of tolerate-no-fools "Crazy" Joe Clark of Lean on Me fame, was willing to come out publicly against him.   There are no shortage of examples of Johnson behaving badly, treating athletes poorly, and screwing up relays.  Read here and here.  To many, anything he says simply lacks credibility in any form.

Thus I take what he says about Logan with a double grain of salt.  One of the first things Logan did once selected for leadership was to get rid of Johnson.  Brooks' baby, the National Relay Program, was a huge expenditure with literally nothing to show for it--dropped batons plagued the US team at both the 2008 and 2009 Worlds.  So Logan convinced people to get rid of it.  Johnson resigned.

The US team's overall performance at the 2008 Olympics was widely panned by sources as mainstream as USA Today and Sports Illustrated, yet Johnson now wonders if such criticism from Logan was warranted.  And he digs up various other political issues of the time and talks about those as well.  I see that there may be particular gripes, and I also see someone who just might to be trying to get himself elected or appointed back into USATF.  Remember, Johnson (or anyone else) has been a politician more than a coach once he entered into the organization's leadership, and as such his statements should be interpreted in the context of influencing people who may elect or appoint him.  And his talk of needing an insider...well, Phil Hersh worried that Stephanie Hightower may be aiming for the CEO job, and he knows his stuff.

So here's the thing...is it possible that both Logan is egocentric and incompetent (as Johnson, et al, claim) and that USATF's board of directors is little more than a collection of 15 clowns (as Logan claims)?  Yes.  What a fine kettle of fish.

Who for USATF CEO?

There's been plenty written about why Doug Logan got dumped as USATF CEO.  SI's Brian Cazanueve identified a lot of shortcomings, but they sound like the kind of thing that results in non-renewal rather then outright firing.  I still say that the powerful people either assuage or inflame these types of grumblings about the person at the top.  In short, Hightower wanted him gone so he was.

In an interview with the Long and Strong Throwers Journal, former top-level javelinist and current top-level businessman Bill Schmidt said the following:

In most sports governing bodies, they are administered by former athletes with little or no business acumen. In the case of track & field, everyone has their own agenda and do what benefits their own interests.

Is this because of the specific people who run USATF, or is this always going to happen regardless of who is in charge? I think you can make a case that the latter will be the case unless strong actions are taken against it.

People who are very good at track have been great athletes their whole lives, and (for Americans) in most cases track was probably not the first sport they did.  Our school-based system is unlike the rest of the world, where youth track is club-based.  Nearly all track people in the USA are like David Oliver, to pick an extreme example: they knew they could be successful at a team sport, and instead chose to be in an individual one.  I think track people simply are not "team players", given to thinking more about themselves than others, and it is probably much more true in the USA than elsewhere since our early-youth programs in football and baseball are so much stronger than they are in track.

So who could do it?  Right now it appears it would require a glutton for punishment.  Phil Hersh warns us that Stephanie Hightower herself might take the job, and that would be a very bad thing.  I could see a situation where, if she became the new CEO, there would be a horrible short-term implosion which would eventuially lead to the ouster of a lot of destructive people at USATF.  The next five years might be very bead, and the next ten very good.  But I'd really like to skip over the bad five years and get ten good ones right away.

Curtis Anderson at the Eugene Register-Guard suggested Vin Lananna, who is too smart to take the job.  Former USATF head (1970-1997) Ollan Cassell said it doesn't really matter, which is true in some ways but overall I disagree strongly.  Probably the best single candidate out there is the above-mentioned Bill Schmidt, but I think he's been on record saying "no f-ing way".

A Separate Pro Track Organization?

In the wake of Doug Logan's firing, a discussion sprung up among Martin Bingisser, Ann Gaffigan, Chris Nickinson and Paul Merca about splitting off a separate professional organization from USATF.  I chimed in with some rather useless blather.  Since then I've done some reading and thinking.

The vast majority of top-level American sports have separate organizations for professionals and rank-and-file amateurs.  Most widely known are the PGA and USGA, which work hand-in-hand to produce the US Open.  Similarly, the ATP and WTA work with the USTA on the "other" US Open.  There are others; the NBA is separate from but works with USA Basketball for national team competition, as does the NHL with USA Hockey, MSL with USSF, and so on.

In fact, this kind of pros separate from amateurs is the rule, with a few notable exceptions: "traditional" Olympic sports which did not have (openly) professional competition before the breakup of the AAU, which controlled them all with an iron fist until 1978.  Believe it or not, track and field is almost assuredly the biggest of those sports, even at the elite professional level.  We're certainly bigger and more popular than swimming or wrestling or anything else I can think of.

The purpose of a domestic professional track and field organization would be to promote domestic professional competitions, to get pro-level track (and road racing) into the media, and so forth. I wouldn't see athlete development as part of its mission. It would be charged with creating a higher profile for the sport which would then allow for greater earnings among said athletes, which would give them more resources for their own development if they wished to do so.

Saying who is an NBA professional is easy enough: you're on an NBA roster.  Deciding who is a golf pro is also pretty simple because one of the main functions of the PGA Tour is to make that decision via its card system.  But how in the heck do you do that with track?  There are so many athletes, the sport is so diffuse, and new stars can come from almost nowhere.  Fortunately, we have a model to work from.

When you join USA Triathlon (as you must for all domestic triathlon competitions), you get a choice of "amateur" or "pro/elite" for your lisence.  Actually, you can only choose the second if you qualify.  Only those with pro/elite lisences can get into the elite wave at races with a purse of at least $5,000.  Also, by having such a lisence you qualify for national championship events.  Due to the nature of triathlons, marks are not used for pro/elite qualification but rather finishing within a certain time of the winner or in a certain place at various top-level races. 

In track, we could choose the qualifications for pro status in any number of ways, but I think a competitive-based system would be preferable to a marks-based system.  What would a USATF pro membership offer to an athlete?  I think, at a minimum, eligibility for the VISA Championship Series prize money and automatic qualifying to national championships.  Remember the big brouhaha over Adam Goucher getting into the last Olympic Trials over some other guys?  If this kind of pro membership status were cut and dried and subject to an annual renewal, that kind of drama wouldn't happen.  This means we'd be looking at about 15 to 20 athletes qualifying as pros in each event.  (I'd suggest a separate but equally cut-and-dried qualifying process to national championships for collegians and high schoolers, but that's another topic alltogether.)  Those athletes qualifying as USATF pros could also be put at the head of the line for getting into domestic professional events, such as the Millrose Games or Prefontaine Classic.

