I've always thought that the form charts printed up in the Register Guard (man that's a great track paper) before every U. Oregon dual meet were a big deal. Nothing like knowing a PR triple jump by a walk-on freshman for third place just won a close meet. It buys into the same feeling that the oly trials buys into. Knowing the importance of many places (3rd being the big one in the trials of course) adds more excitement to the thing - a lot more.
Unfortunately, I think that the current Oregon program places much less emphasis on filling gaps in a dual meet team. This ultimately will be a detriment to the program I believe. John Gillespie was the real driving force behind the dual team philosophy, and this former Duck, at least, laments his return to the HS ranks. Cheers, Buck 'Once a Duck' Jones -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, February 14, 2003 10:14 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: RE: t-and-f: can I come back now? It depends...what do you think of Milli Vanilli? Randy Treadway wrote: >You mean the disappearance of meaningful collegiate competition >and the rise of day-long time trial meets that no one wants to >watch? I assume you mean NCAA meets chasing meaningless provisional qualifiers. Give me the best individuals of the world in Zurich chasing world records, with rabbits in every race (something that some people deride as 'time trials') and I'll tune in at 3am every time. As far as 'meaningful collegiate competition', I have to admit that I no longer care less whether Florida State beats Florida or UCLA beats USC. It's totally an individual sport for me, and team scores are something that is superimposed on the top of it for nothing more than provincial bragging rights. That's just the way it is, and I'm not really dissatisfied with it that way. RT >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Randy-You and I will be track fans no matter how boring the sport becomes to the average sports fan. And that average Joe is the dude we're trying to court. Who goes to college meets? Friends, family and super nuts like you and me. We need the average college sports fan, say a fan of Cal or Stanford, to want to go to the Cal-Stanford dual even if he's not necessarily a big track fan. At least Cal and Stanford have one dual on their schedule! Not to pick on just these schools, but what about Arkansas, LSU, Alabama, UTEP, etc. Who wants to go to their home meets? I receive dozens of collegiate press releases each week. These are supposed to make their way into local papers. Do you know what the headlines are? "4 Wildcats post provisional qualifiers." "Bulldogs show well at home meet." "Tracksters qualify 3 more." Who gets excited about that? Look, we're never going to get back to the days of 15,000 people at the UCLA-USC dual meet, but we've got to do something to make track interesting once again to the average fan. Regionals is at least a step in the right direction. Harping on drug use and blaming them for the decline ain't helping either. sideshow
