The League

By Jarrett Felix

Track and field, for all intents and purposes, is an individual sport. In high school and college, there is a team competition element and in the Olympics, we will count medals, but compared to a sport like basketball or baseball, the logistics and excitement are inferior. For that reason (in part anyway), there is no professional cross country or track league in the United States (or the world, but as a typical self-centered American, I’ll keep it to the US). However, a couple of exciting new groups are taking a stab at making this possible. And no, none of those groups are etrain crica 2014.

Let’s back up a second. First, there was the American Track League. You may have seen the Atlanta or Houston meets on TV that featured some of the nation’s best athletes like Ashton Eaton, Ajee Wilson, Matt Centrowitz and Clayton Murphy. The meet let fans down to the track, had cheerleaders and tried to make the sport more spectator friendly. I have my own personal qualms with it (the kids on the track clamoring to steal Jenna Prandini’s headband weren’t my favorite and there was some suspect interviewing), it seemed to generate some excitement from the youth and at least get people talking. Plus a Murphy vs. Centrowitz match up in a 1k made me drool a little bit.

But the ATL was missing something. So enter the TrackTown Series. When we talk track, it seems it’s impossible to avoid the “Historic Hayward Field” (count the number of times this phrase is said on a typical ESPN NCAA broadcast. It may actually be possible that you can’t say Hayward Field without the Historic), and former U of O Head Coach Vin Lananna is working hard to create track’s first ever league featuring a legitimate team concept. The league will have four teams: New York, Portland, San Francisco and Philadelphia (shout out). Each team will feature both male and female competitors competing in a variety of distances and field events. And there will even be a 4 mile road race where fans get to toe the line with pros.

The first event is coming this Friday night beginning at 9:30 east coast time on ESPN. Not too shabby. It will feature some 2016 Olympians including top flight medal contenders like Matt Centrowitz, Shannon Rowbury, Brittany Reese and even Canadian Melissa Bishop. Again, we are talking minimum amounts of shabby-ness. The goal is to have 2 athletes from each team in each event (they get pretty close to this goal, although it’s not always perfect) creating a total of 8 participants and then awarded points based on finish. It’s 9 points for 1^st, 7 for 2^nd and then 6-5-4-3-2-1 for the next six places. At the end of the first night, the winning team will be awarded a trophy for their efforts.

The teams are set and you can find them here. Same can be said for a schedule of events at this link. What you probably didn’t know, is that there was actually a draft for this league (Philly’s first round pick Boris Berian isn’t competing in this year’s event) on Twitter where many of the top names were revealed and put on teams. However, that wasn’t incredibly well marketed so even a die-hard fan like myself didn’t tune in to the twitter-verse until it was too late.

Which I guess leads to the part of the post where I get critical. I want to stress that, overall, I think this is a fantastic idea and I’m optimistic this will be an interesting innovation that draws in a few more fans and, at the very least, gives an opportunity for athletes to grow their brand and make more money from the sport. I’d love to see our best athletes get some support. But I do have one or two (or seven) criticisms of the process so far. And heck, most of them aren’t even really the organizers fault, they are more just issues with how are sport is set up in general.

For starters, it’s hard to believe they put together a team competition without some type of relay. Maybe a 4x100 where you pull in your long jump talent to help with the sprints, a medley relay of the distance or sprint variety or a classic 4x4. All would be worthy additions to the itinerary. But relays aren’t possible. For people who have so much money invested in their health, they won’t want to take silly risks in events that aren’t their specialty. Sounds stupid, but unfortunately I feel like it’s the way people think. Basically everyone trains super hard for one meet (Olympics and world champs) and everything else is just supposed to be part of the plan.

They also won’t have official team uniforms as far as I’ve heard. They will have colored bibs which is a decent substitute, but I’m really sad we won’t be seeing some cool uniforms. I would buy a Philadelphia (Insert Sponsors Name Here) racing singlet for sure. The teams can’t do uniforms because of sponsorships. The primary moneymaker in our sport is your shoe contract and people from Asics or Brooks don’t want their athletes wearing other people’s gear during the few times of year where the athletes actually race (and they aren’t wearing Nike dominated team USA garb).

I get it, but can’t they compromise and make shirts in a certain color and just change the logo depending on the athlete? To me, it seems like a better marketing opportunity anyway. Like I would buy a Robby Andrews jersey for sure. Adidas just slaps on their logo large and in the corner or the back or whatever and just makes it the New York team’s color. Then I’m wearing the Adidas logo and I’m paying them the money to wear it. Seems like a good return on an investment for sponsorship dollar in Robby Andrews. That’s a win for everybody. Sponsor, athlete, track league and Jarrett Felix, certified Robby Andrews enthusiast.

And I gotta say, I feel like the point system is a little too complicated. I’m not sure I’m really going to want to be doing the math during the men’s 1500 trying to figure what it takes for Philly to stage a comeback. I’m more of a fan of the 5-3-1 system for 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd. I like math and all, but coming up with one set of circumstances has to fall into place when literally everyone in the field will score points in a given just seems way too complicated. I mean imagine if in basketball, there were six basketballs and you had 1, 2, 3 and 4 pointers. The last possession would be impossible to keep track of and lack drama, even with incredibly capable announcers (which, guess what, track and field has struggled to find).

Sorry, I know I'm harshing the vibe here and probably coming across as a bit too negative. I just enjoy the sport. A lot. And I want it to be more socially acceptable that I do. And this league could really do something about it.

And that’s the thing. This idea is really great. If we can find the right system (and this will take time, no matter who is in charge and what the ideas are), then we could get something pretty exciting going for our sport. Our old methods aren’t working. We need to get innovative and we need to take chances. Doing something different, even if not perfect, to try and break the mold, get some publicity and grow the sport is an awesome idea. I know I will be watching on Friday night (even if it’s past my bedtime) and I hope plenty of you will as well.