If this got off the ground, it would make sense for the professional arm of USATF to create a domestic pro circuit as well.  American meets will never supplant the European summer season, but the domestic indoor and early-outdoor seasons really need beefing up and could do well with good leadership.  As for the roads, we already have a pretty good domestic circuit, but a professional spinoff of USATF could offer them coordination into a cohesive whole rather than just a bunch of independent races that do nothing to help each other raise their collective profile.

The chance of all this happening is somewhat less than the chance of my 75-year-old mother becoming the next star of the WWE, but I think it's worth thinking about anyway.

Doug Logan Fired

About ten minutes ago I went to usatf.org to look into membership for some kids I coach who are going to run Junior Olympic cross country this fall.  I saw on twitter that memberships are discounted to $10 (down from $39) from now until the end of the year.

And then I saw this.

USATF Board to hire new CEO


INDIANAPOLIS - The USA Track and Field Board of Directors has voted to pursue new leadership in its CEO position, bringing to a close the tenure of Doug Logan, who had been CEO of the federation since July 2008.


After a meeting over the weekend in Las Vegas, the Board voted to pursue leadership change.

Yep, they fired him.

Phil Hersh, one of the few full-time Olympic writers still around, had an immediate comment:

You can bet the U.S. Olympic Committee isn't happy with this move, even if it unlikely to intervene.


As I wrote in a Blog last week, it is foolhardy to dismiss Logan after just two years on the job. And, unless he was fired for cause, USATF will have owe him a severance in the vicinity of $1 million. That would be ironic, since sources have told me a reason the USATF board was unhappy with Logan owed to what it felt was his inability to bring in new sponsors.


Further irony: Last week, the international track federation named Logan to one of its committees.
My initial attempts to reach Logan and Hightower were unsuccessful. Stay tuned.

There are the official reasons for his dismissal, and then there are the real reasons.  I'd have to guess his fate was sealed when he convened the Project 30 Committee and it issued its report.  The nine committee members were, by design, all outside the USATF power structure.  One of those was Carl Lewis, a man probably more unwelcome by USATF leadership than any man on the planet given his long-running pointed (and accurate) criticisms of said leadership.  The report itself advocated an athlete's union, the kind of thing guaranteed to piss off management wherever you are.

The union idea never got off the ground, but Logan's biggest transgression was probably ending the National Relay Program.  It was a boondoggle and a failure, but it was a cash cow for Brooks Johnson, the closest ally of USATF President Stephanie Hightower.  She's a career politician, and they don't get to positions of power by forgetting when someone crosses them.  It just took a while before the time was right to rile up the board of directors.  Make no mistake, if she didn't want him gone he'd still be in the job.  Ironically, fixing the relay situation is likely to be Logan's biggest (and probably only) lasting legacy.

I'm not an insider.  I'm just a fan who reads a lot.  But I do work for a large urban school district and I've seen this kind of BS before.  Does it surprise you to know that Hightower was president of the board of the Columbus Public Schools?  Me neither.  As Mark Twain said over a century ago, "In the first place God made idiots.  Then He made school boards."  And the USATF board.

Executive Directors / CEOs of track and field in the USA...
2008-2010 Doug Logan
1997-2008 Craig Masback
1970-1997 Ollan Cassell
Let's see of the next one lasts over a year.

LATE EDIT:  Joe Battaglia at Universal Sports has his own speculation.  He said "looking back on the brief Logan era, you would have to give him a grade of incomplete", but also notably cited the 2012 Olympic Trials marathons being awarded to Houston over Boston or New York as a possible factor as well. Again, good for USATF (it was a significantly better bid overall) but ticked off power brokers like the NYRRC's Mary Wittenberg.

Sorry About the Jinx

LATE UPDATE:  The plot thickens.  IAAF president Lamine Diack just appointed Logan to the IAAF School/Youth Commission.  Interpretation: Diack wants to keep Logan around, and the job probably comes with perks for the rest of USATF, thus giving the Board of Directors reason to move with caution.

Earlier this week I assumed that silence was meaningful in terms of Doug Logan's job as CEO of USA Track and Field.  You may recall that in late July he was told that his performance needed to improve or he'd be fired.  Having heard nothing for quite some time, I said I thought his job was safe.

I just had to go and say it, didn't I?  Reuters reports just this morning that his fate will be determined this weekend at a meeting in Las Vegas.  The story also extensively quotes Carl Lewis, who doesn't like the meddling.

"He brings credibility, knowledge and expertise," Lewis told Reuters. "He understands the future and has a vision.

"They (USATF) were lucky he fell in their hands," added Lewis.
...
Lewis said for too many years USATF and its predecessors had been dysfunctional and run by "people who don't understand anything outside their own zip code."

"The sport is not even an also-ran in America," said the former sprinter and long jumper. "I can't believe they want to try and get rid of him.

Lewis has thought for at least 30 years that USATF is run by a bunch of jackasses, so nothing new here.  That Reuters specifically sought out Lewis for comment is interesting.  Lewis was one of nine experts hand-picked by Logan for his Project 30 task force.  The AP also has an article, also extensively quoting Lewis.

It sounds like Logan's detractors want improvement but not change, and we all know one is not possible without the other. Recall that Logan's predecessor, Craig Masback, was twice threatened in a similar way and came through unscathed.  But Masback abruptly resigned in early 2008, and speculation was that he saw the coming leadership in that year's elections as even more difficult to work for.

The most immediate change that came out of the Project 30 task force report was the cancelation of the National Relay Program, as it had done nothing for our relay performances and cost a lot of money.  Once that happened, Brooks Johnson retired.  It was his baby and cash cow.  He was very tight with new USATF President Stephanie Hightower and Men's Track & Field Committee chair John Chaplin (a man once described as "a douche for the decades").  Canceling the program was the right thing to do, but these people are nothing if not vindictive.  I suspect nothing would happen to Logan if these two didn't want it to happen.  Giving Carl Lewis a position of power and advocating for an athletes' union are two other things that are necessary for USATF to improve but guaranteed to piss off its power brokers.

What's On Today
The Notturna Di Milano, an EAA Permit Meeting, takes place in Italy.

