Johnson gives Relays primer with two weeks to go

Penn Relays coordinator Dave Johnson gives an inside perspective to the organization of the event. DP: Given that Penn Relays was the most widely attended track and field event in the country last year, do you feel that leaves Relays in a special position to carry on the importance of the sport and in a special position to attract the best athletes? Dave Johnson: Yes, the Penn Relays is an institution that first of all goes far beyond the sport. It is much more than just a track and field event. It is very much a cultural occasion. It is a reunion. It is a major time to see friends, and it always has been. The nature of the culture who is really turned on by the event has changed over the course of 100 years, but that is only a reflection of the times anyway. In fact, if you go back to the very first write-up in 1895, you'll find that the story in the society pages is longer than the one in the sports pages. DP: Much of it must revolve around the fact that you have so many students both locally and nationally participating. How do you balance the need to attract international caliber athletes with the need to make sure that the colleges and high schools are well taken care of? Johnson: The need for international caliber athletes I don't think is entirely there. Sponsors turn on to big names. The crowd is turned on mostly by the scholastic races. Back in the '60s there was a major war going on between the NCAA and the AAU [Amateur Athletic Union]. If something like that occurred again where we had to make a choice between the college section and the club section, it would be an easy decision. We would have to get rid of the club section. This is first and foremost a scholastic meet. The Relays existed very well for 50 years without open competitors. What [club athletes] do is put the icing on the cake. Maybe the curious spectator has heard about it. "I know Michael Johnson is going to run, I'll go and see him," or Carl Lewis. They will draw a certain type of person, but it is certainly far far from being the normal crowd we get. DP: How do the retailers or the sponsors you get reflect the scholastic crowd versus the club team crowds. Which is the bigger key in drawing sponsors and how do you try to gear the sponsors toward the crowd that is going to be there? Johnson: We have sponsors coming in for a variety of reasons. Some of it is through personal contacts who have some direct ties to the Relays or the department. We have people involved because there is a chance star athletes will be there. We have companies that want to be involved through their community outreach program. You have a very wide variety of interests among the sponsors themselves. A lot of the advertising is a feel-good thing. They are not expecting a direct payback. DP: You mention that the Relays are a "cultural engagement," but the Relays are currently perceived by a lot of Penn students as a cultural engagement that doesn't appeal to them. They feel anywhere from uninterested to alienated to even afraid. How are you working to show the Penn campus that this is something they should be a part of? Johnson: There is reduced ticket prices on Saturday and no fees on Thursday or Friday. Our business is to put on an event. It is an event that has an enormous amount of publicity to the Penn campus. Penn Relays brings a lot of notice to this campus internationally. Internationally track is a major sport. In any given country it is going to be one of the top two or three sports. You can't say that in this country. You can't figure the amount of prestige this event brings outside of our borders based along the perception of what track is inside this country. Track in England is far more important. A great many people there are aware of Relays, probably more so than in this country. Our primary duty is to put on an event that helps draw in the outside world, high school kids and college kids. In many ways what the Penn Relays really represents is a cultural trust, and the University of Pennsylvania happens to administer the trust. It is a public trust, and it is run for the benefit of the public. The University benefits greatly from that. It is very difficult I think for people on the inside to realize how important the meet is. It is a great way for this whole campus to be seen by people who might never have an interest in Philadelphia or the University. DP: Would you find it at all a disappointment that the Penn campus either doesn't understand the importance of the event to the campus or doesn't view it the way you would hope. Johnson: I wouldn't call it a disappointment. I look upon it as a certain reality that it is no longer the white, elitist institution that it was when it was created. It was created by Penn track alumni who were trying to develop a resurgence of track and field athletics at the University. Track was struggling in the mid 1890s and was at one time considered to be in danger of dying. You had crew, baseball and cricket, and that was about it. I think that the nature of the relays is a matter of drawing people to the event. Would I like to see more Penn students involved? Sure. Do I expect it? No, I expect Penn kids to make choices as to what they want to do with their time. As the academic calendar has changed over the years, it has become more difficult to for a kid to come to the Relays. DP: It seems as though there is an enormous displacement of people and there is a history of small riots at Wawa and other incidents on campus. How do you prepare for that and are there specific security measures you go through. Johnson: