Running Shorts

With the Olympics coming up in three weeks, I thought this would be the perfect time for a three-part series about the state of the sport. After all, this is the one time every four years when people outside of the insular track world actually care about athletics. It wold be easy to come up with a list of complaints about the sport; however, I'm deciding to take a positive outlook (on both the topic and my own running performance), so instead I'm going to fix running (and jumping and throwing) in three easy steps. Shamateurism to Professionalism Athletics exists in a state of shamateurism . On the one hand, it is a professional sport, in that individuals athletes can make money from it (how much they actually make is appalling, but still...). On the other hand, athletics is governed by amateur rules that directly limit the ability of its professional athletes to make money. It's this weird, nebulous purgatory that definitely isn't amateur but isn't fully profes...

(...besides growing a "boring" sport into a popular mass media spectacle.) In a word: Sponsorship. Just watching the Masters, I couldn't help but notice how many golfers had multiple sponsors on their kits. Obviously, most have a club sponsor (this would be the equivalent of a runner having a shoe sponsor) that also provides a uniform. But then many more had other corporate sponsors as well...some related to the golfing industry, others not so much. Check it out with Adam Scott, pictured below: Adam Scott, photo from google images. Just in this picture, you can see four sponsors: Titleist (that'd be the club sponsor) and Footjoy (a golfing shoe), shown on his hat. And then Mercedes-Benz and Uniqlo (clothing) on his shirt. Nascar is the same, except even more ridiculous. Compare that to Nick Symmonds: Nick Symmonds, outspoken critic of sponsor regulations. In terms of visible sponsors, he has a grand total of...one. Brooks running shoes . That...