Several NCAA sports recently have struggled with maintaining participation numbers and staving off budget cuts, not to mention outright elimination of programs.

But somehow, it seems more sobering when the sport that produced the NCAA's first championship begins to suffer such stress.

The first National Collegiate Track and Field Championships attracted 62 teams to the University of Chicago June 16-17, 1926. A midday rainstorm cut attendance at the second day's finals, but the NCAA still managed to take in enough gate receipts to reimburse visiting teams for two-thirds of their traveling expenses.

The meet symbolized college track and field's growing importance in international amateur athletics. That year's Spalding Official Track and Field Guide noted that American amateur records in all 15 events then typically contested in college track and field were "with few exceptions, held by college-trained men," and that most American Olympic gold medalists first made their mark in the sport in colleges.

College track and field grew in popularity, produced international stars such as Ohio State University's Jesse Owens, and at one time -- at least in some regions of the country -- was followed by sports fans as avidly as football and basketball.

"For most spectators, it depends on what part of the country they live in," said Dave Johnson, who as director of the Penn Relays heads the oldest continuous track and field meet -- and probably today's best-attended campus-based meet -- in America.

"In the parts of the country that had strong dual-meet programs, the spectators will remember that as the golden age," he said. "Californians, I think, will remember the golden age as the '50s and '60s, when the California Relays, West Coast Relays and Compton Invitational were thriving."

But track and field eventually faced the same competition for fans' atention as all other sports.

"What happened with California was the influx of professional sports teams," Johnson said. "Just as that golden age was dawning back in the '50s, you didn't have the Dodgers yet; the Lakers might have been there but it was the transplanted Minneapolis Lakers and not the Los Angeles Lakers we know today. Professional sports just didn't have the share of the publicity pie that it has now, and that helped track, and amateur sports in general."

The rise of professional sports on the East and West Coasts may help explain why a trio of events in a region where relatively few pro teams were located -- the Great Plains' Texas, Kansas and Drake meets -- grabbed center stage in college competition beginning in the 1950s and extending into the '70s.

The three events, staged one right after the other, formed a "triple crown" of college track and field, and fans took an interest in performers who dominated the meets. The interest peaked at the last of the three events, the Drake Relays in Des Moines, Iowa.

"In a year in which weather was comparable, at least as often if not more often, Drake was ahead of Penn back then," Johnson said. "They had probably more talent at the meet than Penn did. But the lessening importance of the Kansas Relays hurt them greatly."

Over time, fewer world-class competitors appeared at Kansas, opting either to skip directly from Texas to Drake, or to compete at other events. "When you pulled Kansas out of that mix ... that eliminates the cachet of going for the triple crown," Johnson said.

The Penn Relays, which are held the same weekend as the Drake Relays, actually benefited from that development, as teams felt less pressure to appear at Drake and many opted to travel to Philadelphia instead. If any place in college track and field is enjoying a golden era today, it's the Penn Relays, which this year attracted a record crowd (including more than 50,000 spectators for the Saturday finals) and enjoyed live television coverage on NBC-TV.

But the Penn Relays seem very much an exception today, as no other college event -- including the NCAA championships -- attracts the same degree of attention from fans and sports media.

Most of the storied events of college track and field history continue today in some form or fashion. Drake posted its 39th straight sellout crowd of 18,000 this year, and the Kansas Relays recently were resurrected after they briefly were discontinued for renovation of the University of Kansas' Memorial Stadium.

But those events' inability today to attract the kind of nationwide interest they once enjoyed are symbolic of college track and field's struggle to maintain visibility and support in the face of competition from other sports.

-- Jack Copeland