In golf, tennis, NASCAR, etc., you need to be certified to be considered a professional athlete. You can't simply sign up to compete in an event, rather you have to have your professional "card" to get you into the event. Toni Reavis commented on this last year on Runnerville, the fact that there is a need for a professional certification process in our sport.While you and I may know who are professional athletes, who are semi-professional athletes, and who are amateur athletes, the majority of the public does not. There is very little to distinguish a three hour marathoner from Ryan Hall or Kara Goucher. However, if there was a Pro Card, which USATF could set the controls on, this would offer legitimacy to our sport at the professional level.
This would also provide great status to some events, saying that it's a pro event rather than simply an invitational. To me, having a Pro Card offers a way to organize the sport, promote the sport and give it more credit than it currently receives. In the next few days I'll take a deeper look into the subject, but for now what are your thoughts or ideas towards having a Pro Card or professional certification process?
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7 comments:
Sounds like a very good idea!
What does this card do? I dont see any advantages to this?
It will probably exclude the semi-pro athletes that are struggling to make it.
I definitely think there should be some system in place to help promote athletics as a profession (that is, instill confidence in potential athletes that they can get a steady paycheck by running), but looking to golf and tennis is not the way to go about it. I also don't think "pro cards" are even close to the top of the list when it comes to making the sport more accessible for the public.
For one thing, those sports don't _need_ pro cards to be or remain legitimate. Golf in the US isn't "golf", it's the PGA, which is a for-profit company that has it's own interest in mind when doing things like issuing pro cards. The PGA doesn't need Tiger to pull out a card when he gets to an event to make sure he's legit, for him his pro status is really just a safeguard for the PGA so they have something to revoke if they need to, like to maintain it's appearance if an athlete acts out or gets in trouble. For Bob Smith who qualifies for one PGA event in his life, the card is just an easy, procedural way of handling his eligibility in an arbitrary context for the company. It doesn't make him any more pro than before he had it, it doesn't come with any public notoriety or sponsorships; it's just a formality, and it doesn't help the sport.
In athletics, look at the marathon. You say there's no way of differentiating a 3 hour runner from Kara Goucher. Let's say Kara had pro status, what's she going to do, run in all those pro-only marathons? There's absolutely no way enough race directors are going to host races with 32 or 64 runners (or somewhere the range of other pro events) to make that kind of series or cup or tour worthwhile. If Boston of NY had a separate pro-race before the regular race, now your asking volunteers, police, fans, TV, etc for another 2 (or 4 if you had gender specific races) hours, which won't go over well. If you keep the one-big-race strategy, but call some people professionals, I don't see that having any impact on fan base, or even making the events more exciting for the Letrun crowd that's following it anyway; they look at times and names and that's what matters.
In track, there are also problems with drawing a solid line in the sand to separate pros and amateurs. For one thing, too few runners consistently enter races to make that work. How many professionals are we going to have? The PGA lists about 300 players on the PGA tour, and most are people no one's heard of. Let's say there are 20 track/field events, that means there are 15 pros per event. So if a third of them show up to a meet, that's five pros per event. That's not terribly enticing for fans, and doesn't really legitimize an event saying "this is a pro event!" at all. If you "professionalize" more runner than that, the pool becomes diluted and whole purpose of drawing that line goes away. Also, adding an extra heat of the mile takes 5 minutes, it's not a deal breaker like adding another 10 people to the US open where each match is 2 hours long. If a meet director can add five minute to a meet and get the local 4:30 high schools on the track, there's no good reason they shouldn't; it adds value to the ticket, or at least time to the meet.
Again, I think having a professional aspect in this sport is a great idea, I just don't think it is or should be expected to be an answer to lack of fans or being a sub-prime sport. It is definitely a good way of getting more talent interested in dedicating their life to the sport, which can certainly help athletics and it's image in the long term, but I don't see it helping right out of the gate.
There are too many (thousands, 10s of thousands...) people that love running or even love track and field specifically that spend zero dollars a year on the sport as a spectacle. They are essentially people just waiting for a way to support the sport, even if they don't realize it.
Think of how many different people go to Letsrun, USDR, Flotrack, Dyestat and RunnerSpace on a daily or weekly basis. Those are all people who don't need to be convinced of the sports legitimacy, don't care about who's pro and who isn't, don't need ESPN to televise meets, don't need guys in suits being officials, and don't need to spend $50 on a ticket to watch 45 minutes of the shot put because of some olympic medalists. Rebuilding ideas need (NEED!!) to focus first on bringing in those people to spend a little bit of money on a regular basis, and building a real, recognizable, national fan base (and I mean something track fans can recognize themselves, not other people). All these ideas of attracting new fans and legitimizing the sport are just wasting the fans there already are, but just don't have any way of BEING fans.
The best way I can be a fan of track right now in Boston is by going to the Reebok meet in Feb, going to high school or college meets, going to the High Performance Series in the summer, watching the Marathon, and maybe driving to Penn or NYC to see another meet. That means even if I'm trying me absolute hardest, the most money the universe can make off my track fanship is like $75. Believe me I'm willing to pay more and I don't need a pro meet with pro card professionals to do it.
Our sport is different and needs no stupid card. I think the vast majority of people that would watch a track meet on television realize that if an individual is no longer in college and is good enough to compete on a televised track meet, you're a pro. Of course there are exceptions, e.g. Jordon Hasay, but then the announcer would certainly mention that she is still in high school.
Good post. This is a great idea in my opinion.
I am glad this post created some discussion. That is exactly why this blog is here...to create discussion. Thank you for each of your posts.
Chris, thank you for your very detailed post. I agree with many of your points, but still feel their is a need for some sort of "professionalization" in our sport. A Pro Card is one idea. I also agree with you that to increase the visibility of the sport, USATF and the other powers that be, need to create a better product for the fans that are already in place before spending their time trying to attract in new fans. The more you can give the diehard fans, the louder they will be. Major League Soccer has done a great job with that.
Anyways, thank you for posting on here. Hopefully we can keep the discussion flowing.
Just what we need more red tape. this is such a dumb idea. you give to much power to a organization and take away power of the individual and the meet directors. this is the worst idea i have ever heard.
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