Track
This
weekend was the NCAA Indoor Championships in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and we
only had one athlete at the meet so I didn’t make the trip. I’ve been to a lot of NCAA Championships over
the years and if I don’t personally have an athlete there I don’t feel I should
go. I do some work with Austin Bahner,
who made the meet in the Heptathlon, but we already had three coaches going.
Instead I
went to Lincoln, Nebraska, to watch the Division III Championships. My best friend, Kevin Lucas, is the head
coach at Mount Union in Ohio and he had his team there competing. I rarely get to see Kevin so the four hour
drive north was no big deal. We hung out
for a couple days, did some socializing, and I got to see the meet end with
Mount Union winning the 4x400m relay! It
was Kevin’s first NCAA title in that event and he was definitely fired up.
Watching
the D3 meet was very cool though because these kids were in it for the love of
the sport. Now don’t get me wrong, there
were some very fine athletes, but the enthusiasm and passion for track and
field was on great display and I’m glad I got to watch it in person.
Thanks to
ESPN3.com I was able to watch the Division I Championships on my phone. If you weren’t able to see it you missed
probably the most exciting finish in NCAA history. On the women’s side, three teams had a chance
to win the meet and it all came down to the 4x4. Oregon outleaned Texas, winning by two
hundredths of a second and grabbing the NCAA title by half a point! Both teams also broke the NCAA record in the
4x4. What a finish!
Speaking
of watching track on TV, last week I happened to catch the SEC Indoor
Championships on ESPNU, and was I disappointed in what I saw. The SEC meet is always the most competitive
conference meet in the country and I was excited to watch it, even on tape
delay. The meet was basically reduced to
90 minutes of uninteresting highlights, with very little attention paid to the
field events or the drama of the team races.
Every year at our national coaches’ convention, the powers that be talk
about how we need to make our sport more watchable so that it can be marketed
and put on television. The problem is
when a meet is on television, the people who televise it don’t know what to do
to make it interesting.
I was in
Europe this summer and was lucky to watch several meets on TV while I was
there. They do a much better job and
show ALL of the events, including the field events, which often have more drama
than the running events. The problem
with US broadcasts of track is that they show some of the running events and
only show the best jump or throw in the field events. In my opinion a track meet should be shown
like a golf match, try to show as many things as possible and let the story tell
itself. So often, in an entertaining
golf tournament, the drama is built by bad shots just as much by great
shots. Track is the same way, someone
who has some pull please tell ESPN and NBC this!
More and
more, everything is going online so I do have hope that eventually our sport
will learn how to show our sport more effectively. I agree that we can do a better job of
putting on a good show at the track meets, and the TV networks should do the
same.
Once
again I didn’t get out to any movies (kind of tough until the summer), but I
did watch the Usain Bolt movie called The
Fastest Man Alive on YouTube. It is
a 2012 documentary made about the sprinter, detailing his training,
competition, and off the track life during the 2011 year. I had heard about this movie but never felt
like watching it because I feel like I’ve seen everything about him I could
possibly see but once I started watching I got sucked in. I really loved seeing the footage of him as a
14 and 15 year old, running 21 seconds and looking like a baby giraffe on the
track. I’ll link it down below, it’s an
entertaining 85 minutes. Thumbs up.
DVD
Choice of the Week (from my collection):
I’m going with another Coen Brothers classic with the 2007 drama No Country for Old Men. This movie is another reason why I love Coen
Brothers’ movies so much. They always
try to do an original movie for an old concept.
In this one, Javier Bardem plays a hit man/serial killer who is chasing
around Josh Brolin while Tommy Lee Jones plays a cop trying to catch them
both. It is tense from the opening scene
until the end and one of the things you might notice is that there is hardly
any music in the film. I never saw it in
the theater but wish I would’ve because I can imagine how intense it would have
been to see it with a crowd. It’s one of
the highest rated movies on IMDB and deservedly so.
Everything Else
Shocker
basketball heads into the NCAA Tournament as a #1 seed and to everyone’s
surprise, they are in by far the most difficult region of the entire
tourney. Three of last year’s Final 4
are in their bracket along with teams like Kentucky, Duke, and Kansas
State. If they get past Kentucky/Kansas
State in the second round they would likely rematch with last year’s national
champion Louisville. I think I saw the
Chicago Bulls and the LA Clippers in the bracket as well!
While I
was in Lincoln, Nebraska, for the D3 nationals, I went out with Kevin to
socialize with the locals. Once they
found out I was a coach at Wichita State they pretty much gave me a hard time. That’s normal when you are visiting a “major”
university town. Schools like Wichita
State (or Kent State where I went to school) always get looked down upon even
when their own basketball team (or any other athletic team) is far inferior. I always laugh it off but can’t help to stand
up for the little guys. I went to a
small high school and we always wanted to compete against the bigger city
schools in Cincinnati, often beating them.
20 years later I am still in the same situation!
I was
selected for jury duty today. This was
the first time I’ve ever been selected and fortunately it’s during our spring
break so I didn’t have to miss practice.
I was interested in the process but all I ended up doing was sitting in
the waiting room all day before being told I could go home. I got paid $10 and mileage so I won’t be
retiring anytime soon.
Website of the Week
Jayski.com
Keeping
with the auto racing theme, I always enjoy checking out the Jayski
website. It was founded in 1996 by a
grassroots organization to keep up with the daily news of NASCAR. Eventually it partnered with ESPN but
remained the same simple looking and informative website. I don’t get to watch as many races as I’d
like because of the track season so this is where I go for great info a few
times a week. It’s so much better than
the official NASCAR website, which is too much into graphics and a bulky
interface. I hope this website continues
to provide great coverage of auto racing long into the future!
Interesting articles and videos to
waste time with
The epic Kansas basketball rivalry that wasn't (Wichita State/KU)
Between Two Ferns with President Obama - hilarious (video 6:36)
1994 video about "What is the Internet anyways?" - made me laugh (video 1:28)
31 of the most exotic swimming pools in the world - crazy stuff
3 part video series of Steve Nash's final days as a professional athlete (~30 minutes total)
Usain Bolt - The Fastest Man Alive (Movie) (video 84:57)
