★ The Sports Examiner: Chronicling the key competitive, economic and political forces shaping elite sport and the Olympic Movement.★
★ To get the daily Sports Examiner Recap by e-mail: sign up here! ★
≡ HONORING AL FRANKEN ≡
A group of track & field legends gathered at the top level of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for a long-overdue presentation of a World Athletics Heritage Plaque to remember meet promoter Al Franken (1925-2021), who put on amazing indoor and outdoor meets in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego across six decades.
Appropriately, the event – held at the rooftop “1923 Club” at the top of the Coliseum’s south side – was hosted by World Athletics Council member Willie Banks, who was not only a former world-record holder in the event, but who competed in multiple meets that Franken produced.
Central in the presentation was Franken’s son, Don, who worked with his father over 25 years to help with such well-known meets as the Sunkist Invitational in Los Angeles and Jack in the Box Games in San Diego, and the outdoor Vons Classic held in the Coliseum in the 1970s and the later Pepsi Invitational and Jack in the Box Invitational at UCLA’s Drake Stadium.
A bevy of stars were there to remember Al Franken, including mile star Eamonn Coghlan (IRL) – the “Chairman of the Boards” for his indoor mile records in San Diego and elsewhere – sprint superstars Steve Williams and Maurice Greene, 400 m Olympic relay gold medalist Herman Frazier, 400 m hurdles Olympic silver winner Danny Harris and 1968 hurdles Olympian Geoff Vanderstock and four-time Olympic long jumper Martha Watson.
They especially remembered Franken not only as a showman who consistently drew large, loud crowds to his meets, but also someone who believed in taking care of the athletes who competed, and that meant paying them … regardless of what the rules were at the time.
Banks noted, “Al is a special guy because he understood that track & field was not just a competition, but it was entertainment. He changed the way we looked at sport. …
“What Al understood, if you’re not entertaining, if you’re not putting butts in the seats, they can’t use you. We need to have people who can entertain. He wanted fun, he wanted excitement, he tried to match people up so that when they came across the finish line, it was tight.”
This was probably showcased best at the January 1987 Sunkist indoor meet, where former UCLA star and 1984 Olympic 100 m hurdles silver medalist Greg Foster was challenged by world-record holder Renaldo Nehemiah, returning to track after his NFL football career. A boisterous crowd of 13,261 (!) came primarily to see these two stars, with Foster setting a world best of 7.36 for the 60-yard hurdles and Nehemiah third in his return, in 7.59. Pretty impressive promotion of a race of less than eight seconds!
Coghlan, whose mile battles with American Steve Scott especially, were legendary, explained:
“Al was ahead of his time because he looked after the athletes really well. A lot of race directors back then gave us money ‘under the table’ – that was the only we could get paid – Al wanted to make sure that we were really paid well. And the reason he paid us well was because, as Willie said, we performed. …
“Al paid us well. He saw value for money and there was never any difficulty in Al looking after us because he got great value for money.” And he noted that track & field, of course, pays athletes and “they’re doing now what he did all those years ago.”
Williams, who equaled the world 100 m record four times at 9.9 in the hand-timed era, told the now-famous story of Franken finding him in the warm-up area for the AAU National Championships at UCLA in 1974, and saying “Steve, Steve, I’ll give you $500 if you wear the Sunkist jersey; you don’t have to wear it except for the finals!”
Athletes almost never wore jerseys with commercial sponsors in those days, and Williams continued: “So, I wore the Sunkist jersey. I was lucky and I ran 9.9 that day and the picture went worldwide. But the cuter story of it is, I never thought about the money again. And then the week before Christmas, I got a check in the mail from Sunkist, from Al!”
Williams regretted that Franken was not appreciated at the time for what he was doing for athletes, but also in attracting corporate interest, which included Sunkist, Jack in the Box, Vons, Kinney, Pepsi and more to support his meets and the sport:
“Al would have changed the game if they had gotten out of his way. He had all of these corporations that were ready to play ball, but the AAU wanted to put their thumb on the scale. … They kept their thumb on the scale that pretty much retarded the sport taking off the way it could have and should have.”
(Williams did not note it, but behind the Amateur Athletic Union, then the governing body of track & field in the U.S., was the International Amateur Athletics Federation – with a strict amateur code – which had its thumb on the AAU to enforce its rules. A lot of Franken’s issues also came from the IAAF amateurism policy.)
Watson was especially grateful to Franken and others, such as the Mt. SAC Relays, when women’s track & field was mostly ignored:
“They made us pioneers, they made me a pioneer because we didn’t have the opportunity to perform in a big stadium, there were lots of people. We didn’t even have a track program in the high schools. It changed my life, it changed a lot of our lives.
“I got a scholarship to go to college. I saw the world. I guess I’m overwhelmed today because Al Franken made this possible, and a lot of other people too.”
Los Angeles Coliseum Commission Chief Administrative Officer Al Naipo explained that the plaque itself will be on permanent display at the Coliseum.
¶
★ Receive our exclusive, weekday TSX Recap by e-mail by clicking here.
★ Sign up a friend to receive the TSX Recap by clicking here.
★ Please consider a donation here to keep this site going.
For our updated, 681-event International Sports Calendar for 2026 and beyond, by date and by sport, click here!
