The performance trap

Why the best use of sport is not its most popular one.

Running in high school cross country. circa 1997?

A lot of online running content is about performance. Check out your social feeds and, depending on your search terms and data history, you’re either served pro- and semi-pro racing content, or pro- and semi-pro running lifestyle content. The things these have in common is, of course, performance and money. 

So let’s talk about it: sports, performance, and money. If we’re good enough at racing or lifestyle, can we turn the sport we love into a performance that others will pay to watch? 

Let’s start right at the top with recently-minted national treasure and true genius of her game, Caitlin Clark. Clark was just the number one draft pick for her sport’s professional women’s league, the WNBA. I guessed her starting salary would be $2 million, which is still $8,133,900.00 less than her counterpart in the NBA,* but I was only guessing.  

The answer? Clark’s starting salary in the WNBA is $78,000.** That’s three decimal places less than her male counterpart. That’s over 100 times less than her male counterpart. That’s the amount of money I made as a set design assistant in New York City in 2008-ish. That. is. RUBBISH.

In 1999, 25 years ago, I was 18 and deciding whether I should trade my college years for competitive athletics. So I did what seemed logical to me at the time: I looked at what was on the other side of college and asked myself: how would I make money? Would running in college pay for college and also set me up to do something that pays afterwards? Because what was clear was that, if you’re a college athlete, the programs are set up to focus on your sport primarily, not your studies, so your sport needs to do what your studies are supposed to do, and set you up to make money after you leave college.***

That system works in a sport where there’s a big professional market and sponsorship deals, like in mens’ football, basketball, and baseball. But as you tumble down the popularity ladder, the system gets less effective. Even if you manage to make the Olympic or National teams, the question remains: can you make money? How will you pay the rent? How will you buy food and toilet paper? You can earn money through sponsorship deals and influencer hustle, but both sponsorship demands and influencing are different jobs from playing your sport. Looking at Caitlin Clark’s starting salary, as the highest scoring player in one of the most popular sports in the world, even with sponsorship/influencer deals, I’m simultaneously offended for Clark and relieved I made the choice I did 25 years ago. 

Sports are great, and sports can give you the building blocks for happiness, but the external professionalization of sports, especially ones that don’t have clear paths to financial stability, is a huge problem in our society. Through Stoic Running, I hope to share with runners and other readers how to use sports at personal, familial and community levels for their best purpose: to sustain and support connections and internal pride, not as a performative path to financial stability. Because performing is not playing, and financial independence often does not exist. No matter what the internet tells you. 

Hard truths aside, sports are amazing for what they are, and for today, remember: go run.

**RealGM cross referenced with Draft Kings
**What Caitlin Clark’s Salary Tells Us [title abridged by author]
**I’m not saying that no college athlete manages to study hard and focus on academics, but the training regimes aren’t set up for that focus; they’re set up to focus on your sport.