Watching the NCAA Championships (from the comfort of home)

What a world we live in! To think we now have live webcasting of the NCAA Div I Cross-Country Championships from Terre Haute, Indiana, with on-the-course updates of the score every kilometer or so. Very impressive, and a sure way to make the sport more popular, right?

Well, I'm sorry to be a wet blanket, but the web coverage convinced me that for the time being the mass appeal of cross-country will continue to be limited. I mean, I loved being able to watch the race, not just read the results. But I can't imagine anyone but a die-hard finding the coverage compelling, and here's why:

1. Those commentators

There must be some FCC requirement that commentators for running events have to be either former athletes incapable of making their own sport interesting or broadcasters borrowed from another sport who lack any real knowledge about running. How else to explain the universally poor commentary?

The only exception that comes to mind is Toni Reavis, but he can't be everywhere, can he?

Yesterday, the commentators made a huge big deal out of Rupp tripping on Chelanga's heels when Chelanga slowed down. It seemed totally out of proportion to the significance of the contact, but it just showed that they didn't know what else to talk about. Then they kept talking about how this year's race was just like last year's (when Rupp lost in a final sprint to Josh McDougal), but it sure seemed to me like a completely different race: last year, you had the sense that Rupp and McDougal were at the end of their endurance, and the final sprint was about survival, not speed. This year, Rupp never looked troubled -- not once, and you knew that the winner would be the one who could pull out the can of whip-ass and lay down a 60-second final 400.

The other night, I found myself watching a bunch of old videos of Steve Ovett's races on YouTube. The British announcers are so good -- so excited, but also so knowledgeable. They actually know all the competitors, and have a sense about how each one of them races. When someone is trapped on the inside lane, they react with urgency, if not panic. Why aren't there are announcers like that in the U.S.? Why do we settle for so much less?

2. No One Really Knows What's Going On in the Team Race

Although there are 252 runners in the race, and the team title is probably being decided somewhere between places 25 and 75, all the coverage focuses on the top few runners. Yesterday, virtually all the coverage was on the cat-and-mouse game between Rupp and Chelanga. And even then, I felt they failed to point out the obvious -- that Rupp was coasting, waiting to make one big move.

But perhaps that's hindsight. But anyway, regardless of the race at the front, it's nearly impossible to know what's happening in those critical team places in the middle/front of the pack. Maybe if you had spotters assigned to each team? But those spotters would have to have some idea about what to look for; they would have to know each of the runners. Maybe they could enlist the alternates from each team to provide live updates?

For example, it appears from the split times and final results that Matt Centrowitz (Oregon's fourth runner) passed 7 runners in the final 2K, and that Diego Mercado (Oregon's 5th) passed 11 runners. Andrew Wheating (Oregon's 7th, and an Olympian at 800m) used his closing speed to pass 20 runners in the last 2K!

3. It's hard to broadcast weather

The event becomes more interesting when you really get a sense that the athletes are contending not only with each other but with the conditions. Somehow, the broadcast has to get across the damp, the cold, the mud of the race so that we can experience the triumph over the elements.

Football does a pretty good job at this. They somehow have learned over the years how to frame the long-distance shots that show the snow falling, the rain pelting down, the crowd in parkas...

4. Commercials

I guess you have to have commercials to pay for the coverage. Actually, the commercials weren't too bad, but if the commentary had been better, the commercials would have killed the buil-up and suspense. I think it was lucky that Rupp chose to run a race that concentrated all the drama in the first 1.5M and the last 400m.

Well, so it was great to have the webcast, but it still left me kind of grumpy.

I'm sure some will disagree. Did you watch the webcast? What did you think? Do you think Noah Jampol could do a better job calling the race?