Flashes of Panic

Part of a press release I got today prompted me to look in to the stakes for USATF’s new Visa Championship Series.

The male and female Visa Champion will share a $50,000 jackpot, and each will receive a trip for two to a premiere Visa-sponsored event of their choice, including the Super Bowl, Pro Bowl, Kentucky Derby, Pebble Beach Weekend or Tony Awards.

Sweet. So, as an award for “the top overall performance” in a four-meet series, an achievement which could very well mean outperforming the very lengthy history of the sport (with an American record or even world record,) we will reward these supposedly-professional athletes, who have trained full-time for several years, with something less than the starting salary of an Alabama schoolteacher, and the chance to to be just another spectator for some true professionals (in the “really overpaid” sense of the word,) who earn more than that on a daily basis, in a gaudy spectacle watched by a few hundred times as many people as watched this “top overall performance.”

I’m a long way from the first to point out how pathetic this is, of course. And I realize that USATF and the sport as a whole don’t have the cash to support a truly impressive award. But I really wish they’d stop pretending it was something spectacular.

Maybe it would help if we announced all sports prize money or salary figures in millions. This one, for example, is .025 million dollars. Compare, please, with the average salary in the NFL. There’s actually a figure to the left of the decimal point.

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