Track on TV
Diamond League Zurich rerun, 1:30 PM on Universal Sports
Diamond League Stockholm rerun, 10 PM on Universal Sports

Around the Web
Runners' World Racing News has all the headlines, including the announcement of elite fields for the NYC Marathon

Shelly-Ann Fraser avoids a (stupid) 2-year ban, but exactly what will happen is still unknown

Sprinters on the mend: Asafa Powell and Walter Dix

Teddy Tamgho chooses a new coach

Sunday Evening Decathlete

What did we learn this week at the USA Track and Field Championships?

Chaunte Lowe is the new star.  An American Record win in the high jump (2.05), and then immediately following that she took second in the long jump.  That kind of two-event ability is basically unheard of.  I have no idea if she's planning on doing much, if any, long jumping over the remainder of the season, but on the high jump alone she's getting deserved attention. 

Des Moines should not get the 2016 Olympic Trials.  Drake tends to bring in the crowds, as the Drake Relays has sold out for 45 straight years, the Iowa High School Championships are the best-attended in the country, and two years ago they broke the NCAA Championships attendance record.  But the attendance here was very disappointing, failing to get 10,000 fans in on any day, even when hometown hero Lolo Jones was running.  That, along with the long throws being held outside the stadium and a seating capacity of only 14,500, should disqualify Des Moines from winning the next round of Trials bidding.

To be fair, the fields were not of national championships quality, as is common in the off-year.  But Indy's attendance in 2006, with similar heat issues, was only 2,000 less, and no one thought Carroll Stadium warranted another Olympic Trials due to a strong fan base.

Jen Suhr is back to top form.  In just her second meet back after a one-year injury hiatus, she won the pole vault and took some shots at her own American Record.  I didn't think she had it in her yet; I'm glad I'm wrong.

More is not better.  The weekend's events saw unprecedented levels of coverage.  The meet was on TV for seven hours, and two different websites did live webcasts.  Unfortunately, the TV coverage was of unbelievably poor quality.  Even worse, I can't say it's a new low.  It's just more of the same: no excitement about anything longer than a mile, horrible to non-existent field event coverage, and the producers prefer talking heads and replays between commercials and distance races during them, rather than the other way around.

I did not see the Runnerspace webcast, but apparently they put some accomplished announcers in the booth for those, such as Paul Swangard.  Also, the webcast during the TV broadcasts were "field event specials".  I appreciate the effort.  But how in the world is anyone supposed to watch a webcast AND the TV at the same time?  It's as if they've given up any pretense that our sport is track and field, or that the jokers who do the TV coverage could ever get it right.

Javelin throwers are BIG.  As a fan and not a journalist, I rarely meet top athletes or even get to see them up close.  Javelinists get such little attention that you don't get to see them on screen much.  And, when you do, they're always on the field surrounded by no one but other throwers.  So, when I got to meet Breaux Greer a few years ago my first thought was "Damn, he's big".  Not shot-putter or hammer-thrower big, but a well-muscled well-proportioned guy who is just 10% to 20% bigger than your normal athlete.

Ditto for new javelin AR holder Kara Patterson.  The woman who does post-competition interviews for ESPN is almost always taller than the athletes.  Not with Patterson, whose big and muscular upper body was striking on camera.  Yet she still looks feminine to me, whatever the heck "feminine" means.  It certainly does not mean weak.

Track and field is treated just like the NFL and the NBA playoffs.  In that ESPN has broken into all of these broadcasts to show the final innings of a no-hitter.  On Friday night, the end of the men's 5k and all of the men's 100 were cut off in favor of Edwin Jackson's eight-walk no-hit performance.  Turns out they are contractually obligated to do so, and took pains to replay the missed portions multiple times on Saturday and Sunday.

USATF rolled out part of its Project 30.  It's mostly a big pile of money for athlete funding, directed at those who are financially struggling but good shots at medaling in 2012.  But all the athletes had to sign with Nike, so those with other companies were left out in the cold.  Of the 31 athletes in the program, eighteen were already with Nike.  This made some observers question just how much new money there really was, and whether there was undue influence by Nike.

I'm looking at it from a different perspective: grants to athletes are not the most effective use of federation money.  Grants to training groups are.  The Oregon TC.  The World Throws Center.  The Mammoth Track Club.  John Cook's training group.  The old Santa Monica TC.  Mac Wilkin's throws group up at Concordia.  These places are where the not-quite-good-enough athletes make huge steps forward.  If I had $1 million to improve US distance running, I'd start up ten more Hanson's Distance Projects, and I think we'd have depth second only to Kenya.

Who's #1 in the 400?  LaShawn Merritt famously shot himself in the foot.  Jeremy Wariner hasn't been up to his own standard, and was a DNF yesterday.  David Neville beat Wariner early but scratched in the semis.  Angelo Taylor has run some good races, but only dabbles in the event.  Calvin Smith looked good early in the season but has really fallen off since then.  Ditto for Tavaris Tate.  So it fell to journeyman Greg Nixon to win yesterday.  Kudos to him--he put up the world leader--but the event as a whole isn't setting the world on fire.

USATF is thinking outside the box: good.  I don't know anything about it besides the press release, but USATF had a "member appreciation weekend", which included a hospitality tent at the stadium and other goodies for USATF members.  This is new thinking.  Previously, membership in USATF was reserved for athletes, coaches, administrators and officials.  The member appreciation weekend potentially adds another type of member: fan.  The idea of USATF having a booster club is long overdue. 

I'm shocked at how few college track/XC programs have their own booster clubs, and even more shocked at how few do anything for their members.  So far as I know, only Ohio State's Olympian Club makes its members feel special, with pre-meet tailgate parties and reserved seating at home meets.

On Friday night I worked a fund-raiser for my cross-country team at the Toledo Speedway, our local stop on the ARCA circuit.  At the table next to ours was the Michigan Auto Racing Fan Club,signing people up and selling hats and shirts, and we weren't even in Michigan.  Does US track have a fan club?  No.  It's high time that we do.

USATF is thinking outside the box: bad.  CEO Doug Logan mentioned the idea of a track reality show.  Ugh.  The whole point of reality TV is that it is not complimentary to the people on it.  Maybe it could be done well and drive some interest, but I am not confident.

Yours truly is still in the hunt.  I entered the weekend in second place in the USATF Pick N' Win Game, and at one point I was first.  Now I'm fourth.  I was eight points out of first, now I'm six points out.  First place wins $2,000, second is $150, and so on down to $50 for tenth.  Unless I have a bang-up day at the Pre Classic, I think I'm going to win a nice dinner instead of a new computer.


