Did the growth of American football hurt US track and field performance? Youth football has exploded the past 20-30 years... It's sucking up a lot of the talent, so players that may have gone into other fields (baseball, boxing, track, etc) are now all on the football field in middle school and high school.
You read stories about some guys doing both track and football in college. What if more of our football players trained for just speed at an early age?
Also this could explain why women's track hasn't fallen off as far as men's