New ESPNU channel leaves out track...

[GtheK]

ESPN is launching a new channel, ESPNU, dedicated solely to college sports. Obviously everyone expected the programming to be heavy with football and basketball (the big money sports), any mention of track or xc is absent (unless you count "and more")

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=2004351

The NCAA might be the best avenue for quality track in the U.S., since most of the big elite meets take place in Europe.

But even with a channel with only NCAA sports programming, we'll see a women's volleyball game of the week before we'll see the Stanford Invite.

So, is track really that impossible to watch, or does it just do a terrible job of marketing itself?

[Kevin]

Re: New ESPNU channel leaves out track...

My vote goes for the latter thought. What most of the other sports have that we lack is TEAM competition. During the halcyon days of collegiate track, some of the key competitions were the dual meets. While that is not economically feasible right now, a step in the right direction might be to stress the team nature of the NCAA regionals, and perhaps have team challenges at key relay meets during the spring.

I am under no illusion that we are going to create a "May Madness" phenomenon (like college basketball's March Madness for my European friends), but why not try to tap into a strong affiliation many people feel for certain colleges?

[bad hammy]

Re: New ESPNU channel leaves out track...

Getting a little more team spirit could not hurt, but note that tennis, golf and NASCAR kick T&F's TV butt by a wide margin, and they are individual sports also.

[MJR]

Re: New ESPNU channel leaves out track...

College coaches don't want to have a w/l record because it exposes how crappy they are doing, in general, in recruiting and coaching more than their specialty area events that they know.

Tennis and Golf get far worse TV ratings than what T&F is shown on TV. they get more time because they have industries behind them that have products to sell and that will buy the advertising space. Another way to look at that equation is to look at the number of ads in any Tennis or Golf magazine and compare it the T&FN.

[trackstar]

Re: New ESPNU channel leaves out track...

>Getting a little more team spirit could not hurt, but note that tennis, golf
>and NASCAR kick T&F's TV butt by a wide margin, and they are individual sports
>also.

Maybe if we could have Gatlin and Greene collide and explode into a fireball ...

[gh]

Re: New ESPNU channel leaves out track...

<<So, is track really that impossible to watch, or does it just do a terrible job of marketing itself?>>

1. All the sports they mentioned, except wrestling, were pure team sports.

2. Wrestling, like many/most of the others they cited, is a snap to televise (1 camera, 2 at most). Track is horrid (no worse than football, but football's bucks cancel that comparison out).

3. Much/most of that they're talkign about will already have professional-level TV crews in place, so the infrastructure already exists. To start doing track meets would require a lot of ground-up engineering. Somebody cited the Stanford Invitational. As part of the OrgComm for both the GP meet and the couple of nationals that were there, I can tell you that it's a large and expensive project (and one that screws a lot of spectators) getting it set up there. Unlike football and basketball venues, track stadia are not constructed with televising in mind.

So matter how good the track competition is (to us), it has horrid logistical strikes against its getting aired.

[KevinM]

Re: New ESPNU channel leaves out track...

>College coaches don't want to have a w/l record because it exposes how crappy
>they are doing, in general, in recruiting and coaching more than their
>specialty area events that they know.

This is simply a false statement. There are many reasons that w/l records are rare in collegiate track, but "crappy" coaches has nothing to do with it.

What's the source of your ire? More racewalk bitterness? I'm not poking fun. I'd really like to know.

[MJR]

Re: New ESPNU channel leaves out track...

Kevin

Look at the majority of rosters and the quality of perfomers in spots that are outside of the head coach's specialty event(s). You will find athletes who are there to fill out spots and get them the needed number of performers at the needed number of meets. I'm not talking about the powerhouse schools that wash the deck w/ everyone else, but the average schools.

All of these schools, especially the D1 ones, avoid scored meets like they were Ebola. It exposes them to their AD's as not having complete teams and they can't hide behind the 1 or 2 athletes who they have breaking school records. These programs get trounced in their conference meets by ridiculous margins and barely make a blip on the team points radar. They have a singular focus on getting those 1 or 2 kids into a post season meet, without any care or concept that they are screwing the whole sport because they are myopic or not qualified to be anything more than an event specialist.

