Glad I got out before this complete disaster. Don't really want to follow the Logan Hightower battles. What happens if she doesn't get selected as chair of the board????
Glad I got out before this complete disaster. Don't really want to follow the Logan Hightower battles. What happens if she doesn't get selected as chair of the board????
Do you people get what you are saying and complaining about?!?!?! "The USOC doesn't want democracy...yadda, yadda, yadda..." Whaaaaa. That is excatly why track and field is a joke in this country. Professional athletics is a business...not a freaking club that you can join buy simply paying a $25 fee. Name one professional sports league that Hightower could get HIRED on in ANY position. You are all complaing about who got elected to manage the national intermaurals. Get over it!!!
The word is "intramurals" and there is no valid comparison between USATF and any "professional sports league."
The pres deal is over and done with.
Now I'd like to see USATF give us a clear direction and status on
1) Bid process for the 2009, 2010, 2011 USA Outdoor Championsips.
2) Bid process for the 2012 USA Olympic Team Trials.
3) IAAF regulation track stadium in L.A. (Sports Arena lot)
4) Freeing Web Video rights from broadcast TV rights.
5) New contract with Getty Images
Technology wrote:
TV ads are priced by TV viewership. If packing stadiums was important you can give away free tickets to students. Jay Leno, David Letterman, reality shows, have tiny audiences in the studio.
That's right, because a professional sporting event is so much like the Late Show. So were you on the LOC for the Athens World Cup in 2006 that managed to sell a few hundred seats leading up to the meet and then opened the gates to let anyone roll off the street and come in and they still had awful attendance in the f***ing Olympic Stadium?
If you give it away for free: a) you devalue it and b) you can never plan on getting anything in the way of ticket revenue again. Sporting events need to look popular before you can bring in sponsors. If no one is willing to watch it in person, what makes a sponsor think that people will tune in to see this thing that can't even get 5000 people to watch?
And could we please have a little professionalism when it comes to the broadcasting of our sport? Some ex-cross country runner with a handheld camera and his buddies cheering and making noise does not make our sport look appealing to companies looking for an audience to which to market their products.
Admit though that our sport would die if it stayed in Eugene or any one place for that matter. We have to expose the next generation to track and field and running, and to do that we should move our premier events around the country. We should give our people the freedom to record and broadcast sound, pictures, and videos. That's how we expand and make our sport more popular.
I'd rather see the meet in Kansas City, St. Louis, or Chicago than back in Eugene over and over and over again. Those are much more interesting destinations. The moneyed interest (Nike) is running the sport into the ground. Hayward + Eugene = Backwater
Im Sick and Tired wrote:
We don't need your or Eugene's sanctimonious treatment of our Olympic Team Trials and USA Outdoor Championships. They belong to us and not to Eugene. USATF should have an open bidding process to give all interested associations a fair shot at the 2009 Outdoors, etc. Spread it around. The tens of thousands of USATF volunteers all over the nation deserve a chance at it too.
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Sure thing. And let's make it a requirement to guarantee that 20,000 spectators are in attendance for the men and womens 10,000m.
Who's next on the list?
AMEN, Ditto, Agreed. Eugene is where the sport is supported so let them host. When school children like these naive Letsrun posters have a real say...the sport will be lost.
I'd rather see the meet in Kansas City, St. Louis, or Chicago than back in Eugene over and over and over again. Those are much more interesting destinations. The moneyed interest (Nike) is running the sport into the ground. Hayward + Eugene = Backwater
Those places are too hot / humid in the summer, but are fine during the spring and the relays season.
The OTs and USA Outdoors should be held up and down the western states where the weather is good in the summer.
Nine out of 29 USATF Olympic medalists live in Southern California which is regarded as the track and field capitol of the world and that alone should put them in the mix for the OTs/Outdoors.
I'd like to see Home Depot, U of W, Sacramento State, U of O, Stanford, Mt Sac, Boise State, on the rotation. Other western places too.
But you will definitely ruin our sport by having it in the same place all of the time.
Admit wrote:
Admit though that our sport would die if it stayed in Eugene or any one place for that matter. We have to expose the next generation to track and field and running, and to do that we should move our premier events around the country. We should give our people the freedom to record and broadcast sound, pictures, and videos. That's how we expand and make our sport more popular.
