Thursday, April 27, 2006
The politics of Track
While Track and Cross Country are "pure" sports in that they generally reward the people who work the hardest and show up the slackers, the sport has a long and wierd history of being governed by coaches and officials who have never run a step in their lives. The stories are legion concerning top runners who are disqualified after a race for minor rule book infractions ( I'm thinking of the girl who started out wearing a headband which is legal but was disqualified because the headband slipped down around her neck where it was ruled a necklace which is not allowed). There are whole books written on the subject so I'll get to my point.
CONTINUED
ESPN has an article about a Track coach who was fired for submitting inflated times on an entry form for a big meet. While this sounds like a major infraction... and I am not advocating the practice... It is equivalent to the way heights are listed for basketball players, and weight is listed for football players. They are always wrong but they are tolerated if you could make a plausible case for them being close. For example you can list a 6'0" basketball player as 6'2" or 6'3" but you couldn't list him as 6'8". Similarily you could list a 5:10 miler as having run 5:00 but not 4:50. Coaches assume a certain amount of shading but they won't tolerate outright lies. In the ESPN article it sounds like the AD was looking for a way to get rid of the coach for personal reasons, otherwise there is no way that an AD would investigate his own coach for somethig like this. The fact that the football coach took over just seals the deal.
Was there a point to this rant? Sort of. There are two types of people in our sport. Those who have run and understand just how hard the atheletes work, and those who have never run but enjoy using the rule book to mess with people. It makes for some very interesting situations.
You can read the article here.
Read more!
CONTINUED
ESPN has an article about a Track coach who was fired for submitting inflated times on an entry form for a big meet. While this sounds like a major infraction... and I am not advocating the practice... It is equivalent to the way heights are listed for basketball players, and weight is listed for football players. They are always wrong but they are tolerated if you could make a plausible case for them being close. For example you can list a 6'0" basketball player as 6'2" or 6'3" but you couldn't list him as 6'8". Similarily you could list a 5:10 miler as having run 5:00 but not 4:50. Coaches assume a certain amount of shading but they won't tolerate outright lies. In the ESPN article it sounds like the AD was looking for a way to get rid of the coach for personal reasons, otherwise there is no way that an AD would investigate his own coach for somethig like this. The fact that the football coach took over just seals the deal.
Was there a point to this rant? Sort of. There are two types of people in our sport. Those who have run and understand just how hard the atheletes work, and those who have never run but enjoy using the rule book to mess with people. It makes for some very interesting situations.
You can read the article here.
Read more!
