mikecohen said:
helltopay1 said:
so sad to see the demise of Caltrack&field. our teams of today are only a shadow of the teams presented by Cal when I was a lad. dual meets were common . of course, neither Cal nor Stanford were nearly as good as the two powerhouses, USC and UCLA. Nevertheless, individual Cal athletes, namely don Bowden, Leamon King always competed well in the many relay events regularly held in fresno, Modesto, and Bakersfield. Those cities hosted a two-day event which featured the top high school, JC and top AAU performers as well as the top college performers of the day. We used to either hop into a car or take the bus to these cities and grab a motel for the entire weekend. Fabulous meets. Those days are long gone. Edwards stadium will soon become either a parking lot or it will become a student dormitory. I forgot to mention monte Upshaw. Leaped 25 feet four and a quarter to win the State Meet when he was a senior. He also beat the great Rafer Johnson in thev 180 lows by running 19.0 flat. johnson came in second in the identical time. Johnson won the Highs by running 14.3. Uposhaw came in second by running 14.5. Any other track and field nuts on this site???
Me -FWIW -- Also, re the remarks about TV: It seems to me as though the way TV covers T&F these days is very entertaining. They've developed a format of organizing the events and videos thereof so that something is happening on-screen of particular interest at any moment. Unlike the real-time long stretches between events, which are fine in person, 'cause you can freely scan the field and race preparations for all sorts of interesting stuff while you're sitting in the stands on a great sunny day, those stretches would be death on TV.
The problem with track is that the amazing part of what the athletes do doesn't happen at the track in front of the crowd. It happens on an empty track at 6:00 am every day, in the weight room, etc. The amazing thing these athletes do is train to get to that point. When they step into the blocks, though, it isn't that compelling unless you know a story behind it. I think that is why the Olympics works, but people ultimately ignore for 4 years.
I remember seeing dot racing for the first time and people calling the A's lame for doing it and the fans lame for playing along. But I felt those people didn't get that we were poking fun at ourselves as humans. Because ultimately a race is a race whether it is a human, a dog, a horse, a car, or a dot. Unless you know the back story.
One of the most compelling races I have seen was a distance race I watched years ago. It wasn't a particularly important race. What happened is there were two guys from countries that were mortal enemies in the race. Neither was supposed to win. One decided to go out front and leave the pack. The other chased. The pack didn't respect them and ignored them. The commentators did a good job in explaining the dynamic. So you are watching these two guys side by side waiting for them to break. They never did. They pushed each other to a 1-2 finish in that race.
Unfortunately, though, college track is just not compelling to most. Cal has not been good for many years. Edwards' days have been numbered for a long time when you factor in that the school needs the land. My feeling is that Christ is making a smart political move here. The school needs the land, with or without the stadium situation. The school needs to pay for the retrofit with or without Edwards. By linking two unrelated but necessary actions, it looks like a compromise instead of just doing two separate things that would each have vocal opponents.