Collegiate Track and the Team Sport Model
by Steve McGill

In the previous article I discussed professionalism in track and field — a topic inspired by the mess surrounding the Grand Slam Track League. In this article I want to discuss collegiate track and field as it relates to the professional ranks. This article is inspired by a quote I saw from an NCAA coach after DI nationals: “Track is a team sport.” Well it is and it isn’t. The question I want to address in this article is whether or not professional track can learn something from collegiate track that can help to grow the sport at the professional level, or is that even a realistic possibility?

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Here’s where I agree with the college coach: there needs to be more dual meets, more tri meets. At every level except the professional level, track meets are too damn long. Youth meets last for days and sometimes never end. Most weekend high school meets last all day; even weekday meets go well into the night. And at the collegiate level, again, meets go on all day long. Back in the day, dual meets were quite common. The UCLA vs. USC dual meet was known as a classic, but all around the country, at both the high school level and the collegiate level, dual meets and tri meets were pretty much the norm for the bulk of the season. Weekend invitationals and relay carnivals were relatively few and far between, and the huge amount of teams at end-of-season championship meets indicated that the meets held huge significance. 

Nowadays, every meet has a huge amount of teams. Every weekend there’s an invitational or relay meet with dozens of teams competing. Most of these meets feature rolling schedules, so athletes aren’t sure when they should begin their warmup. And if family members or friends want to come see you race, you can’t tell them for sure when they should come because you don’t really know.  Compare that to a team sport like basketball or football or volleyball or soccer. You know when the game is going to start, you have a good idea of how long it will last, and you can schedule the rest of your day around the game. Dual and tri meets allow for a similar experience. Such meets last two or three hours, and because there are only two or three teams competing, it’s easy for fans to follow the action, to know when to come to watch, and athletes don’t have to spend their entire day at the track meet. In that sense, these smaller meets are fan-friendly, athlete-friendly, and coach-friendly. 

But to call collegiate track and field (or track and field at any level) a team sport is missing the mark. Yes, team points are counted, team medals are awarded, team champions are crowned, but individual performances are what matter most. In the 2024 Olympics, for example, Femke Bol did more for her team than Sydney McLaughlin did for hers. Femke ran in the mixed 4×4, the 400 hurdles, and the women’s 4×4. Sydney only ran in the latter two events. Femke won gold in the mixed 4×4, but that heroic performance arguably cost her in the 400 hurdles, where she not only lost to Sydney, but to Anna Cockrell as well. While I’m sure she doesn’t regret running the mixed 4×4, I’m sure she wishes she had given herself a better chance to upset Sydney in the 400 hurdles.

Track at its highest levels celebrates individual performances. We remember Usain Bolt running 9.58, but we don’t remember how many medals Jamaica won that year, and we don’t care how many points he would’ve scored if team points were counted. We remember Karsten Warholm running sub-46 in the 400 hurdles at the 2021 Olympics. We remember Noah Lyles coming back from last place to eke out an incredible 100m victory at the 2024 Olympics. Take a look around and identify your own examples. I don’t think that creating a professional league with teams, and having meets in which team points are kept, would make track and field more attractive to casual fans. Track, by nature, is a sport in which each event is basically its own world, its own universe. Each event has its own history, its own rising stars, its own established stars, its own intricacies and complexities and strategies and challenges. 

But I don’t think that organizing professional track and field as a team sport, similar to collegiate track and field, would necessarily be a bad idea. Like I said in the other article, professionalism in team sports like basketball and football and baseball entails being paid by the team that you play for. If track and field had a similar setup, that would at least allow athletes to earn a salary without relying so heavily on shoe contracts for their professional survival. Each team would have their own sprinters, hurdlers, throwers, jumpers, etc. The league would need a commissioner and team owners, general managers, coaches just like other sports leagues. Obviously, there’d also be a need for sponsorship and a TV deal.

But would fans buy in? I’m a Philadelphia sports fan. If Philly had a professional track team, would I root for them like I root for the Eagles and 76ers? Would I feel invested in team scores and want the Philly team to beat teams from other cities? That would require a complete mindshift in how the sport is viewed by fans, and also in how the coaches coach and how the athletes train. As it is now, professional athletes specialize in one event, maybe two. If the focus were to become more team-oriented, then competing in multiple events would be the norm. Someone like Sydney, for example, would run the 400h, the open 400, the 100h, the 200, and whatever else. The Olympics and World Championships would, in a sense, have to become an afterthought, as competing for your team would be paramount. 

Is that what we want? I don’t know. I don’t know if keeping things the same is best; nor do I know that making changes just to say we made changes is a good idea either.  

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