Catching Up With New USA Track & Field CEO Doug Logan
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| USATF CEO Doug Logan |
DOUG LOGAN last week signed a five-year contract to become the CEO of USA Track & Field. The job marks a return to managing a major sports operation for the former MLS Commissioner. Logan spent the last decade running Empresario LLC of N.Y., a sports consulting and entrepreneurial firm that in '01 was a consultant in the creation of the National Rugby League. Logan took time last Friday to speak with SportsBusiness Journal Staff Writer Tripp Mickle about his new job.
Q: How do you feel about your return to sports in an executive position?
Logan: For someone who is first and foremost an unabashed sports fan, to be a steward of one major sport is a dream, and to do it a second time around is irresistible if the circumstances are correct, and I deemed these circumstances correct. Looking at the rigors of what this job requires -- it's an 80-hour-a-week existence -- it's a lot of hard travel, but it's like BILL PARCELLS going back to coaching -- it gets in your blood and it's what you do.
Q: What did you see in this opportunity that appealed to you?
Logan: I've been around long enough that I remember track and field in its golden years -- the late '40s and '50s. I've been a longtime fan. I've attended a lot of Penn Relays, Millrose Games, Olympic events. The sport has plateaued for years as other major sports have passed it by from an enterprise and commercial opportunity perspective. I think it has a huge opportunity. You don't have to worry about explaining the rules. You don't have to worry about athletes wearing helmets, so you can see the grimace and determination on their face as they compete. And everyone has jumped, everyone has run and everyone has thrown, so it's something that's familiar.
Q: What obstacles do you see?
Logan: I am blessed and cursed by candor. There's no other way of explaining or talking about drug issues except to say it's a shame -- it's an awful, awful problem that left unchecked will choke the life out of the sport. I've got some views on this that are a little unorthodox. As an administration charged with leadership of the sport, to be constantly answering questions about drugs and saying, "We try so hard and 90% of our athletes test clean" -- that defensiveness just doesn't work. Just ask someone who's a fan of baseball. Any efforts to get additional eyeballs to a television are tainted by (performance-enhancing drugs). Any attempt to create other domestic events are challenged by that. Any effort to get more media coverage are challenged by that. It has almost a universal choke hold on the sport that prevents it from taking its rightful place.
Q: You don't think it already has choked the life out of the sport?
Logan: I don't because we're still talking about it, aren't we? And we'll still send a team to the Olympics and they'll win 25 medals. I don't think it's terminal. I think it's reversible.
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Logan Feels Track & Field Has Room
To Grow In Marketing Of Sport |
Q: How would you describe the health of the brand?
Logan: I think it's pretty good. I think it's undervalued. I think it's got far greater acceptance than the marketplace has ascribed to it and we will very quickly go out there and put a toe in the water and see what's happening out there. From the standpoint of categories, the value of the sport's established partnerships are low. We have to do things internally to make it more attractive.
Q: What type of things?
Logan: Part of that is the drug issue. We have to take a very aggressive and impassioned stand and ask sponsors and suppliers and agents and athletes to join us in that.
Q: You referenced the FedEx Cup and the U.S. Open Series as models you admire. How might you borrow from that concept?
Logan: I think they're models. I don't know that either are exactly adaptable. But they're things (from) two guys that I respect -- (ARLEN) KANTARIAN and (TIM) FINCHEM -- that are getting results. What it does is there's incentives for athletes to compete and a seasonality to it you can follow week by week and a crescendo that comes at the end with a culmination event. That's something we ought to seriously look at. It's the type of competition that lends itself well to the American psyche.
Q: Last year, the USATF entered into a verbal agreement to collaborate on a new Web site and turn over sponsorship sales to Wasserman Media Group. How will you deal with the WMG relationship?
Logan: I'm going to have to sit down and talk to them. I don't want to talk too much about it because I really need to do some studying about it. Before too long, I'll be out in L.A. having the first of a series of discussions with them. If I find there are inhibitors toward the sport's growth, I will try and address them. Hopefully, we'll wind up on the same page, and that same page is growing the sport going forward.
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