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NCAA Championships – All About the Format
This year there were two things to talk about when looking at the NCAA Championships. One was the competition – and this year’s competition was as stellar as ever! The other was the format as the powers that be thought it was a good idea to split the meet into TWO separate meets – a men’s meet and a woman’s meet. Personally I would prefer to focus on the competition, but spending the week attempting to enjoy the meet I have to give my two cents on the format. For my money the format sucked. The announcers kept making reference to the fact that the athletes got a full day…
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NCAA Regionals?
The NCAA Regional "meets" were held this past weekend in Austin TX (West) and Jacksonville FL (East). Did anyone notice? They were overshadowed by what was an AWESOME Prefontaine Classic. Hard to gain attention when there’s a mini world championships going on! But I have to feel that they also suffered from their own format. Note that they were "meets" and not "Championships". And I somewhat question if they were even "meets" given that ultimately there were no "winners" – just a bunch of "qualifiers". What the NCAA had done is split it’s Championships into three separate meets. There are the two Regional meets which basically serve as the Trials…
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Prefontaine was HOT!
Once again Pre was as good a meet as any on the planet. Which begs the question, why can’t we do this more often? It’s a rhetorical question of course, because the simple answer is MONEY! It takes a boat load of money to put on a quality meet these days, and who has that kind of money laying around? Yes, Eugene touts itself as "Track Town USA", but let’s be real – it’s in Nike’s back yard! Nuff said. I’ve said for years that the answer to track and field’s "issues" with attendance is not tied to street races, concerts, or pole vaulting in the parking lot. The answer…