Another push is being made for the mile to return to the NCAA Outdoor Championships, and now it looks like the pieces are in place to make it happen. Possibly.

Southern Utah head coach Eric Houle laid out the proposal this week ahead of the United States Track and Field Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) convention in San Antonio, which will be voted on tomorrow. Houle wants to ditch the 1500 for the mile immediately.

This has the good people at Bring Back The Mile understandably pumped since they’ve built an entire site dedicated to the “magic” of the mile, as they put it. They’ve long opined that the mile’s close relatives, the metric mile (1500) and the imitation mile (1600), aren’t nearly as welcoming to outsiders since the American running vernacular references distance run in miles not meters. “Americans ‘get’ the mile not the 1500,” says BBTM.

I canÂ’t argue with that. Even now after years of following the sport, my brain automatically works to convert 1500 times to their mile equivalency. It doesnÂ’t make sense that I still do this, but the point is that the mile remains a measuring stick of a runnerÂ’s worth in the U.S. The 1500 is something us track people in the States have grown up accepting from years of watching international competition, but the mile is still held in higher regards here.

Non-track people in America donÂ’t know what a 1500 is, and they donÂ’t care enough to stick around to hear the explanation. But the mile is a different story. A mile is a distance you drive, a part of our day-to-day lives. We run miles, why at the NCAA level do we not race miles in outdoor track?

BBTM has an ally championing their cause at the NCAA level in Houle, an ally that just may have the ticket to drop the metric from the mile ahead of this yearÂ’s college championships in Eugene.

In his proposal, Houle cites “a decline in interest in Track and Field over the last 30-40 years,” that needs to be addressed by making the sport more relatable. The mile is exactly that— as Houle points out, “everyone has run a mile, for time, at some point in their life.” This might be hyperbole, but his point is that the mile is much more of an understood race for non-track people in the US than the 1500, a distance that is often explained as being “109 meters less than a mile.”

A return to an event that has cultural significance in the U.S. makes sense for the collegiate championships that are targeting larger viewership. But a chance to grow the sport by a return to the glorious mile could not sway the voters four years ago as a significant roadblock stood in the way, a roadblock that has since been eliminated.

BBTM says that the X-Factor for axing the 1500m— which has been contested every year at NCAA Outdoor since 1976 — could be that the IAAF accepted mile times for 1500 World Championship qualification starting in 2015. That wasn’t the case back in 2011 when Texas A&M coach Pat Henry lobbied for the switch, and he was reportedly turned away by a solid majority partly for that reason.

Perhaps Houle and the Bring Back squad have finally found the key to turn the rusty lock. But even if they have, and despite hating myself for offering up such anti-American propaganda, I think more than just World Championship standards will factor into a decision to change the distance after 40 years. 

Mile times arenÂ’t being accepted for 1500 Olympic standards, and if standard-hitting was a good enough reason for the voters to keep the mile away from NCAA Outdoor in 2011, why would it be any different for the Olympics? I canÂ’t see the rationale changing now because of that. 

In their literature, USATF notes that men can qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials 1500 with a 3:54 mile or faster (and just today, 4:28.43 for women), but an athlete would still have to run a sub-3:38/4:09.50 1500 to be eligible to actually make the Olympic team. Voting in favor of a switch to the mile would ignore this fact, and go against a similar line of thinking from 2011. 

I would be thrilled if I end up being wrong on this, but I think when the votes are tallied on Friday, the count will still be in the favor of the 1500.