Look. We love track and field. For our dollar, there’s nothing we’d rather take in sporting-wise than a down-to-the-wire 1500m, a blink-and-you-miss-it 100m, or a neck-craning high jump showdown. But we have to admit that one area our sport falls short in—that the major professional leagues of the United States have really dialed in—is “the in-stadium experience.”

If you’ve ever attended an NBA, WNBA, NFL, MLS, etc. game, you know what we’re talking about. From the moment you saunter into the stadium until the post-game exit traffic, you WILL be entertained. There is no dead air. No quiet moments. Just sport at its highest level, punctuated by things like baby races, plate-balancing unicyclists, local recording artists inserting creative melisma into the American national anthem, and T-shirt cannons galore.

To call the experience “stimulating” is like calling Antarctica “chilly.”

But of all the gimmicks and sideshows trotted out by professional sport franchises across our fair land, the one that we like best is the Atlanta Braves’ “Beat the Freeze” promotion. At each home game, a fan gets the chance to race the Freeze, a particularly speedy mascot, first portrayed by Nigel Talton, who happens to boast a lifetime best in the 100m of 10.47.

Of course, pitting a local schlub, several beers deep, against an NAIA podium finisher wouldn’t make for a particularly interesting outcome. So the Freeze spots the challenger several seconds—to the point that he is occasionally beaten! The result is pure magic. It’s inarguably a more momentarily entertaining spectacle than the baseball being played around it. And though not the point of the exercise, it really does drive home just how much fast a legitimate sprinter is.

The Braves are actually hiring a new Freeze right now. (We highly encourage any Georgia-based speedsters looking for a strange part-time job to apply.) And while smiling serenely in appreciation for all the various Freezes have done to entertain us, we got thinking: are there other contexts in which we could casually deploy decent track and field athletes to make laypeople look silly?

Imagine you attend LSU—your football program has just had another stinker of an outing on the road, and the opposing team’s student section is rushing the field to tear down the goal posts in celebration… again. You are dejected and it’s been months since you’ve had the chance to utter “geaux Tigers.” That is, until your track team’s pole vaulter sprints onto the field, pole in hand, and effortlessly clears the 10-foot-high crossbars. Confused and, frankly, impressed, the wind is fully taken out of your foes’ sails, and they quietly shuffle out of the stadium and back toward the quad. The next Mondo Duplantis flexes at the 50-yard line, stomping on the home team’s logo while brandishing a pole menacingly.

Despite our distaste for competitive treadmill running on the elite level, there’s room for some stationary action in a different setting. Set up a pair of Woodways smack dab in the middle of an arena and let a fan try and hold the PB pace of a 10,000m All-American for all of halftime. If they’re still on the ‘mill by the time the teams retake the field, they get $10,000. Good luck making it half a mile on a stomach full of hot dogs and Bud Light.

The Freeze is cool enough, but let’s introduce some Penn Relays magic into the mix. Two teams of four – two 100m sprinters and two randomly-selected fans apiece – crisscross the football field or soccer pitch, shuttle relay style, with the added entertainment value of placing the pros and shmos on opposite legs. There’s more reason to integrate that into a sportsball game than the mixed 4x100m into Worlds if you ask us.

There are so many ways to display the incredible strength possessed by shot put specialists. You could have a retired thrower attempt to squat any three randomly selected fans in attendance at an NFL game. You could do something similar with bench pressing fans. Hell, if you’re really creative you could probably envision four particularly rigid fans being deadlifted at halftime. The simplest may be having Ryan Crouser pick up and throw a 15-pound dumbbell 60-plus feet next to Joe Ticket-Holder attempting to do the same. If all else fails, there’s only one way to convey STRENGTH to the average American sports fan. And that’s arm wrestling (or arm wrasslin’, if you prefer). We envision a sort of all-comers situation in which a former competitive shot putter sits at a folding table in the middle of the field/court during a time out break, and ten or so fans are trotted out to challenge them. Of course, each fan is easily dispatched. Before the crowd can lose interest, the fans are allowed to team up. Can the thrower overtake two simultaneous noodle arms? Three? Four?

Are these ideas dumb and in some cases dangerous? Yes. But that’s showbiz baby. That’s sports-as-entertainment!

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