FROM THE NCAA GUIDE: \u201cThe American people have shown a fondness for sports events that can be completed in the time of two hours or less. There is no reason why all the track meets cannot be finished within a space of two hours time.\u201d<\/p>\n
File that quote under the plus \u00e7a change category. Here\u2019s the rest of the quote: \u201cAt the 1929 NCAA meet the program with the exception of the pole vault was completed within 1 hour and 53 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s right, we\u2019ve been fighting the bloated track meet concept since time immemorial. (I hasten to add that the \u201829 NCAA meet was single-sex and didn\u2019t have the steeplechase, 10,000, any relays, triple jump, hammer or multi-events. All the prelims\u2014which meant all but the last three attempts in the field events\u2014and the 2M were held the day before.)<\/p>\n
The final day of this year\u2019s NCAA Championships (that would be Sacramento on June 9) harkens back to the old days when it comes to wham-bam-thank-you-mam. The decision was driven more by the need to fill a TV window than anything else, but on Saturday no fewer than 17 finals\u20145 on the field, 12 on the track\u2014are going to be crammed into a window of just under two hours.<\/p>\n
That\u2019ll make a good TV package, and it\u2019ll be a lot of bang for the buck for the people in the stands. If they don\u2019t mind morning track, that is. To fit into an East Coast TV window, you see, the meet kicks off at 10:00. Would you believe a meet that\u2019ll be done in time to go have a beer after the meet and it\u2019s not even noon?<\/p>\n
While I\u2019m a fervent believer in keeping meets nice and tight, I\u2019m having trouble getting warm and fuzzy feelings about this year\u2019s concept. It\u2019s one thing to go to an invitational meet and be entertained; it\u2019s quite another when it comes to deciding national titles, where every event is a gem and deserves your (almost) undivided attention.<\/p>\n
Forget those 5 field events.<\/p>\n
Putting on an announcer\u2019s hat, let me break down the presentation for you. All the field events are slated to begin at 10:00 (why do they have to begin at the same time as the racing?). Properly introducing the field for each jump\/throw will take 2\u20133 minutes, so that series of announcements needs to begin about 15 minutes before the meet actually starts. With a race going off roughly every 8\u00bd minutes starting at 10:05, that\u2019ll be about the last you hear of the jumping and throwing.<\/p>\n
Roughly speaking, there will be only about 24 minutes of actual racing in the period between 10:05 (the start of the first race) and 11:52 (the end of the last). But when you add in 2:00 for introductions before each race and another 2:00 after each for letting the buzz die down and the reading of the results off the scoreboard and doing video replays there\u2019s another 44:00 gone.<\/p>\n
So now we\u2019re down to 39:00 left for the field events. But wait! You\u2019re forgetting that the NCAA does 8-deep victory ceremonies for each event, and those take about 3 minutes apiece, if lucky. So divide 39:00 by 3:00 and you get 13 victory ceremonies (and there are 17 events). So not only do we have a shortfall on basic time, we\u2019ve not allotted a single second for announcing field events.<\/p>\n
Last time I looked the name of the sport was track and field.<\/p>\n
Memo to the NCAA Track & Field Committee and the Sacramento Sports Commission: since you\u2019ve still got a couple of months in which to do so, please reconsider your proposed timetable, even if it\u2019s only to boot all the victory ceremonies into a post-competition window. Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"