Where have you gone, Steve Prefontaine?

by Paul Shugar
THE POST

Somewhere right now Dick Enberg is smiling.

This is Enberg’s favorite time of year because the Olympics are coming, and he probably already has many interviews for his heart-tugging "Dick Enberg’s Torch Reflections" that will warm the hearts of Americans every night of Olympic coverage.

These moments will make me as sick as watching Vince Carter do a little dance after he does a windmill alley-oop jam over a man from a country that just gave the player his first pair of basketball shoes.

Enberg will probably have a moment on how special it is for the millionaire Carter to get a gold medal and how it is something of which the basketball star has always dreamed.

Will the nausea ever stop?

I cannot wait to see Enberg and NBC spend most of their Olympic coverage on athletes, like the Dream Team, who have been predicted to win a gold medal since the last Olympics.

A great deal of coverage will be left out on many sports like American distance running for one simple reason.

They suck.

We, the lucky viewers that we are, may get a glimpse of a distance race if some Kenyan or Moroccan breaks a world record. "Oh, by the way, Jonathon Riley placed third from last," a blurb at the bottom will say.

The sad thing is Riley already knows where he is going to place, he knows he does not stand a chance and he knows Dick Enberg will not do a "Torch Reflection" about him.

He is America’s premier 5,000-meter distance runner, but that is like holding the title of first place in a local talent show on the international scene.

Where have the Steve Prefontaines and Dave Wottles gone who made the premier-American-distance-runner title mean something?

College is the pro-league for Olympic running and that is where the problem lies.

Running is not just athletic talent; it is a mindset – as many of the great runners always preach.

"Everyone runs to see who’s the fastest, but I run to see who is the toughest," Prefontaine once said.

Now the only thing the American runners focus on is who is the fastest. They do not think they can race with the Kenyans whose times are much faster then their own.

The mindset that the Kenyans are faster is banged into their brains starting in high school. They watch their possible running scholarships from all over the nation disappear to the more reliable and more manageable international athletes.

Do not deem me a racist because I think international runners should not be allowed to take American scholarships.

"How can I be the best if I don’t race the best?" Prefontaine said.

International runners should be allowed to run in the United States, but if coaches build their teams around international runners, this puts American running at a disadvantage.

Even teams in the Mid-American Conference are building their teams around international runners, and we just watch America fall more and more behind every Olympics.

Maybe the next Prefontaine quit running because some Kenyan got a scholarship instead of him. Wottle ran at Bowling Green. Just because the conference is the MAC does not mean a big-name distance runner cannot come out of it.

The Toledo, Kent and Eastern Michigan cross country teams may get their Conference Championships and prestige boosted by international runners in the short run. In the long run, however, until the NCAA makes a rule to limit the number of international runners per team, America will just fall further and further behind in distance running.

An NCAA ruling has to occur if an American distance runner will ever be the subject of an Enberg "Torch Reflection."

**- Shugar, a sophomore journalism major, promises to someday write a column that does not mention Steve Prefontaine. Email him at ps198099.**