Some people know how to run races and some people don't.  The USA has some pretty good milers, but even more impressive to me is how tactically aware they are.  You lead the second and third laps and you usually are well back of the winner, but Leo Manzano darn near won after doing so.  Lopez Lomong is just as savvy and came up for the win.   On the women's side we've got great depth and similarly good tacticians in Anna Pierce and Shannon Rowbury, first and third in the championships.  While Erin Donahue doesn't quite have the talent to run as fast as the others, she does know how to make the most of a slow race and took second on Saturday.

And then there's Bridget Franek.  I hesitate to call her out, as I have a distant but personal connection to her family, but she's a professional athlete now and it comes with the territory.  She's tough as nails, but I have yet to see her run with any plan besides overpowering her opponents.  She was outfoxed today and got eaten alive.  Had I been smart enough to listen to my doubts and pick Lisa Aguilera to win (who did), I'd be tied for first in the fantasy league.

USA Road Mile Championship Webcast

I just learned there will be a live webcast of this evening's USA Road Mile Championship beginning at 8:53 PM Eastern time. Pretty cool.

The races have some decent fields. The headliner men are Lopez Lomong, David Torrance and Rob Myers. Lomong was a 2008 Olympian, Torrance ran a great anchor leg in the DMR at Penn, and Myers is a former US indoor champ. The women's race is a bit tougher, with Anna Pierce, Christin Wurth, and Sarah Bowman. The first two are among the best in the world, having run sub-4:00 in the 1500 last year, and Bowman is an up-and-coming pro who starred at Tennessee over the last few years.

Questioning the Olympic Marathon Trials Bidding

Joe Battaglia has a long and involved story at Universal Sports about the selection process for the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials. It's interesting to read at face value, and reading between the lines is even more interesting.

Quick recap if you're short on the story: the 2008 OT races were held in conjunction with the New York and Boston marathons, held the prior day on separate courses. It was a big success and it was widely expected that 2012 would be similar. Houston beat them out with a bid to host both of the OT races along with their own marathon in January.

When I first heard about it, I wondered if there was any USATF funny-business going on. But I didn't have to read much to find out that Houston won because they had the best bid. They offered to cover all the costs, pay out more prize money than was required, and didn't expect any cut in advertising money from USATF. Add in the time-of-year advantage and you're looking at almost a perfect bid from USATF's standpoint, aside from being outside the major media markets of the northeast. Even that might not be a downside, as NY and Boston already give serious marathon racing outsized attention, while Houston could be seen as a place to take it from near-zero to something.

What's really interesting is that the story was written at all. Ever since the OT site was announced, the NYRRC's Mary Wittenberg has been bitching about it. Not aggressively, since there appears to be little to bitch about, but she's made her disapproval well known. Note that the BAA has said essentially nothing in the press, and they were in basically the same situation as the NYRRC. They aren't as aggressively self-promoting as the NYRRC and/or Wittenberg.

Battaglia doesn't have an axe to grind. He just needed something to write, and he tried to make it look like there were two sides to the story. But there aren't, Battaglia knows it, and doesn't pretend otherwise. New York got beat fair and square.

LATE EDIT: Thanks to pjm for his insight in the comments. There's a thread on this at Let's Run, and I'll just say very few people are jumping to Wittenberg's defense. To be fair, they're not exactly praising Logan either/

Why The Success?

As I mentioned yesterday, the USA's medal haul at the World Indoor Championships was unusually good. 17 medals is the fifth-best showing in the history of the championships, bettered only by Russia/USSR (three times) and the USA (once). More impressive is the fact that many of our best athletes either skipped the indoor season (Gay, Richards, Merritt, Phillips) or were competing at the NCAA (Eaton, McCorory).

This comes just a year and a half after an embarrassing showing at the Beijing Olympics. Why the difference? An offhand quote by Bernard Lagat sheds some light on the matter:

There was amazing organization from Albuquerque to Doha. This is the best team I have ever been in. Everybody is together. The sprinters, the jumpers, the pentathletes were all cheering for us.

Whether they called themselves the AAU, TAC, or USA Track & Field, its name and the phrase "effective management" have only been used in a sentence together in the manner of USA Track & Field is not an example of effective management. This has been true for at least eight decades.

But in the wake of the Beijing PR nightmare, USATF did some reorganization of national team coaching and managing duties. Maybe, just maybe, the effectiveness Lagat credits will not be a one-off accident, but rather is a new way of doing things. The reorganization gave national teams fewer "coaches" and more managers, seeing as how the former is largely a ceremonial title and the latter does real actual work. However, there are other explanations; it's also possible that wearing "USA" all over your body in an Islamic middle eastern country tends to make Americans a tighter group than they would be in other circumstances.

Doug Logan Gets It

In his latest blog post, he is not satisfied with the state of domestic TV coverage. "The UK and Europe have some of the most entertaining broadcasts you can find in track and field, and there is much we can, and will, learn from them. I am committed to changing this paradigm." Read on.

VISA Championship Series Issues

There’s been a bit of barking over the VISA Championships Series standings and the venue of the upcoming USATF Championships. The series awards bonus money to the top three Americans, as measured by their best performance in the series according to the IAAF scoring tables.

The nationals are being held in Albuquerque, at an altitude of 5300 feet. That has a significant effect on the sprints, hurdles, horizontal jumps and distance events. In a recent release, USATF CEO Doug Logan said the following:

International standards set by the IAAF do not take into account altitude adjustments for scoring tables, records or rankings. That will hold true for the USA Indoor Championships as well, given that the scoring for the Visa Championship Series uses official IAAF tables. Rather than arbitrarily make an adjustment based on nothing more than a guess, which would result in vast inequities in the tables, it is far more fair to have athletes compete and have their performances compared as they always are.

I can assure you that well before our sport committee chairs approved awarding the Indoor Championships to Albuquerque, the relatively moderate altitude of the site was discussed extensively by USATF staff, with input from coaches and members of the sports science and sports medicine communities as well.

I don’t for a second believe the stuff about "discussed extensively by USATF staff, with input from coaches and members of the sports science and sports medicine communities". They simply never thought about it when considering the bid put forth by Albuquerque, or if they did it was deemed unimportant.