Frankly, we've never drawn anywhere near what Penn football used to draw. I think it would be interesting to see what the crime reports were like back then too. Any time you have an enormous number of people coming into any area, there is the potential for problems. That is why it is very well constantly addressed. I think if you check with University police and you might find that the number of incidents of crime per thousand is not great. The reports I heard included one mugging last year at something along the lines of 1 o'clock in the morning the Sunday after the race. I think for the most part, that once the races are done there is a crowd that wants to get out of here. DP: The shootings at the Palestra have been ruled to be almost entirely unassociated with the game. Nonetheless, it occurred because the sporting event drew a large number of people. Have you or anyone else in the administration felt any sense of heightened anxiety? Johnson: I wouldn't say heightened anxiety, I would say there is an awareness. Is it increased awareness? I mean you can answer that either way. Yes, there is increased awareness, because you know of something that occurred recently. Does that increase necessarily what we are doing? Not entirely because we have had a pretty strong police presence through the Relays in past years. Do we change the nature of what we do? There are aspects of security measures that frankly I would not be the person to comment on. I don't want to step into what is say Maureen Rush's or Tom Seamon's area of work. We have city police and undercover people. We have a community watch organization that is involved. And there is also a large security force that is for Penn events that is hired for the Relays as well. DP: Over the last 10-15 years, there has arguably been a huge fitness boom -- especially running boom -- but at the same time attendance and corporate sponsorship of track and field in this country has plummeted to a large extent? Johnson: Well, if you are going back that far, I wouldn't say corporate sponsorship has plummeted. In fact, corporate sponsorship wasn't a great reality in a nutshell until 15 or 20 years ago. What goes on is that it rises and falls with Olympic games in particular, and even more so with domestic Olympics. In 1984 you had enormous upswing and then in '85 you start to see the fallout and people cut back on it. It happened a lot in '96 also. We're only two years removed from the fallout and when we peak again in the year 2000, obviously it's not going to be the level it was in 1996 when we had the Olympics in this country. So to say that there has been an enormous decrease in sponsorship is missing the point of how it really is cyclical in nature around the Olympic games. DP: What kind of challenges does this cycle present you with during the down years? Johnson: Well, the same way it hits other people. In an Olympic year everything is easier to get. Anytime there is an Olympic year, sponsors are more aware of track than they would be otherwise. The whole country is more aware of track and field [during an Olympic year]. Our attendance and sales figures were up in '96, '92, '88 in every regard. From the quality of the athletes who come in on the Olympic development side, you have a lot of athletes who are peaking for that year and are looking for a place to get an early season competition in. The fans are much more aware of track in that year. That will probably always be the case. I think it really involves comparing 1998 to 1994 and 1990. It's possible that track attendance has declined slightly in that eight-year period, but I think the bigger decline was in the eight to 12 years before that. I think when we really started to see the decline was back in the late '70s early '80s. And it certainly didn't help that in '76 in Montreal we had a boycott by the African nations. Then in 1980 we had the U.S. boycott and in '84 we had the Eastern Bloc nations boycotting. So you had three major boycotts in a row. That didn't help at all, particularly in public perception. What has also occurred is that there are more professional sports which are getting coverage now than 20 years ago. Twenty years ago you had far less coverage of women's sports. Sports pages haven't increased their number of pages nearly as much as they have increased coverage of both professional sports and women's sports. The cutbacks have to come from someplace, and they come from Olympic amateur sports. DP: With two weeks to go is there anything you are exceptionally excited about with this particularly Relays coming up? Johnson: We are going to do something we have not done for close to 20 years -- well more than 20 years. We are going to run a 4x mile on the men's side instead of 4 x 1500 [meters]. The depth that Arkansas, Michigan and Stanford all have indicate that we could see a time of 16 minutes, which is four guys all running four-minute miles. This has never been done on the college level before and we have got three teams that can take a shot at it. Now am I expecting 16 minutes to go? I never expect anything in terms of records. Is it possible? Yes, it is definitely possible, but it depends on so many things. The weather, mostly the weather, but there is enough competition, but if somebody takes off right from the start, everybody else is going to be chasing them. So if they are close with one leg to go we will have a great shot. In recent years, the majority of the teams that wind up being ranked in the top 10 are competing in the Relays. In almost every one of the 16 major Relay events, the majority of the ranked teams will be here.