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.
While some superstar athletes do very well for themselves in this setting (see: Usain Bolt), the vast majority struggle to make any money (I've written about that before; no need to rehash it all). Most of the money in athletics ends up going to the organizers of the sport: international (IOC, IAAF) and national (USOC, USATF) federations -- no different than when athletics really was an amateur sport pre-1980. The rest of the professional sporting world has left athletics behind, which is largely stuck in a 30-year-old model.
The problem is that the same institutions that governed the sport in the amateur era are still in charge today. The IOC and the USOC are the easy examples, but the IAAF and USATF are legacy bodies, as well. The Amateur Sports Act (1978) carved the USATF directly out of the old Amateur Athletics Union (AAU) -- so nothing really changed there. As for the IAAF, well...it didn't even have to change its initials: from the International Amateur Athletics Federation until 2001 (!) to the International Association of Athletics Federations. Big difference there.
In my view, athletics will never be a fully professional sport until it adopts a professional association of athletes, like the ATP/WTA in tennis or the PGA in golf. The amateur legacy institutions are just too entrenched, too enriched by the status quo to make any substantial changes to the format and presentation of the sport.
Athletics should be following the models of tennis and golf, as there are remarkable similarities. All of those are largely individual Olympic sports with a (near) global reach in terms of both audience and participants. There's just one fundamental difference: tennis and golf long ago both adopted a professional model with professional organization and professional tournaments and professional athletes. Athletics, on the other hand, remains wed to the amateur ideal of the Olympics.
Looking to the tennis and golf model, we can see that dual-governance is extremely productive. The roles of the national / international governing bodies vs. those of the professional organizations are clearly defined. The USTA and USGA are responsible for (among other things): enacting basic rules and regulations, certifying courses, insuring events, selecting national teams, hosting international competitions, and providing grassroots opportunities for youth and masters competition. The ATP/WTA and PGA, then, are solely in charge of defining, promoting, and developing the professional sport.
In the world of athletics, there is no organization that is entirely devoted to professionalism. Heck, there's not even a standard definition of what it means to be a professional track & field athlete! USATF tries to promote professional sport, but they have too many other responsibilities and not enough manpower or money power to do so competently. The nascent TFAA could (and should) step into that role, but time will tell how political and financial pressure hold sway.
So those were the bodies governing the sport, but now what about the rules they impose? After all, I did say that athletics is governed by amateur rules. While I could write on and on about those rules, I'll simplify it to two (both of which come from the Olympic charter but are enforced by USATF/IAAF):
Both of these rules are holdovers from the amateur era, originally meant to maintain the image of athletes as gentleman competitors, unencumbered by the influence of crass commercialism. Unfortunately, that crass commercialism pays the bills. Don't think for a second that the IOC doesn't know this -- they take full advantage of that commercialism for themselves, as long as it's limited for the athletes. Commercial athletes athletes, after all, may ruin the purity of the Games -- or at least the profit margin.
It's 30 years beyond time to get rid of Rule 40 and Rule 50. It's time to get rid of any and all sponsor regulations. Individuals should be free to display as many sponsors on their kits as they wish -- in whatever form and size as they see fit. This is where a professional association would come in handy, because it will take one to permit rules (or lack thereof) such as these. Until that happens, athletics will remain a shamateur sport.
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 professional either. It's shamateur.While some superstar athletes do very well for themselves in this setting (see: Usain Bolt), the vast majority struggle to make any money (I've written about that before; no need to rehash it all). Most of the money in athletics ends up going to the organizers of the sport: international (IOC, IAAF) and national (USOC, USATF) federations -- no different than when athletics really was an amateur sport pre-1980. The rest of the professional sporting world has left athletics behind, which is largely stuck in a 30-year-old model.
Institutional Inertia (Or, Alphabet Soup)
The problem is that the same institutions that governed the sport in the amateur era are still in charge today. The IOC and the USOC are the easy examples, but the IAAF and USATF are legacy bodies, as well. The Amateur Sports Act (1978) carved the USATF directly out of the old Amateur Athletics Union (AAU) -- so nothing really changed there. As for the IAAF, well...it didn't even have to change its initials: from the International Amateur Athletics Federation until 2001 (!) to the International Association of Athletics Federations. Big difference there.
