Okay, having competed in track and field since the 7th grade might make me biased, but I believe it is one of the greatest sports in the world. After all, who else gets to compete on coed teams past the third grade?
Track has one of the highest participation rates of any sport. It exemplifies the “student athlete,” with 11 out of 29 female and 7 out of 29 2006 NCAA postgraduate scholars being from track. People of all ages are now running, with charity marathons becoming more popular every year.
Yet when you look at major sports news sites, you don’t see Track and Field on the menus. On ESPN, you have to click “More+” and then “Olympic Sports” is ranked there with Bass Fishing, Action Sports, Rodeo, and Cricket. A confusing arrow on Olympic sports takes you to NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics in Torino. After three clicks, you finally get to the track and field page. It’s an ugly news wire with no images.
Yahoo Sports isn’t much better. Off the Sports Link, you must select “More,” which takes you to a page with tons of links. After searching through these links, you finally find “track and field” under “Other sports.”
Track and Field (known simply as “athletics” outside of the USA) fares better in Europe, where the sport is enormously popular. The BBC has its own dedicated site for “Athletics” that is up-to-date, interesting, and loaded with images.
I’m not blaming the sports websites. Instead, it is up to track and field to be more proactive in getting its news covered. Television coverage was somewhat better this year, with live coverage of the NCAA championships for the first time since 1982. 1982?!?!?! We need to do better than this.
1 Comment
Found A Great PR Grad Student Blogger :: Karen Freberg at infOpinions? · July 2, 2006 at 11:04 pm
[…] Yet another post of Karen’s is about how sports sites don’t seem to give the women track athletes the recognition they deserve. I have to agree. It is one of the unfortunate sides of sports. I can remember when track drew big crowds. Stadiums would be full and TV would actually cover it – even live TV. Sadly, those days are gone. But, the athletes are still here and tremendously talented. It is a shame they don’t get more coverage. […]