There is simply no intelligent reason for all but a few meets every season to not have team scoring. Unless, of course, someone is afraid it will show how weak their team(s) are.

[KevinM]

Re: New ESPNU channel leaves out track...

Mike,

Sorry to bring this up from so long ago, but I still feel I need to come to the defense of the coaches in the US.

I am as big a believer as anyone that team track needs to be embraced by collegiate coaches and ADs, but your implication that sheer laziness is the root of team track's decline is unfair.

A far more likely culprit in these unbalanced teams is simple funding issues. With a few notable exceptions, the teams that finish at the top of the national rankings are the schools with the largest budgets. These are schools that can afford to keep the largest number of coaches, have the full 12.6/18 scholarships, and sponsor enough women's sports to avoid gender equity roster size issues on men's teams.

I don't doubt one bit that there are some "lazy" coaches in the collegiate ranks. I know some of them. The collegiate coaching world is so screwed-up, however, that even the "lazy" coaches I know work 60-70 hpw and sometimes go 30+ days without a day off. Yes, summers are light, but it doesn't change the fact that college coaching is a thoroughly time-intensive field. To blame coaches for the decline is complete track teams is to ignore several powerful extenuating circumstances that are outside the control of the coaches.

[dukehjsteve]

Re: New ESPNU channel leaves out track...

Kevin, it's just a dreamworld to think that TV can emphasize team scores in Track effectively. This is not Cross Country, but an amalgam of individual events. The general public has NO interest in team championships in Track... same in Swimming. Particularly in these new NCAA Track Regionals, as to my knowledge there either is no such "title" and even if there were, it means nothing.

[KevinM]

Re: New ESPNU channel leaves out track...

Steve, I agree a bit with you, but quite honestly, I don't really care if the "general public" has any interest in team titles.

[RMc]

Re: New ESPNU channel leaves out track...

Several points:
D1 teams field limited event specific teams due to limited scholarships. T&F is the only NCAA sport with fewer scholarships than team "spots" i.e., events. Some teams can spread out, but most have to focus to survive. Change the funding level and we'll see more broadly based teams.

Several years ago I suggested a team oriented "Cup" competition akin to the Euro Cup with regional qualifying etc. I think it would be particularly difficult with the addition of the Regionals (which I support). But given my point above, I'm not sure that this would even be feasible anyway.

On team scoring, with the Finish Lynx type systems in place now, meets can be team scored by computer instantly. A savvy meet director could flash up team scores right after the individual results. However, team scores get lost in the large meets where there are only a few individuals from each team present.
One solution at the NCAA might be to have team "qualifying" in which only the teams that advance a certain number of athletes of a certain caliber out of the Regionals can contend for the team title. This would be like the season champ finale that NASCAR used this year. That way the spectators would know which teams to focus on through the meet, and teams that sweep the hammer on the first day could be ignored if they're not in the team competition.

[here goes]

Re: New ESPNU channel leaves out track...

I'll give a few reasons why track meets don't do well on TV.

1. To preserve the illusion of a meet being broadcast live, ever false start, and footage of people messing around in their blocks, warming up, etc. is shown REPEATEDLY. If they showed back to back races, similar to the nonstop action of a highlight show but showing just the race, that would be fun to watch.
2. Human interest stories that are injected into the broadcast, especially for big meets. This wouldn't work for any other sport, why is it supposed to work for track?
3. I know this one will be controversial, go ahead and fire away, I think I'm just being realistic. Mixing in women's events with the men's makes it less exciting to watch. Again, looking at other sports as a model, people just like watching men's sports more.

[sprintman84]

Re: New ESPNU channel leaves out track...

Of course we all know track and xc get no respect in the sports world (the US sports industry)

[paulthefan]

Re: New ESPNU channel leaves out track...

I know this is not going to sound nice and kind
but another reason that track fails to get attention is that it is perceived as a CO-ED sport... while the media types love this fact and provide large helpings of biographical material for track meets as main course, the average sports enthusiasts has no interest in watching women run. Let alone run faster than he can... Most women viewers on the other hand find the viewing figure skating much more feminine and appealing...... it may sound ugly but men dont much like to watch women in sports... that is just the state of nature at present.