In my view, athletics will never be a fully professional sport until it adopts a professional association of athletes, like the ATP/WTA in tennis or the PGA in golf. The amateur legacy institutions are just too entrenched, too enriched by the status quo to make any substantial changes to the format and presentation of the sport.
Athletics should be following the models of tennis and golf, as there are remarkable similarities. All of those are largely individual Olympic sports with a (near) global reach in terms of both audience and participants. There's just one fundamental difference: tennis and golf long ago both adopted a professional model with professional organization and professional tournaments and professional athletes. Athletics, on the other hand, remains wed to the amateur ideal of the Olympics.
Looking to the tennis and golf model, we can see that dual-governance is extremely productive. The roles of the national / international governing bodies vs. those of the professional organizations are clearly defined. The USTA and USGA are responsible for (among other things): enacting basic rules and regulations, certifying courses, insuring events, selecting national teams, hosting international competitions, and providing grassroots opportunities for youth and masters competition. The ATP/WTA and PGA, then, are solely in charge of defining, promoting, and developing the professional sport.
In the world of athletics, there is no organization that is entirely devoted to professionalism. Heck, there's not even a standard definition of what it means to be a professional track & field athlete! USATF tries to promote professional sport, but they have too many other responsibilities and not enough manpower or money power to do so competently. The nascent TFAA could (and should) step into that role, but time will tell how political and financial pressure hold sway.
Changing the Rules
So those were the bodies governing the sport, but now what about the rules they impose? After all, I did say that athletics is governed by amateur rules. While I could write on and on about those rules, I'll simplify it to two (both of which come from the Olympic charter but are enforced by USATF/IAAF):
- Rule 40 - You may have heard of this one before, as it has definitely caused the most controversy. Basically, it creates a five-week blackout period around the Olympics, during which time Olympians may not appear in any commercial advertisements -- unless, of course, that advertiser is an official sponsor of the Olympics (see how the rules benefit the organizations and not the athletes?). So at the height of their marketability, athletes and their sponsors are actively prevented from capitalizing. Enforcement has even gone so far as to restrict athletes' voices on social media. No wonder companies are hesitant to sponsor athletes in Olympic-dominated sports. I will mention that this Olympic cycle has seen a mild update to the rule (read about it here), which has only resulted in athletes that failed to qualify for the Olympics being used in Olympic-based advertising.
- Rule 50 - Ever wondered why track & field athletes don't just wear logo-laden uniforms like NASCAR drivers or cyclists or golfers? Rule 50. You may be less familiar with this one, but I think it actually has a larger impact on athletes' professional potential than Rule 40. This is basically a series of guidelines restricting advertising on athletes' uniforms. Technically it only applies to competitions during the Olympic movement, but since USATF and IAAF are tied to the US/IOC, it affects all their competitions as well -- which is to say, every competition. USATF has a four-page .pdf file detailing the requirements to be Rule 50-compliant. Read it and wonder why companies don't sponsor more athletes -- spoiler alert, its because the rule renders logos near-invisible. But that only applies if your company primarily manufactures apparel; know an athlete who wants a non-shoe/apparel sponsor? Too bad, can't put the logo on a uniform.
Both of these rules are holdovers from the amateur era, originally meant to maintain the image of athletes as gentleman competitors, unencumbered by the influence of crass commercialism. Unfortunately, that crass commercialism pays the bills. Don't think for a second that the IOC doesn't know this -- they take full advantage of that commercialism for themselves, as long as it's limited for the athletes. Commercial athletes athletes, after all, may ruin the purity of the Games -- or at least the profit margin.
It's 30 years beyond time to get rid of Rule 40 and Rule 50. It's time to get rid of any and all sponsor regulations. Individuals should be free to display as many sponsors on their kits as they wish -- in whatever form and size as they see fit. This is where a professional association would come in handy, because it will take one to permit rules (or lack thereof) such as these. Until that happens, athletics will remain a shamateur sport.
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