Absolutely. Which is why I was encouraged to see a beyond capacity stadium in New York for the Reebok meet this year. But I was even more impressed when 20,000 people stayed to watch the men and womens' 10,000m in Eugene. There's a shortlist of cities in the world where you can expect that kind of turn out.
Its over and done with wrote:
The pres deal is over and done with.
Now I'd like to see USATF give us a clear direction and status on
1) Bid process for the 2009, 2010, 2011 USA Outdoor Championsips.
2) Bid process for the 2012 USA Olympic Team Trials.
3) IAAF regulation track stadium in L.A. (Sports Arena lot)
4) Freeing Web Video rights from broadcast TV rights.
5) New contract with Getty Images
Wasserman media and trackshark have the rights to most of usatfs stuff. But usatf isn't going to let anyone with a camera show up at nationals and shoot video.
Yeah, and Osaka, Beijing, and Berlin are too hot / humid in the summer. Too hot / humid for what?? It's a SUMMER SPORT! We need to choose athletes who can prepare best to perform in hot and humid conditions.
So aside from Deena being a good runner, what relevance is her endorsement of Hightower? Does holding the AR for the marathon make her qualified to influence organization positions, and ultimately decisions? Hell no. If track and field was a sport anyone cared about this dysfunction wouldn't continue.
Deena, discus thrower Aretha Thurmond & I believe walker Philip Dunn are the three athlete reps voted on by the Athletes Advisory to the new board (20% athlete representation to board per the Ted Stevens Act).
Stephanie (president) and Bob Hersh (IAAF Council) are the other two members of the new board, with ten spots left to fill.
BTW Deena and Aretha were the two active athletes appointed by CEO Doug Logan to join the original 7-person panel (the one with Carl Lewis, Mel Rosen, Benita Fitzgerald Mobley, three USOC people & Ralph Mann) to examine USATF per his Shin Splints blog on the high performance aspect:
http://www.usatf.org/about/leadership/ShinSplintsBlog/?b=9
The AAC called Logan on it, stating that there were no active athletes on the high performance audit panel.
BTW, Jon Drummond is your new Athletes Advisory chairman, replacing Sandra Farmer Patrick.
playing the slot machines... wrote:
BTW, Jon Drummond is your new Athletes Advisory chairman, replacing Sandra Farmer Patrick.
Kind of makes you wonder what they are advising the athletes on doesn't it??????????
Jamaicans are very loyal fans. They come out in droves each year at Penn Relays and Icahn are make up 85% of the crowd.
Wasserman media and trackshark have the rights to most of usatfs stuff. But usatf isn't going to let anyone with a camera show up at nationals and shoot video.
Our sport is dead if all we have planned at USATF is old fashioned TV coverage. We will be swamped, stomped on, and kicked in the teeth by BMX, Club Volleyball, X Games, NASCAR, and Nathan's Hog Dog Eating.
To expand track and field in the U.S., USATF should release video rights to any website producer for free so that coverage is totally complete with all of the athletes in the finals, heats, prelims, race walk, hep, dec, warmups, locker room interviews, etc.
Today, with old TV, all we see are highlights and the top 3 finishers. New video and new media are the wave of the future.
Agreed, thanks. Runners, many times, have no perspective. Your perspective is appreciated, because in the whole scheme of things, this is totally insignificant.
So are you proposing to have the USA Outdoor Championships and Olympic Team Trials in hot and humid Beijing or Osaka ? (Berlin is mild in the summer). That won't work either. It's too expensive to fly to Asia for a U.S. National event.
American fans want are fickle and want the USA Outdoor Championships and Olympic Team Trials in the USA, and in the mild U.S. west. That's a given.
A couple things about USATF voting.
1. The 5- and 3-hour voting times are windows to allow people to cast their ballots in between various meetings they might have to attend. Think about it as "polling hours" in a U.S. election.
2. Similarly, it may be easiest to equate the delegates-only voting w/ the Electoral College, although w/ a bit more freedom to vote their minds (they aren't quite as bound by the wishes of their state/association as the Presidential Electors).
While it might sound idealistically democratic to say "we have the technology, let every USATF member vote" think for a minute about the ramifications of that statement. Under those conditions, 8-year-old Junior Olympic participants would have the same voting privileges as an open distance runner (or a race walker, mountain/ultra guy, etc.). If you think the American electoral system is screwed up, how do you think that would work?