The CEO of USA Track and Field, Doug Logan, was dismissed today. This bit of news is of note because it might be the perfect way to start off this blog. There is wide speculation on why exactly Mr. Logan was dismissed but it seems that the wide consensus is that he did not do enough for the sport of track and field to raise its popularity in the mainstream. When board member, Deena Kastor, an Olympic bronze medalist in the marathon was asked about the dismissal she responded, “``It came down to reviewing his performance and not finding great results in the past 2 1/2 years and (his) not being able to fix things brought up in our evaluation of him,'' Kastor said (Hersh, 2010).
There are plenty of people within the sport that are making running cool again and social media is the one leading way. Twitter lets fans interact and follow their favorite starts ranging from the fastest man in the world Usain Bolt to America’s marathon hope Ryan Hall. LetsRun’s message boards serve as a gathering for many fans to talk about the sport. Flotrack, a video website, is providing the coverage the sport never had (Lobby,2010). Track and Field is the number participation sport in high school (Jones, 2010).
Despite this social media boost, track is still considered a very minor sport. TV coverage is lacking at best. Of all the track and field events on this summer, the most viewed running broadcast happened to Shaq VS. featuring Tyson Gay. According to a Runner’s World poll, 13% of runners surveyed did not know who Ryan Hall or Meb, American Silver medalist in the Marathon, were (2010).
Now, I should explain a bit on why I am starting this blog. My name is Cara Hawkins and I am a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin. For one of our class assignments we are to pick a subject that we care about and relate it back to advertising. I have chosen to examine how to advertise or market track and field. I hope to every week to bring some aspect of advertising in track and field to you. I guess I should to share a bit more about myself. I ran track and field for a small D2 college, Carson-Newman and was an unsuccessful middle distance runner. I am currently training for a marathon. I interned for Runner’s World my last semester of undergrad and I am currently working for Flocasts that owns Flotrack.
So tune in next week when I kick off the series.
Cara
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BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATION: Hersh, P. (2010, September 13). Globetrotting. Retrieved from http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/sports_globetrotting/2010/09/usa-track-field-dumps-ceo-logan.html
Jones, G. (2010, September 4). Number of prep athletes up. Retrieved from http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20100908/BLOGS06/100909571/1008/SPORTS
Lobby, M. (2010, September 1). Social media making running cool again. Retrieved from http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=20360
