Mute Button On, NBC Called for False Start

Without question, what happened last Sunday in the U.S. Olympic track and field trials at Sacramento was cruelly unfair, a crying shame and a monumental disappointment to track fans across America.

Yes, Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene won’t be anywhere near the men’s 200-meter Olympic final in Sydney, but NBC will.

(Note: If you missed NBC’s tape-delayed-in-Los-Angeles telecast of Sunday’s climactic competition at the trials but would like to re-create the experience, know in advance that the network cramped up down the stretch, then set aside sports section for three hours before reading the next paragraph.)

NBC, the network that will bring you some of the action from the Sydney Olympics, all of it tape-delayed, evidently figured its videotape technicians needed to get in some work before hitting the ground in Australia, so a track meet that ended at 6 p.m. PDT--and was aired live on the East Coast--was held in the can so it could be consumed in West Coast living rooms, in prime time, from 7 to 9.

Some interesting facts and figures they might want to pass around the executive offices at NBC Sports:

* Time difference between Sydney and Los Angeles: 18 hours.

* Time difference between Sacramento and Los Angeles: Zero hours.

So, for no other reason than to plump the ratings in front of a prime-time audience, Day 8 of the trials was delayed locally, turning U.S. track’s “Super Sunday” into a telling preview of coming aggravations from Your Olympic Network.

Seemingly intent on alienating every American track and field fan from here to October, NBC’s telecast featured one jump apiece from the men’s long jump and triple jump finals, and one throw from the men’s discus final. No dramatic buildup, no analysis of the strategy as the competition played out, just high jump champion Charles Austin’s winning leap and let’s clear the way for another round of commercials.

Of course, for the purposes of the telecast, every jump, throw and vault was mere prelude to the final event of the trials, the hyped-till-it-hurt 200-meter showdown between Johnson and Greene. It was TV programming by-the-playbook: Keep them guessing, keep them waiting, keep them watching until the big payoff at the very end.

But then, as luck would have it, a bad case of news broke out on NBC.

As East Coast viewers saw, while it happened, both sprinters pulled up, grabbing their left hamstrings, neither making it as far as 150 meters. The two fastest men in the world, injured and unable to qualify for the 200-meter competition in Sydney.

This was major news, except at NBC, which made no mention of the double blowout during the first 105 minutes of its tape-delayed telecast. Nothing was said at the outset of the tape-delay about both Johnson and Greene having been injured in the final, which would have been good journalism but--as it would have given away the ending up front--lousy entertainment. And rest assured, when it comes to NBC and the Olympics, journalism doesn’t take a back seat to entertainment--it isn’t even on the same freeway.

Worse still, NBC showed the semifinal 200 heats without a cautionary word and maintained the charade as its cameras zeroed in on Johnson getting his legs massaged by trainers “in anticipation” of his final run-off with Greene--even though, in real time, Johnson had been carted off the track in agony hours earlier.

No, the Big Showdown wasn’t “still to come.”

The Big Showdown had already blown up--which any viewer with access to the Internet, the radio, ESPN or an uncle living in New Jersey already knew.

Sadly, only the athletes at the U.S. trials had to finish in the top three in order to reach the Olympics. No such provision exists for television networks, which means NBC is still going to Sydney, even though it got smoked on the last day of the trials by CNN, ESPN and Fox Sports Net.

Thus, we are left with the following unsatisfactory results from the men’s 200-meter final:

* Johnson: Reported to starting line, did not finish.

* Greene: Reported to starting line, did not finish.

* NBC: Finished, did not start to report.

MICHAEL VS. MAURICE: SOME FINAL WORDS

Sorry, the media can’t be blamed for this one.

Until the last 20 seconds of the U.S. trials, the anticipation surrounding the Johnson-Greene runoff had been the best thing to happen to American track and field since the anticipation surrounding the Johnson-Donovan Bailey 150-meter runoff in 1997.

It is sheer coincidence (isn’t it?) that Johnson pulled up lame in both races, limping off into the sunset, cursing both events. But name another track competition since the Atlanta Olympics that had mainstream American sports fans discussing it in advance, debating who would win, actually caring about the outcome.

