screen shot via YouTube/Drake Athletics

Try sitting through this video without snoozing. Better yet, try driving through, writing about, or thinking about the state of Iowa without snoozing. The true definition of a flyover state, this land of corn and alcohol abuse is somehow home to NCAA Track and Field’s premier event, the Drake Relays. This event has been going on since 1910 and is regarded as a proving ground for many of the nation’s top sprinters, throwers and so on. So, it should be no surprise that big, bigthings are underway for the event’s 114th rendition this spring.

If you can make it farther through that sleep aid of a press conference than I did (a minute and a half), you are more patient than me. To cut to the chase, this year the Drake Relays will hold their high jump event in a produce section in an Iowa grocery store.

This is the most Iowa promotional video ever. Most gimmicky athletic promotions feature an over-the-top carnival barker-styled promoter. Not in Iowa. Brian Brown, director of the Drake Relays is not a very good hype man, if you’re still awake enough to notice. Although, his rhyme game is tip-top: “we will high jump at Hy-Vee in Waukee,” is pure poetry. But, he’s fighting an un-winnable war. Nobody outside of the track and field community gives a shit about the high jump, which is pretty much the opposite of limbo. Instead of dancing as low as possible, you jump over it! Holy shit that’s exciting! Let’s find a way to work cauliflower in there somewhere and we’ve got gold! We’re going to put Waukee on the map!

Joe Long

Joe has been to Cooperstown once, but never NYC. As a broke college student, it doesn’t look like that will change for a while. In the meantime, he will use his extensive couch-potato skills and Wall-Street outsider perspective to bring loyal readers small doses of insanity every day. In return, he fully expects every reader to mail him gold coins. So, get on that.

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