In late February, I wrote to Bill Roe, the president of USA Track & Field. Basically, I said: "When you pick a new CEO for USATF, throw a wide net, and don't feel obligated to hire someone with a vast track and field background.
"Just go get the best person for this job."
Bill assured me that the search committee would do just that.
Last Thursday, the USATF Board of Directors approved the search panel's choice to replace Craig Masback, the former world-class miler who took a job with Nike in January.
The new CEO? Doug Logan.
That brought this reaction from Garry Hill, the longtime editor of Track & Field News: "Who?"
He wasn't alone. Although Logan is well-known to soccer fans (he was commissioner of Major League Soccer in the late 1990s), his name means nada to trackfolk, and especially Masters athletes. We scratched our heads over the selection of Logan, a 65-year-old sports marketing executive from Florida (but originally Cuba).
Why should folks interested in Masters track care about who serves as CEO of USATF?
Well, consider the emphasis. If USATF continues to focus mainly on Olympic-class athletes, where does that leave Masters age-groupers? Will we continue to be seen as a cash cow (via annual membership fees)? Will media brass in Indianapolis continue to virtually ignore our achievements? Will our budget remain an anemic $80,000 a year?
To answer these questions, I studied Logan's background. Does his career history give any hints of how he'd treat Masters track?
What I learned was interesting but not revealing.
Logan, a former marathoner, still runs. He has gray hair. He has "arthritic ankles." He's had ups and downs as a businessman. (The USATF press release on his selection trumpeted his successes but said nothing about his failures, including a $500,000 bankruptcy case involving a semi-pro basketball team he owned called the San Diego Wildcards.)
USATF posted excerpts of a teleconference with reporters, and Logan never uttered the M-word. But he alluded to Masters as one of the "constituent groups" of USATF that might feel aggrieved in the USOC-mandated restructuring of the USATF Board of Directors (which recently kicked the Masters T&F Committee chairman off the board).
Logan said: "There are certain groups that will feel disenfranchised. In the process of what the board goes through, during the process, we need very open lines of communication with all of the constituent groups of USATF. Make sure they wind up with mechanisms that empower them on an ongoing basis, make them see that in certain modalities they can make their opinions and voices heard and they can have their turf protected, even though they may not have a single, go-to person on a board of directors."
Well, this didn't say much. Or it said volumes. Who is accusing Masters of "turf protection"? And what does that mean -- when Masters have hardly any turf to protect?
Logan's teleconference, and other chats with reporters, have dwelled almost exclusively on combating drug use in the sport and growing the sport's popularity. Perennial topics. All fine and good. But Masters make up the majority of USATF membership, and how will our interests be recognized?
Logan's first days were devoted to the Big Picture, so perhaps it's asking too much for him to address Masters minutiae. So I'll withhold final judgment on his prospects. But I won't give him a pass on such questions either.
Therefore, I'll make the same pitch here that I did on my masterstrack.com blog:
Send me your questions for Doug Logan. I will pick out the best (or all) and convey them on your behalf. Questions are a good way to teach as well as learn. Through your queries, Doug will learn which issues are the biggest concerns for Masters tracksters (and fieldsters). Feel free to write me at TrackCEO@aol.com.
Bill Roe delivered on his promise: USATF wasn't wedded to picking a "track person." Whether Logan is the best person for the job -- and Masters -- won't be known for a while.
Tags: USATF CEO Masters