Four days after the Greene-Johnson hobble-off, U.S. sprinter Jon Drummond was in studio with XTRA’s Jim Rome talking . . . track. Sorry, Michael, but this is good for the sport. So too were the headlines and the reams of copy devoted to the 200-meter final leading up to the race, even if the fit-for-a-prizefight trash talk was off-putting to traditionalists.

For the last 25 years, U.S. track and field has stood around, scratching its head, asking where all the fans went while it was lapped by the savvy marketers behind the NFL, the NBA and the World Wrestling Federation. Track in this country will never regain the niche it owned--and later squandered--during its “golden era” 1950s and ‘60s, but if it is to even compete with the heavyweights in the 21st century, it had better brush up on 21st century promotional strategies, and fast.

Circa 2000, Johnson-Greene carried the right kind of plot line: the two best in the business, a head-to-head matchup, the promise of power and speed, two divergent personalities, a healthy dollop of perceived mutual animosity. And if that animosity was manufactured and contrived for the express purpose of publicizing the encounter, well, it’s nothing Don King hasn’t taken and run miles with for the last three decades.

If U.S. track and field is going to rebuild its fan base, it needs more events like Johnson-Greene and everything that accompanied it.

Up to the last 150 meters.

Johnson, rather melodramatically, accused the media of “forcing” him to run the final and risk injury to his already sore legs because if he hadn’t, “You guys would have killed me. You know that, I know that. . . . I’ve been through these ‘showdowns’ twice and I had no part in building it up. But once that ball gets rolling, you can’t stop it.”

Johnson is half right.

No doubt, he would have been criticized for backing out of the final, but he has dealt with worse. Bailey called him “chicken” after Johnson pulled up in their 150-meter runoff, yet Johnson somehow recovered in time to win a 400-meter world championship later that summer.

But saying he had nothing to do with the runaway prerace buildup is nonsense. Please see Johnson’s guest commentaries for USA Today during the trials, or his daily entries on NBC’s Olympic Web site, or the transcript of his midweek news conference in which he took repeated shots at Greene.

Johnson did his share of stirring the pot, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

As Greene accurately observed once all was said and left undone, the prerace buildup “put a lot of attention on our sport. When you put attention on it, you’re going to bring new people to this beautiful sport. And when you do that, hopefully, you’re going to create new fans for our sport.”

THE BEST SYSTEM AVAILABLE

As soon as Johnson and Greene went down, the cries predictably went up:

We’re not sending our best to the Olympic Games!

There has to be a better way!

Well, yes, it is unfortunate that Johnson and Greene won’t be running in the Olympic men’s 200-meter competition when they were favored to finish 1-2, but, no, there isn’t a better way, and that includes doling out free passes to top athletes injured before the Games.

The only reason Johnson and Greene lined up last Sunday--their first head-to-head race in more than two years--was because it was the only route to Sydney available. At the U.S. trials, the rules are hard and fast: top three or else.

The IAAF, international track’s governing body, offers wild cards to the World Championships for defending gold medalists. Had USA Track and Field adopted the same policy for the Olympics, Johnson could have skipped Sacramento altogether, having doubled in the 200 and 400 in 1996.

And if USA Track and Field offered injury exemptions for top-ranking athletes hurt during the trials, Johnson would never have raced Greene last Sunday. After Saturday’s first-round heats, Johnson was already complaining of a sore right thigh. He could have ended his trials right there, taken the free pass and sat in the stands, watching Greene and others sweat it out in the final.

Not surprisingly, Johnson is a wild-card advocate, although circumstances caused him to curb his campaign after he failed to finish the final.

“I don’t want any wild card because I don’t want any special rules for Michael,” Johnson said. “If you do it, do it after I retire. If you did it now, there would be too much craziness.”

The concept of Olympic wild cards might find a more receptive audience if the best American sprinters didn’t devote all their time between Olympic Games to avoiding one another. As it stands now, the U.S. trials and the World Championships are the only non-Olympic meets in which the best in the United States are compelled to compete against each other.

Take away that leverage and the U.S. trials become just another meet where somebody’s dodging somebody else. And the sport, in this country, can’t take any more of that.