In prior articles I have expressed that America has a track and field problem. We win more medals in international competitions than anyone else in the sport, but American sports fans have no idea that is even a fact. This is only true because track and field in America is barely a thing at the pro level, forcing all of our best athletes to go overseas to compete for anything of note. All the real track fans are watching on YouTube more than anywhere else, to see footage of races that already happened somewhere around the world. However, this is a problem that can be solved. Americans do like track and field, and our athletes are really good at it. We just need to fix how we do it. All that takes is to study what actually works to entertain the fans and give the people what they want.

Here is a legitimate proposal on how American can fix the sport, based on what sports fans have already proven works. The three things that actually work to hold the attention of Americans when it comes to track and field, are the Olympics, the Penn Relays, and ironically the D1 SEC championships. Pro track should borrow a little from all three to make something unique to America.

The Olympics 

The Olympics works for one simple reason. It’s supposed to be the best athletes in the world all in one place competing. Never mind the fact that track already does that almost every other year with the World Championships, because people don’t care. The Olympics is all they understand, because that’s all they know about. Fans know what the NBA Finals represents because it is marketed to us as the best teams in that league competing in a winner take all series. So whatever you do, it is best to have one big event that is marked on the calendar for American fans to know which team, is the real champion.

The Penn Relays

After that the Penn Relays is always entertaining, and for a while had a good run of television coverage on NBC. People tuned in because the Penn Relays solved the entertainment problem that track and field has. When a track event goes off, especially the sprints, there is only action on the track for a brief moment. But that is only because the athletes are warming up and priming their bodies for over an hour before the moment the gun goes off. They give the best performance they can at maximal effort, and best case scenario will need about another hour to prepare for another effort just like it.

The Penn Relays throws so many teams in one place, competing against each other, that the meet schedule is always moving with entertainment on the track. When one race ends another is beginning. It’s that simple. No awkward pauses occur while they clear the track of the hurdles, or set everything up for the steeplechase. The fans want to see action, and a lot of it. It’s hard to solve this problem, but it needs to be taken into account. Restructure meet schedules at any pro track event in America so that the maximum amount of entertainment can be put on the track all the time. Fans don’t want to wait around for you to get things going, because social media killed our attention spans.

The SEC Conference Championships 

The SEC track and field championships might as well be the best event in college track, perhaps even more than the NCAA Championship. This is because teams are facing off for a championship. It makes sense to you as a fan because you know that the Florida Gators brought all of their best men to compete against the Arkansas Razorbacks, and only 1 team is leaving with the trophy. The athletes compete harder because winning the event is just as important as the performance itself, and scoring points matters. Even getting sixth place in an event can be the difference in your team winning and losing, so you compete that much harder. When you lose that intensity, the only thing left for a fan to care about is how fast the time was, or did somebody break a record. Simply put we have to care who wins and who loses, beyond the person in first place. Otherwise the fans lose interest very quickly.

What Is the American Track League? Is it a solution?

The American Track League is a step in the right direction, but nobody really knows about it. There are no teams that make sense, and no true championship. At present it’s basically a logo used to host meets that nobody cares much about. If America built upon that foundation to create a functional track league that ran from April into June, they could complete all the meets before the USA championships and still allow the top athletes to run in the Diamond League later that year if they wanted.

Start off with a league of 8 teams, that compete in four regular season meets, 2 dual meets, and 2 quad meets. Base the teams out of American cities that have a home track they can use, and aim to host 1 meet on that track so fans have a reason to show up. Teams can be men’s and women’s sides like they are in college. But to start off the league, every team drafts their players into the league basically fantasy draft style, and every year from there we do a traditional draft just like the NBA with only 2 rounds of men or women each, and 2 picks for every team. The kicker is that the teams are comprised of athletes across the 18 primary individual track events including the relays. That means a full roster of men should be about 36 men. The team coaches will be a collection of the professional coaches for athletes who’ve already made team USA in the past four years in any international championship. After each meet gets scored, and the regular season meets are over, the top 4 teams on record compete in a winner take all team championship. That’s just 1 event on 1 track to make it clear which is the best team.

The Bottom Line

The athletes will love it because they hate flying from country to country anyway just to throw a shot put or run 100 meters. They can even prep for the World Championships without having to do any international travel which apparently is far from ideal. More importantly American fans can understand it. Just replace all the unimportant pro races we run in America right now, with this model and see how well it goes. NBC is looking for track events to show anyway, so you might as well give the people what they want. America is way too good at track and field, for nobody who actually lives there to get a chance to watch it and appreciate it. Even though Noah Lyles was right about people not paying attention to track and field athletes, his points don’t matter too much. The NBA champions are not the world champions, in fact that would be Germany. Regardless the NBA is recognized as the best professional basketball league in the world, and the most entertaining. So whoever wins that league is all that American fans will ever really care about.

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