Runnerville

If you haven’t checked out the feature story on Nike at Forbes.com, do so. Nike provides an interesting case study in choosing leaders who will allow companies and organizations to sell themselves to a broad and diverse audience. That’s exactly what the USATF must do in the wake of CEO Craig Masback’s departure for — who else? — Nike.

Nike decided they needed a “sports guy” (as opposed to a business guy) to take the helm and market to specific sports, not just paste the swoosh everywhere. I believe the USATF needs a “business guy” (or gal) who is not solely concerned about what’s best for the athletes, but wants to market the sport of running to the loads of potential fans out there. One person even suggested hiring the highest-ranking non-future-commissioner of the PGA Tour to come over to the USATF and reproduce its structure (amateur/pro tours) and national exposure. That’s so crazy, it might just work!

A note to the USATF: Please, for the sake of our sport, choose a leader who will think as much about the fans as he/she does about the athletes. Ideally, this would be primarily a business person. If they happen to lace up a pair of running shoes every once in a while, bonus.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to spreading the gospel of our sport will be the un-ghettoization of the running community. Basically, we’ve created little running ghettos that support a conversation meant only for insiders. If we want people “out there” to realize the beauty of our sport and tune in, we’ve got stop being so proud of the exclusivity of our sport and begin to speak to them about it in a language they can understand.

It’s true, if you think about it. Runners and fans of running tend to be so enthralled with their identification in an elite and secretive sub-culture, that they relegate their conversations to insider Web-based communities and running / track clubs only accessible to, well, insiders. Not to knock these communities at all … they serve a great purpose and are a source of inspiration to many. My point here is not to bash the existence of a running sub-culture or the ensuing conversation, but to encourage a broadening of that conversation in order to increase visibility.  (this phenomenon isn’t exclusive to the running community, of course. every specialized group struggles with this)

Questions: How does the conversation broaden? How does change realistically occur within the machine that is running, and what role does Runnerville play in that? How does Runnerville avoid the pitfall of being another insular venue for the running community to talk to itself?

Well?