The whole system does lend itself to certain unfairnesses anyway, even aside from altitude issues. Professionally rabbitted distance races are the norm, and are reflected as such in the scoring tables, but championship meets lack paid pacemakers and never produce exceptional times. So by the time the nationals come around, distance runners cannot move up in the standings, only down. Outdoors, no allowances are made for wind, so a wind-aided sprint/hurdle/jump can win the big money.

But in this particular instance, I don’t think the altitude in Albuquerque is going to affect who is going to win. Christian Cantwell’s leading mark, a 72’ (21.95m) effort in the shot put, is beyond the reach of all but a few athletes in the meet. This year money is being paid out for second and third, and even catching one of those won’t be easy.

What does it take? Here you go.

Event	1st place	2nd place	3rd place
60m	6.44	6.48	6.49
400m	45.05	45.33	45.41
800m	1:44.77	1:45.41	1:45.54
1500m	3:34.76	3:36.07	3:36.35
3000m	7:34.14	7:37.27	7:37.90
60H	7.40	7.47	7.49
HJ	2.39	2.37	2.36
PV	5.95	5.88	5.86
LJ	8.54	8.44	8.42
TJ	17.77	17.58	17.55
SP	21.95	21.64	21.57

In the 60 meters, the altitude is estimated to give an advantage of 0.04 seconds. The US leader is Ivory Williams at 6.51, and I don’t think he can get that 6.44. Maybe he can; it would take a "real" improvement of 0.03.

The 400 is hard to read. The estimated advantage due to altitude is 0.37, and only Kerron Clement has the wheels to run the equivalent of an indoor 45.42. Considering that this is his season opener, I don’t think he’ll get it.

The altitude will be of a smaller aid to the hurdlers, maybe 0.02 seconds. Terrence Trammell has run 7.43 and is more than capable of running the 7.40 needed to catch Cantwell, as it would take a "real" improvement of 0.01.

As for the rest of the events, forget it. Not happening.

On the women’s side of things, Shannon Rowbury leads the standings. But neither Carmelita Jeter nor Lolo Jones competed in either of the first two meets, and pretty much every time they’ve run this year they put up marks that would be ahead of Rowbury’s. With Allyson Felix entered in the 400, I think those will be your top three who win the money.

Fantasy League Preview

USATF's Pick'n'Win game enters its second week. As always, obsessively check changes to start lists.

My rundown on the likely winners at tomorrow's adidas Boston Indoor Games...

Men’s 60 meters
Right now, Mike Rodgers is a heavy favorite among the Pick’n’Win contestants. But so far he isn’t anywhere near the level of sharpness he showed in the last two years. Ivory Williams is running very well, and I see no reason to pick against him.

Men’s 400 meters
This is a tough call. Bershawn Jackson won the 600 yards last week over Renny Quow, who is also entered. Chris Brown has been a tough 400 runner over the last two years as well. I think it’s likely to come down to Jackson and Quow. I’m going with Quow, but I don’t think you could go too wrong with either one.

Men’s Mile
Nick Willis is probably the best runner in the field. Manzano could surprise him, but I doubt it.

Men’s 5000 meters
This is the headline race. Bernard Lagat is a great runner and is running very well for so early in the season. It’s hard to pick against him, but the field is hardly a bunch of pushovers. Bekana Daba is a sub-13:00 runner, Shedrack Korir ran 7:35 last year, and Sam Chelanga is coming off an impressive XC season. I would not pick Galen Rupp; he’s a bit under the weather and it’s not assured that he’ll be there.

Men’s 60m Hurdles
Trammell. If you’re determined to go for the upset, pick Mitchum. But you’ll be wrong.

Men’s Pole Vault
The field is short—just five athletes—and only one has cleared 5.60 so far this year. What you really want to avoid is the dreaded no-height. Based on that, I’m going to guess Jeremy Scott is the least likely to bomb out.

Women’s 60 meters
This was awfully close last week. On a hunch, I’m going with Muna Lee.

Women’s 200 meters
Shalonda Solomon has been pretty consistent at the indoor long-sprint game over the last few years.

Women’s 400 meters
The two reasonable choices are Monica Hargrove and DeeDee Trotter. Trotter has run faster than Hargrove this year, and coming off a few poor seasons I think she’s got more to prove—which, at times, is the difference between running indoor merely as a set-up to outdoor and racing it at the best you’ve got. So I’m taking Trotter.

Women’s 1000 meters
This is a decent field. Erin Donohue and Kenia Sinclair are very good runners. Neither is on the same level as Anna (Willard) Pierce, who is one of the best in the world at the middle distances. This is a no-brainer.

Women’s 3000 meters
This is a tough call. Hannah England and Sara Hall battled to the finish last week in New York. Shannon Rowbury and Christin Wurth-Thomas are both seriously good milers who have proven their 3k ability in the past. Genzebe Dibaba and Kalkidan Gezahegne are Ethiopian, and my Ethiopian rule is that they always show up ready to race well. The former, Tiru’s little sister, won an international cross-country race late last year. I think it’s going to come down to whether one of the two Ethiopians can shake all the American milers before the bell lap. I like Rowbury in this race, but I’m not confident.

Women’s 5000 meters
This is a Tiru Dibaba record attempt. The others are there to lend an appearance of competition, but we all know who will win.

Women’s 60m Hurdles
Damu Cherry quietly ran 7.47 for the 55 hurdles last week, which is as good a performance as anyone else in the race has put up yet. I think it will come down to her and Tiffany Ofili, but Cherry is a far more experienced athlete and that’s what tips the scales for me.

Women’s Pole Vault
Chelsea Johnson won in New York last week with a good 4.51 performance. But did you know that Lacy Janson is the world leader with 4.65, and has another 4.50 as well? Those are the two to pick from. I’m taking Janson.

Why I Get So Worked Up

Stay with me, I'll get to it soon enough.

SI's Joe Posnanski has a great column on the core problem of the Pro Bowl.

When I was a kid, I would desperately root for the AFC to win the Pro Bowl. Well, OK, I'm exaggerating a touch. The adjective "desperately" is too strong. I wasn't painting "AFC" on the side of my face or anything. I did care, though. I honestly cared. I can remember feeling happy when the AFC scored, unhappy when the NFC scored. I can remember, late in games, going through those mental gymnastics fans do when watching games and figuring what their team needs to do to win the game. It mattered.

