Host city for the next World Athletics Championships. Despite only being the size of Exeter, it apparently has a massive tradition in US Track and Field, especially at college level, was where jogging was introduced to America, and perhaps as importantly was the original home of Nike (the trainers not the goddess). This latter fact makes me wonder if EIM will boycott coverage of the event on ethical grounds?
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Well I admit I’d never heard of Eugene, Oregon
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I spent a few days in Eugene. Like many mid-size US university cities, it's actually very charming. It wouldn't be top of my list of places to be in Oregon - because lots of Oregon is spectacular - but it was actually a pretty delightful place to hang out. It's also - because of the university and the track athletes - ones of the few places in Oregon you might see non-white people.
By coincidence I was there for the 2012 Olympic athletic trials and went along to a day of them. Despite the weather being spectacularly pissy the stadium was pretty packed and everyone was fully engaged and understood what they were watching.
Despite all the Nike money and all the dodgy Salazar drug cheats around Eugene, it'll be infinitely better than Doha: The weather will be a reasonable temperature, if wet. The stadium will have a crowd. The crowd will know and care about the athletes. And it'll be in a time-zone that makes sense for me to watch.
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- Mar 2008
- 3353
- at the edge of the sea
- Plymouth Argyle, Plymouth Gladiators, Seattle Mariners
- cream crackers spread with nutella
They've got a minor league baseball team in the Eugene Emeralds. Class A Short Season North West League, but couldn't tell you the affiliation. That's all I know about Eugene, Oregon.
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We talked about this on that other thread. Nike and U of O - it's hard to know where one stops and the other starts these days - have put a lot of money into the track stadium there and its become the default venue for all US track events.
As I said on the other thread, that's fine, but it does illustrate how track & field is now just a niche sport in the US without a lot of hope to grow. There aren't many tracks in the US with enough seats for more than a few thousand people, nor any reason for anyone to build one (William & Mary, as it turns out, has one of the only reasonably-sized football stadiums with a track that I can think of) so they might as well make Eugene the permanent site.
Track & field had more ambition in the 80s and 90s - Carl Lewis and the whole Dan & Dave thing (fiasco?), FloJo, Jackie Joyner Kersey, etc. Mary Decker, among others, was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. I cannot imagine a distance runner being on the cover of SI now.*
But all the doping disqualifications have really hurt it here.
Plus, the US hasn't had many (any?) T&F champions that are very marketable. The closest we've had in recent years is Usain Bolt and he's not American. I thought with the Olympics coming back to LA that there'd be a surge of marketing and effort from NBC and Nike to try to make us care about it again, but I haven't really seen that.
*I also can't imagine anyone caring who is on the cover of SI now, which is a related phenomenon. SI kinda represented the old sportswriter establishment (Mostly male. Mostly white. Mostly in New York, I suppose, and generally well-educated) and they could just tell America "Hey, you should care about this sport that you don't care about!" and the sports-watching public would go along with that, at least every four years. But no magazine or institution has that kind of power now. ESPN is the most dominant brand in sports and is mostly just about the sports it has paid a fortune to show - NBA, NFL, college football and basketball.
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Originally posted by ursus arctos View PostThe Emeralds are currently a farm team of the Chicago Cubs
The first name thing is indeed unusual, though perhaps understandable given the reputation of skinners at the time of its founding.
Until a few years ago, Oregon didn't even have a baseball program. But Oregon State somehow became a national juggernaut and that was bothering U of O, so they called Phil Knight and he wrote a few checks and now Oregon is a perennial top 25 team along with Oregon State. My understanding is that the high school baseball is surprisingly good in Washington, Oregon and BC and they're able to get a lot of players from California. And, of course, they have like 12 different uniforms.
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I don't know how you expect US track and field to be more marketable: they won 14 gold medals in Doha, which is so far ahead of the field it's unreal.
I was actually thinking about how that benefits the next World Championship. Americans are even more fickle than anyone else about not caring if the sport doesn't have one of their own in it: the track-obsessed guys I cycle with know the splits of the US 1500m runners who didn't win, but seem almost unaware of the non-US winners. Having a really wide field of successful US athletes means that there aren't going to be sessions that the fans can avoid, safe in the knowledge that they're just missing German and Kenyan athletes.
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Eugene would sell out even if the US wasn't doing well.
HP is talking about the broader sports landscape here, and is spot on as to what has happened. Track/Athletics is the best example, but it is a phenomenon that has hurt pretty much all "Olympic" sports as sports media has become increasingly obsessed with the four big leagues and college football and basketball.
Figure skating and gymnastics are outliers to a certain extent, but that reflects the fact that they attract a very different (predominantly female) demographic that has yet to embrace most other women's sports (including track/athletics).
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Originally posted by ursus arctos View PostI'm a bit surprised that more college towns haven't followed that model, though I guess there is a natural limit to the number of such teams and leagues.
Yeah, there are only two single-A short season leagues - the NYPL and the Northwest League and then there are two "advanced Rookie" leagues that play a short season, the Appalachian League and the Pioneer League. I suspect all of those teams would love to have another tenant playing there in the spring, so we'll likely see more of these arrangements and more teams moving to create them. College teams may also partner with summer wood-bat league teams. That fits the schedule too.
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Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View PostI don't know how you expect US track and field to be more marketable: they won 14 gold medals in Doha, which is so far ahead of the field it's unreal.
I was actually thinking about how that benefits the next World Championship. Americans are even more fickle than anyone else about not caring if the sport doesn't have one of their own in it: the track-obsessed guys I cycle with know the splits of the US 1500m runners who didn't win, but seem almost unaware of the non-US winners. Having a really wide field of successful US athletes means that there aren't going to be sessions that the fans can avoid, safe in the knowledge that they're just missing German and Kenyan athletes.
Americans will pay attention to a non-American if they really stand out. Usain Bolt absolutely smoking the field got attention. And NBC has gotten better about not just fixating on the Americans.
But its hard to get any buzz here for any of the non-sprints, regardless of nationality. Shalane Flanagan is an attractive blonde woman who became the first American winner of the New York Marathon in about 40 years and yet she's not really all that famous. I suppose she has a reasonably lucrative shoe contract - there are a lot of hardcore runners who know who she is and might be more likely to buy a certain brand because she wears it - but that is a drop in the bucket compared to, for example, the basketball shoe industry.
One of those new US gold medalists is Joe Kovacs, the shotputter. He went to Penn State so there have been some mentions in the local press, but I'm confident that polling would show very low name recognition around here. PSU is actually reasonably successful at track, and the local running "scene" is pretty big (not like Eugene or Boulder, but lots of committed amateurs), and its not as if the non-football sports here aren't generally well-supported. Many of them are. but college T&F isn't a very fan friendly sport because the home team usually only competes at home a few times a season, at most. Penn State actually has more home meets than most because it now has a very nice indoor facility that hosts two or three big events in the winter, but I think there's just one home meet in the outdoor season. They did upgrade it enough that they could host the B1G championships last year, but that will only come around every decade or so.
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Originally posted by ursus arctos View PostIt's ok
99 percent of USians have never heard of Exeter
As for Eugene, this would be my word-association response ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Prefontaine
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Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View PostTrack & field had more ambition in the 80s and 90s - Carl Lewis and the whole Dan & Dave thing (fiasco?), FloJo, Jackie Joyner Kersey, etc. Mary Decker, among others, was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. I cannot imagine a distance runner being on the cover of SI now.*
At some point in recent years, Sports Illustrated had ceased to be an idea and instead became a brand. Once that happened, it was doomed.
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