Bring Back the Mile

Everyone in the country should know who Bernard Lagat is.

Everyone in the country knows who LeBron James, Payton Manning, Tom Brady, Michael Phelps, and Michael Johnson are. They are the best at their craft: forward, quarterback, swimmer, sprinter. Lagat? I don't know. Alan Webb? Maybe. Jim Ryun? Steve Scott? Vaguely. Everyone in the country should know these names.

The Mile should be as easily celebrated as the 100 Meter Dash for the casual sports fan. It is four minutes long and fits into most attention spans of the American couch potato. It is more dramatic than stock car racing, more exciting than golf, and not as time-consuming as any of the Big Four team sports. As a student, athlete, and coach of track & field of course I am going to have these feelings, but I am also the guy who can sit happily and watch a marathon or 25-lapper on the track and not get bored so I get pissed when they go to commercial in any event longer than four laps. I'm an adult so I appreciate that not everyone is going to share my feelings on the 10,000 meter, but surely we can all get together for less than four minutes and watch the Mile, right?

Alan Webb had a chance to bring the country back to the Mile in 2001. ESPN broke away from SportsCenter then to show his attempt to break Jim Ryun's national high school record in the Mile. He did so. To my knowledge, ESPN hasn't done that since and instead has broken away from Lagat winning distance races to go to an attempt at a no-hitter a few years ago. I swore off ESPN for a whole month after that I was so pissed. I know a whole month--I really showed them.

Back to Webb... he had his chance. It has been a topsy-turvy decade for him. He went to Michigan and then left that great situation for reasons passing understanding. He had his best season ever in 2007 setting the American Record in the Mile, and then followed that up in 2008 with one of his worst seasons. He has gone through coaches and training partners and is still kicking. He is trying to make it to London this week in either the 1500m or the 5000m. I don't expect him to make it in either event. Anyway, he had his chance.

Why isn't the Mile the premier event in track and field? How is it not celebrated by sports fans and casual fans alike? Part of it is our doing... in a lot of states, high school associations run the 1600m instead of the Full Mile (1609 meters). On the world stage they run the Metric Mile (1500m) and the 3000m instead of the 3200m or a true Two-mile. Confused yet? In college indoors they run a full mile but outdoors they run the 1500m at championship meets. Pick a distance and go with it, people! In this regard, I feel we (the USA) should just do ourown thing: The Mile. I feel that is the most commonly asked question of a runner from a non-runner: "How fast do you run the Mile?" I usually just tell them my 1600m PR and not bother with the global-political sports landscape.

Another issue is coverage. NBC, ESPN, etc. are great... for televising sports that do well on television: football, basketball, and even soccer is getting good pub. Track just doesn't work on television to me (it can it just doesn't with the team sports' suits running the show). It does work very well online though with knowledgeable people and analysts who care deeply about our sport. Think Ryan Fenton & Flotrack.org, Doctor Bob & distancepreps.com, and Jason Byrne & Milesplit.com. When these guys get the chance to be the central body for covering our favorite events in the sport they knock it out of the park (forgive the baseball analogy). When I see that NBC or ESPN has the video rights to an event I groan because I know the coverage is going to be piss-poor to lukewarm at best.

If these guys had the sort of power (and probably more importantly money) to get the rights to cover our sport 24/7, it could go a long way to getting people more interested in our sport. Even if it didn't, maybe more average people would be able to pick Lagat out of a line-up...or at the very least be able to not only watch but really enjoy the Mile.

All men are created equal...

That is to say no matter to whom you might be attracted.

A Federal appeals court recently overturned a part of DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act of 1996) to the delight of many progressives, liberals, and people such as myself who do not care what people do with their private lives. This decision that you can read about in the USA Today is really just a precursor to this debate moving up to the Supreme Court. The sooner the better. The more this topic is discussed and debated in public the better; that is how progress is made even if there are a few setbacks along the way.

Gay Marriage is a common sense issue to me. I just do not understand how so many people get nervous with the idea of two men or two women living next door having the same basic human rights as my wife and I. William M. Welch reported in his article that "because of the law [DOMA], same-sex married couples in states where such unions are permitted are denied federal benefits including Social Security protections and access to family health coverage as well as joint tax-filing status." 

Injustice anywhere is threat to justice everywhere the last time I checked. 

When Amendment 2 was on the Florida Ballot in 2008 (for the record I voted "No" but it passed nonetheless), one of the arguments against Gay Marriage was that it undermined marriage between a man and a woman. Really? How does any marriage (gay or straight) affect my marriage? The marriage next door is not my business; the one inside my house is and I certainly don't need the government or a church telling me how to live my life. 

Furthermore, it seems to me that with the divorce rate still hovering around 50% that "man and wife" haven't exactly been the ideal when it comes to making things work. Granted some people shouldn't have been married in the first place, but can't you try and gut it out for more than a year? Maybe we should give same-sex couples a chance to show the rest of us how to be married since so many heterosexual couples are unable to hold up their end of the bargain. Or we should take away all the rights married couples have period until everyone is treated equally under the law: "Oh, I am sorry, sir you can't come in to see your first son be born; we have revoked all visitation rights." That might change things up pretty quickly.

It comes down to this: we live in a vast, strange world where governments, small businesses, corporations, churches, families, friends, individuals are all trying to have a say in the way we should be living. A lot of that is negative influence, a lot of it is positive. In a world where so many people are trying to pull us in so many different directions with malicious or benevolent intent, why should we be legislating against something as basic and essential as love? Healthcare, foreign affairs, the deficit, and education are important issues that deserve healthy debate. 


Love between two consenting adults deserves admiration from each of us; nothing more, nothing less.