Then, I suppose everything mattered when I was a kid. It mattered that the Globetrotters won on Wide World of Sports. It mattered that Evel Knievel made his jump. It mattered who won the Superstars competition. It even mattered who won on Battle of the Network Stars. That Patrick Duffy ... what an athlete. But you could not never count out the competitive spirit of Robert Conrad.
...
I would watch the Pro Bowl with interest and passion -- Go AFC! -- until I realized that I had more interest and passion in these games than the players. I suppose I came to that realization when I was about 13 years old. When you care more than the players do, the event became pointless. And after that, the Pro Bowl became more or less pointless to me. I might watch. I might not. But it never again mattered.

Posnanski helped me understand the reason I get so worked up about how well things could be done to present track meets (but are not). It's because I care about this more than the people who are entrusted with the job. I see things that could be done better, and are loused up every single time, and I figure they either don't know or don't care. Neither do the people who hire/fire them.

Case in point: this week's adidas Boston Indoor Games. The meat of the event schedule goes from 6 to 8 p.m., but the broadcast window is from 5 to 7. I was about to blow my stack over this until it was pointed out to me that the meet is on Saturday...and the broadcast is 23 hours later. On Sunday. During the Super Bowl. At which point I just slumped in my chair in defeat.

You see, these Visa Championship Series broadcasts are blocks of time bought by USATF. They can't pick and choose exactly when they want airtime, but there's some leeway involved. I'm 95% sure USATF took Super Bowl time because it was cheap. But it does nothing to advance the sport.

Last Friday's Millrose Games were adequate but not enthralling. This week's meet won't be watched by anyone, myself included. Then there's a three-week break before the national championships. It's not much of a TV presence for track & field.

And here's the thing no one in Indy ever seemed to understand: Paying attendees to an event are nice, but over the last 25 years the rule has been that if your sport isn't on TV, to the sporting public it does not exist. And even more important, it does not exist to potential sponsors. Sponsorship and TV contracts are where the money is.

How do you make a TV presence happen? Well, you can be wholly owned by ESPN, and they'll plaster you everywhere. (Examples: X-Games, pro bowling.) You can be a niche sport that meshes perfectly with specific highly profitable sponsor companies. (Example: golf, poker.) Or you can do your darndest to use TV to show how amazing your sport is. Examples there would be...oh, everything else that's on TV a lot, but most notably basketball and football.

You argue, those are the most popular sports in America--track can't compete with them! I suppose no one recalls the early 80s, when the NBA was so unpopular that its championship finals were shown tape-delay after The Tonight Show. Yet the first two World Championships in '83 and '87 were carried live in prime time. Seems hard to believe now, huh?

Major League Soccer was once like USATF. It was a niche sport not well appreciated in America. They got on TV only because they bought air time. Somehow they progressed past that level, but it was hard and took years. It was because people cared and tried. They were more like the players in the Super Bowl than those in the Pro Bowl. I have yet to see any indication that USATF's leadership goes that direction.

Fantasy league preview

USATF’s online pick ‘em game gets started tomorrow with the Millrose Games. Until now, I was the only online advice for the fantasy league. USATF’s Vicky Oddi has entered the fray. In a few areas, I disagree with her picks.

Super 60
A lot of fans and an athlete or two have taken offense at this contest being included in the program. I don’t, as I see it as nothing more than celebrity track. The rules and objectives of the event haven’t been changed, unlike UKA’s harebrained extreme jumping getup.

Reading between the lines, this NY Times article makes it clear who should win the race. Willie Gault was better in his prime than any of the rest of these guys, and has stayed in better shape and competed more. Being some 10 to 25 years older than the rest of the sprinters isn’t likely to make a difference. It would be almost like matching Tom Kite against a bunch of guys who used to have low handicaps but don’t play much anymore. It’s hard to say how much stock to put in reports of a recent 4.27 for the 40 yards by Gault, but if true he’d still be among the NFL’s faster men. And against this crowd...it will be a butt-whuppin’ of Bolt proportions.

Men’s 60 meters
This was going to be a hard choice until Walter Dix pulled out. In his absence, I can’t see Mike Rodgers losing.

Men’s 600 yards
This is one event where I disagree with Oddi. Renny Quow is a far better quarter-miler than Bershawn Jackson, and has shown he can run on the boards. Easy pick.

Men’s 800 meters
This field is very weak. I’m going with Dmitrijs Milkevics.

Wanamaker Mile
This is the most intriguing matchup of the night. Seven-time champ Bernard Lagat is going up against T&FN’s #1-ranked Asbel Kiprop. I think Kiprop is a better runner than Lagat, but the tight board track is a factor that’s hard to figure out. Lagat has the experience and can accelerate off a dime, and Kiprop is very tall; all of these favor Lagat. On the other hand, they won’t matter if Kiprop is flat-out better that night. I’m going with the “first, do no harm” rule of fantasy leagues and pick Lagat, as I figure he’ll be second at worst.

Men’s 60m Hurdles
The only threat to Terrence Trammell will come from defending world outdoor champ Ryan Brathwaite. Trammell has a history of running at a high level in the domestic indoor season, so I’m going with him.

Men’s Mile Race Walk
Why do they make us pick this? Tim Seaman, I guess.

Men’s Pole Vault
Strangely, Oddi did not include this event in her picks. Smart players stand to pick up big points here. Renauld Lavillenie has already made heights equal to or better than the rest of the field did all of last year, but has been chosen by only 20% of Pick & Win players. He should be a heavy favorite, but apparently those Frenchy types aren’t known around these parts.

Men’s Shot Put
Oddi picked Adam Nelson. I disagree, and I think he’s far more likely to be last than first. Be smart and take Christian Cantwell, who has already thrown further than either Taylor or Nelson did all of last season.

Women’s 60 meters
This one is hard to choose. The 60 can be a crapshoot at times. Even worse, none of these athletes have raced much if at all so far this year, leaving us without knowledge of their condition. I’m taking Veronica Campbell-Brown, but any of the others could win.

Women’s 400 meters
This race is also hard to pick. Mary Wineberg has a good race under her belt, but has less upside than Monica Hargrove. Aliann Pompey has historically run well on the boards. Any of those three are serviceable picks. I don’t think Pompey will win, but I think she’s a safe pick for second or third.

