V 14 N. 65 Thoughts and Musings About Promoting Track and Field

This week I was almost intrigued by the promotion of the meet called Athlos, in the old Randall's Island stadium now called the Icahn Stadium in NYC.   However I wasn't intrigued enough to remember to watch it.  Gettin' old, I guess.  But I did read about it  and wondered how someone dreamed up this promotion.  Personally I'm on burn out after the Olympics and Diamond League wrap ups.  This concept of sharing a waning sportlight with Megan Thee Stallion or whomever to draw in the non-track fans reminds me of TV shows like Dancing With The Stars or The Masked Singer or America's Got Talent.  Throw in some B celebrity, add a bit of  pizazz with fireworks and try to get athletes already well on the downward slope after a hard season of competition to race for money.  That's probably the answer,  money.  If the sponsor had thrown in a million dollars or so for a world record performance and scheduled the meet a week or two before or after the Paris Olympics, it might have gotten some traction with me.  Consider when some kids in college can do much better on the current NIL revenues than world class athletes could do at Athlos ($60,000 for a win). In comparison, players in the WNBA receive an average annual pay of $119,590 or   ($2,989.75/game in a forty game season) with the highest-earning players in the WNBA receiving around $252,000 or $6,250/game.   Men in the NBA have a minimum salary of $1,157,153 for an 82 game season or an average of $14,111.62 per game.   The median NBA salary is a wopping $6,696,429.00.   You're right, women's sport pay sucks, but in track and field, men's pay sucks equally.    A noble effort by the Athlos organizers, but they were working with a tired product at a time when football, Major League Baseball, and even cross country might be of more interest to a lot of the the track and field public.  My mistake, they were going after people who had little or no knowledge in the sport by promoting it with Megan T S.  You're right again, the Super Bowl at half time does that too.  Maybe they could have gotten Snoop Dog going against Jay Zee in a pole vault competition  or better still Sean Diddy Combs against  R. Kelly both out on  recognisance bonds for a go at a broad jump. 

 This also reminds me of some past attempts to promote the sport in a somewhat unconventional way linked to other activities.  In 1954 in Toronto, Canada, an organization supporting track and field for young athletes held a training camp and brought in some American coaching talent including Fred Wilt, Ken Doherty,  and Brutus Hamilton to conduct a clinic.  In conjunction a track meet was put on at the Canadian National Exposition grounds while a circus was camped in the infield for a performance later that evening.  

Several well known athletes were brought in to run some exhibition races.  Among them was Wes Santee there to race a mile.  Indeed it was special.  When the gun went off several elephants got excited and bolted from their handlers.  As Wes was rounding the last turn of the race he found the elephants blocking his path and had to run around them.  He won the race in  a pedestrian 4:25 obviously not going all out, or perhaps he stepped in something.  After this elephantine performance Wes came back in an equally slow 880 in 1:58. Sort like the old saying of 'all of a sudden there was a piano or an elephant on his back'.

Another event that I recall where Track and Field was promoted on television in the 1950's

was a decathlon dual mano a mano between Rev. Bob Richards the 1952 and 1956 Olympic

pole vault champ and Bob Mathias the 1948 and 1952 Olympic decathlon champion.

Richards was also a noted decathlete, so the event was somewhat evenly matched, although

Mathias may have had to come out of retirement. I recall that the meet was televised and

held indoors at the Naval Academy. Correct me if I'm wrong on this as I have not been able

to find a report on the event. I do recall that Richards won the 1500 meters and the decathlon.

The whole thing was a promotion by one of the major TV networks possibly with a Wheaties

sponsorship.

I've never promoted a track meet but I have some ideas in case you are wondering.

This link will give you a hint of what I have in mind for an opening 'act'.

https://youtu.be/l3w4I-KElxQ We would try to arrange for elephants on this one as they did

in Toronto. That was 70 years ago. Some of those elephants might still be alive and living in

nursing homes. The Italians took this event a step or two further in Verona. Check this out

as well as the first violinst.

https://youtu.be/QDLOOpCEvo8

But couldn't you see Noah Lyles being inspired to come out in a tunic and 'perform' in

an event like this? The athletic ballet dancers in the second show leave little to the

imagination.

I rest my case.

George Brose

.George, George, George,

    You and I know that track will never be a spectator sport that people will pay money to see.  There are people I know here in EUGENE that don't know about the Diamond league.  The only time a significant number of people in this country watch track is the olympic trials .    

  We're a ball sport country         

Mike  Waters

..brings to mind the 4th place in the 1941 NAAU at Randall's Island that my mentor--the late  Bob Wingo of Wayne University, my alma mater--clocked with a 47.3 at 400 meters.  

Dr. John Telford

George:  Re: ways to generate interest in track and field:

I have always thought that having a mini track meet at halftime of a football game would not only be exciting, but could create some interesting competitions on a continuing basis for the school involved.  Consider:  a 4 by 100 relay, a half mile race, and a 4x400 relay with runners from the schools with the two teams playing football-- to kill that otherwise dead time filled by boring bands with mediocre music, performing meaningless maneuvers on the gridiron.  It could be extended to even more interesting field events, say pole vault and high and triple jump, which could go in simultaneously with the running events.  Kind of a mini Texas Relays in the 30 minutes between halves.  I don't think longer races would work.  The attention span of the average football fan might not tolerate it.    Oops I left out the 4 x 200 which is a real crowd pleaser.  And I realize that some schools, like the U. of Texas took out their tracks around their football field and moved them to a separate stadium.  So the only relays they could run would be the shuttle hurdles, which are somewhat of an oddity..   But for schools with tracks in their football stadium---and there are still lots of them around---it would be an exciting half-time show, and give those otherwise obscure runners, a chance to runbefore the largest crowd imaginable.     Walt 

Okay for high school I suppose, Walt.  But I'd hate for you to be present at the meeting of the Band Parents Club when your suggestion is put out there.  And the cheerleader moms are some of the most brutal people in the world. They make the Taliban look like a 4H Club.    Careful where you mention this idea.  Of course there probably is not a DI stadium with a track anymore, so it's not an option at college games.

When I was in high school in Dayton in the 1950s/60s we sometimes had a 2 mile cross country meet that started in the stadium a few minutes into halftime and finished ten minutes or so later.  We circled the track once and went out into the night along a highway basically in the dark and back to the stadium.  Started having problems when one of the schools finished ten runners after starting only seven.  The coach had three waiting out on the highway in the dark and they joined the race in the last mile.  But they forgot to remove their last three guys and got caught out.  George