Women’s Mile
There’s a dearth of good runners in this race. Sara Hall hasn’t impressed me at all in the last several years, so I think it’s going to come down to Sally Kipyego and Sara Bowman. It was a huge upset when Bowman won a similar matchup at last year’s NCAA indoor championship. I’m sure Kipyego hasn’t forgotten that and wants to even the score. I’m picking Kipyego.

Women’s 60m Hurdles
Priscilla Lopes-Schliep is head and shoulders above the rest of the field.

Women’s Mile Race Walk
If it’s a domestic race walk, always go with Teresa Vaill.

Women’s High Jump
Elizabeth Patterson is the best of a weak field.

Women’s Pole Vault
Jen (Stuczynski) Suhr has withdrawn, leaving Oddi to say that Chelsea Johnson is the favorite. Sadly, no. Aleksandra Kiryashova is the best of the remaining athletes.

Rawson, Millrose Games

Two very interesting news items in this morning's headlines...

Larry Rawson: The End Of An Era In Track On TV

Larry Rawson, the (T&F) “Voice of ESPN” for its 30 years of existence, will no longer be part of the broadcast team for USATF’s series of indoor and outdoor meets.

While Rawson has been replaced by Ato Boldon for meets such as the Millrose Games, the Reebok Boston Indoor Games, and the Penn Relays, he will still have a presence on ESPN this year at the SEC Indoor and Outdoor Championships, the NCAA Indoor Championships, and major marathons in Boston, Chicago, and New York.

It remains to be seen as to whether Rawson chose this, or if it was chosen for him. I suspect the latter. He's only been kicked off the air for broadcasts run by USATF; ESPN still wants him. The decision must have come out of Indianapolis, and based on some of Doug Logan's remarks late last summer about changing the style of TV coverage, I wouldn't be surprised if it came from the top. (Or maybe even higher?)

Speed moves from turf to track for Super 60

Stars of NFL Championship Games spanning the last three decades will trade in their cleats for spikes in the Super 60 at the 103rd Millrose Games.

A new event highlighting the track speed of some of the NFL's most recognizable Super Bowl heroes, the Super 60 is expected to feature the New York Giant's Super Bowl XLI hero David Tyree, ex-Chicago Bear wide receiver and world-class sprinter/hurdler Willie Gault, and Atlanta Falcons' Super Bowl kickoff return star Tim Dwight.

This kind of attempt to broaden spectator appeal is just what track needs, and indoor track is good at. This is no Chris Johnson/Usain Bolt circus, but rather a real race featuring very fast men with years of track experience. More ex-footballers are likely to be added in the next week or so.

Management of Millrose has been taken over this year by Norbert Sanders and his Armory Foundation, at the behest of Logan. Mark Wetmore's Global Athletics group had been in charge for the previous four years, and had been blamed for the falling popularity of the meet. The real problem is that GA is a national operation, and the multi-tiered format of Millrose (pro, college, high school, age group) requires management with connections to the NYC community as was the case under Howard Schmertz. Sanders has his detractors, and it's unlikely God himself could return Millrose to its glory days, but it sure looks like he's trying and thinking creatively. We need a lot more of that.

Weekend Update

There's news, and then there's analysis of the news. The internet and its blogs and non-traditional reporting has allowed the latter to thrive. Here are four great examples from the last week.

1) Kenenisa Bekele gets beaten in Edinburgh XC
And not by a little bit, either--he was fourth, some 150 meters behind the winners. It's safe to say he hasn't been beaten like this in years. What, exactly, does it mean? He partly blamed missed training while in Edinburgh due to snow and ice, but it's not possible to put any shine on this turd. He ran poorly, and beat no one of note.

I do world rankings in each event using a points system, and recently got the system up and running for the 2010 season. It has Bekele at #2 for the 3k-5k category, and I thought "Huh, that's weird. It'll correct itself soon enough." Maybe it was right, and my assumption that he's invincible was wrong.

2) World 10k champ Linet Masai inexplicably forced out of Abu Dhabi half marathon by AK
The Zayed International half marathon is a huge payday, by far the biggest for a non-marathon race. Masai, one of the world's best runners, probably would have finished second and walked away with $100,000. But on the eve of the race she was not granted the release necessary by Athletics Kenya, with no explanation, and didn't get to run. Let's Run speculates as to why, and it sounds just about right. It's the same kind of stuff that made Steve Prefontaine apoplectic, but with sexism thrown in to boot.

3) College track IS concerned with pleasing fans
By the way things go at nearly all college meets, you'd figure this was the last thing college coaches are worried about. In a discussion at the Track & Field News forums about the recently-released NCAA technical manual and exactly how the idiotic new regionals system works, westcoasttiger had this to say:

At the USATFCCA convention group leader (and the force behind this crappy new qualifying albatross) Sam Seemes speaks to the entire coaching group about how the collegiate nationals in xc, indoor and outdoor are struggling to put butts in the stands compared to various other sports. This system is certainly taking things the opposite direction. The ONLY way to bring more fans to the stands is to bring legitimate drama to the meets via real competition and most importantly creating a true TEAM aspect to the sport. Seemes spoke of how lacrosse, water polo, gymnastics, tennis, softball and soccer were kicking track's butt in attendance and revenue. Well the draw for those sports is each has a true team focus even tennis and gymnastics which are not inherently team sports.

He then goes on to give some pretty good ideas about how to fix the problem, citing collegiate swimming's setup as one to emulate. The real point, of which I was not aware, is that other so-called "minor" sports are concerned with getting (paying!) butts in the seats and track is not...or at least the concern is one where, as usual, track people see themselves as individuals first and foremost, and "herding cats" is not a strong enough metaphor.

Another issue not spoken of, but which must be on some coaches' minds, is the increase in regional cable sports TV outlets such as the Big Ten Network. Track lags far behind these other "minor" sports in getting itself on the air, and for the same reasons as cited above. Doubtless this is why powerhouse programs like Arkansas, Texas and Texas A&M are now scheduling dual meets, which are the only regular-season competitions suitable for TV coverage.

4) USATF isn't fan-friendly either
Duh. But T&FN's editor Garry Hill points out how. Analyzing the recently-released USATF Indoor Championships meet schedule, he sees an average time gap between running events of over ten minutes--and that's in the Sunday "prime-time" live TV portion of the program. The common critiques of baseball and soccer is that basically nothing happens during most of the competition, but this meet schedule really does pack 18 minutes of action into an hour and 45 minutes.

Two things jump out at me while reading this. The first is that no one cares about keeping the meet moving along. It's not just scheduling things so far apart, it's the entire idea of how to schedule a meet. If you want to tightly schedule a meet, you run the risk of clipping off warmup time for athletes in the next event, but not if you think creatively. Since the straightaway races of 60 meters and 60 hurdles and the multi-lap races of 400 and up use different surfaces, you simply alternate between them. Example: 1500 goes first, during which the hurdlers do their final warmups, then the hurdles, during which the 400 runners do their final warmups, and so on. Outdoors it gets a bit more complex, but there's still no reason the 1500 runners can't warm up during the 100, since they use opposite ends of the track.

Secondly, this is the kind of critical analysis that must get a wide airing if the sport is to correct itself. Track and field is often described as "insular", and a "wide airing" is a relative term here, but I'd guess for the most part the USATF bigwigs take it as important if it's in the pages of T&FN and not if it isn't. In the piece on Linet Masai, Johnson describes how USATF has gone probably too far in terms of satisfying athlete concerns over the good of the sport as a whole. A prominent editorial in T&FN about this poor scheduling, explaining while being good for the athletes in the short-term it makes for ever-decreasing fan interest, and how the livelihoods of professional athletes are wholly dependent on said fan interest, might have a chance to make a difference. Griping on a message board, no matter how justified, won't make a difference.

Things I Think I Think About The Worlds, Part 3

The NBC/Versus broadcasts got significantly better than has been typical for US-based television, even as the Worlds wore on.

We are all too familiar with the usual setup: long lead-in to a race, the race, the obligatory and vacuous post-race interview, and then a commercial. Repeat until we're ready to vomit, then tell us who won the field events while showing only their winning efforts via badly-placed cameras.

In contrast, the BBC feeds that UniversalSports.com uses for the major meets makes an uninterrupted flow from running events to concurrent field events and back again, communicating the unending three-ring circus atmosphere that is track & field.

In an interview in the current Track & Field News, USATF CEO Doug Logan mentioned television: "Our quality has declined to the point where audiences are accepting stuff that is really very mediocre...then take a look at the television presentation of a European meet or listen to the BBC and it's like night and day." He said USATF is likely to put pressure on its TV partners to make changes.

Well, they must already be happening. The NBC/Versus crew did give us live or almost-live updates of field events not at all at the beginning of the Worlds, some in the middle of the week, and relatively often by the end of the week. They still pale in comparison to the Beeb's near-seamless transitions, but I have to give them credit for trying to learn on the fly.

The impetus for change may have come from competition: the ratio of online viewers (at UniversalSports.com) to TV viewers was probably much different from the norm for sports in the US. Partly this was because the live feeds were during work hours, and it's a lot less conspicuous to watch a web feed at your desk than to bring your 50" HD set to your cubicle. ("Live sports at work? That's so much better than work at work!") But also, the online coverage was superior in every way.

Another improvement from NBC/Versus was using the field event graphics from the international TV feed in unedited fashion. Until now, apparently NBC's decision-makers thought we'd be so horrified by the Frenchy metric distances that we'd brand them cheese-eating surrender monkeys and immediately switch the channel to COPS reruns on G4. Truth be told, metrics are sooo much easier on the eyes and brain, as there are less digits involved, and all that really matters is who threw or jumped farther. And in the age of the internet, most everyone sees results in metrics anyway.

Our US-based crew can still do better, but at least they've got the idea. A track meet's ideal broadcast model is that of a golf tournament. There are many things going on in many places simultaneously, and each has its own meaning that ties in to the larger picture. And we want to know about all of them as they are happening.

Team Track?

In this month's Track & Field News, Sieg Lindstrom has an article about Doug Logan's plans to start up a domestic team track circuit that would compete throughout the year indoors, outdoors and on the roads. The plan is anywhere from six to eight geographically-based teams in a league that would start in two or three years at the earliest.

My initial reaction was that this was the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The sport will not go this direction, because post-scholastic competition hasn't been team-oriented for a century. The best athletes will still compete in individual competition in Europe during the summer no matter what we come up with. This idea is much like World Team Tennis, which sports fans under 40 have probably never heard of, and those over 40 probably think it disappeared about the same time as disco. If it did disappear, no one wold notice.

But on second thought, this sounds like a good idea, as long as it's done right. Logan is the same guy who was heavily involved in the development of Major League Soccer, which has always faced the same issues: the best players will always be on European clubs, because that's where the real money is (and the real competition essential for high-level development). Ditto with track. Like WTT, I don't think most overseas soccer fans would notice if MLS went away. But it's done wonders in the USA.

First off, it allowed the second-tier American talent to get significant playing time in a reasonably decent league, which in turn made the USA a perennial World Cup qualifier (if not particularly competitive when they get there). The effect has been far, far greater though.

There's Fox Soccer Channel in the USA. ESPN now does live coverage of World Cup qualifying, Confederations Cup, UEFA Champions League, and the European Cup, and foreign club action is a SportsCenter staple. Soccer is now considered a major professional sport in the USA, although its appeal is still limited to the nut instead of the casual fan. Fifteen years ago this situation would have been thought near impossible, despite the momentary bump caused by the '94 World Cup. It took a long time, but domestic B-level competition was probably the single biggest driving force.

One of the failings of the US sytem of track & field is a lack of support for post-collegiate athletes who aren't good enough to make a living on the pro circuit. I had a college teammate who was an NCAA All-American, 8th at the Olympic Trials and 50th in the world, but earned more from his grad-school assistantship than he did from his Nike sponsorship and just couldn't keep it up after he got his master's degree. Given a few more years, I think he could have become an Olympian.

This kind of situation is very common in field events, where there's much less money available to be earned and athletes generally don't hit peak form for years after college. It's no coincidence that field events were our weakest area at the last Olympics. Logan's pro track league could give such "semi-pros" enough security to stay in the sport.

And then, of course, there's the possibility that a league like this could make professional track & field a major American spectator sport. I wouldn't expect it anytime soon, but just think of getting waht soccer got...a Fox Track & Field channel, European meet highlights on SportsCenter, and live coverage of every Diamond League meet and IAAF World Series event.

Again, the league must be based on the idea of giving B-level talent domestic competition instead of having to go to Europe to run their B-level meets. But in most events, American B-level talent is still pretty damn good. If one of the teams was based in Detroit/Ann Arbor, I'd get season tickets.