EUGENE -- There was a press conference here last Sunday afternoon before the start of the day's action at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials at Hayward Field. (Which is not really Hayward Field, but hold on to that). Two men were speaking: Casey Wasserman, the CEO of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Organizing Committee; and Max Siegel, the CEO of USA Track and Field. The event was mostly performative, excepting a discussion -- well short of an official announcement -- that the U.S. Track and Field Trials might not take place in Los Angeles, and could return to Eugene for a sixth consecutive time, and the ninth time in the last 14 Olympics, dating back to a three-Games run from 1972-'80.

The historical context here is that prior to each of the last two Summer Olympic Games on U.S. soil -- Los Angeles in 1984 and Atlanta in 1996 -- the track and field trials took place in the Olympic Stadium, which served as a dry run for both athletes and organizers. (In '96, there was also a separate international meet in the stadium, before the Trials). That was then. Wasserman made it clear that there are numerous logistical hurdles to re-creating that scenario, most of which center on the enormous task of staging the Games in L.A. Fair enough, as far as it goes. Siegel responded, "It's not a foregone conclusion that the 2028 Trials will be back in Eugene," and then talked extensively about the many (genuine) reasons for coming back to Eugene. The takeaway among track media and fans was that the Trials are likely to be back in Oregon. On the other hand, this was two businessmen talking publicly four years out from the event, so it's perilous to assume they weren't just posturing in advance of further discussions. CEOs usually make public statements for a reason, and that reason can go beyond the words spoken. So we'll see.

No matter: Even the possibility of another Trials in the Northwest was met by much -- not all -- of the broader track and field world with a groan. Eugene? Againnnnnn? Why this response? Because Eugene is a relatively remote small city in the Northwestern corner of the United States. It's challenging and can be expensive and time-consuming to get here. The demographic of the city's track fan base also more closely resembles the demo that watched Steve Prefontaine run at Hayward (not this Hayward) in the early 1970s, when TrackTown first became a track town, and quite not the demographic that generally attends track meets across the United States. These are fair criticisms and honestly, I feel everyone's pain. Not for nothing: No other U.S. city, large or small, is stepping forward to displace Eugene in this role or to share it. Not for nothing, part two: Eugene does a fabulous job of hosting major track events, although the local populace is not enamored of high ticket prices and the new Hayward has not been full for any sessions of the current Trials. Imperfections abound; solutions are elusive.

All of this hits me in vulnerable places.

Sports journalism, which I have practiced professionally for -- gaack -- 46 years, is about people. About news. About games. About stories. But as much as any of these things, it is about places. (You could clap back at me that life, too, is about places. Fair. But how often in life are you awakened by a phone call sending you to Pullman, Washington on the next flight? Nothing against Pullman.)

For me, it is about so many places. It is about the tunnel between at the saddling paddock and racetrack at the now-demolished Belmont Park, where I witnessed so many Triple Crown failures before, in 2015, a success. It is about the street near Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona, where in 1997 I did an interview with Pat Tillman that sticks with me to this day; and where 18 years later, on nearly the same footprint, I met Michael Phelps and listened as he told me the story of his fall and recovery. About the noisy Scottsdale restaurant where I met Eli Manning at his family's private party after he and the Giants beat the unbeaten Patriots in Super Bowl 42; or a quiet corner of the locker room in Texas where I talked to Aaron Rodgers after his Packers defeated the Steelers to win Rodgers' first -- and still only -- Super Bowl.

It is about small gyms and big stadiums; about cars and bars, about Las Vegas and Lincoln.

And it is about Eugene. Because places measure time, some better than others. Eugene acutely measures mine like it measures the sport's.

The first time I visited this place was in early September of 1983. My fiancée and I took a trip camping and hiking in the Pacific Northwest. (We survived it, and have been married 40 years, another gaack). A stop in Eugene was non-negotiable; I played and followed many sports, but for some reason track and field burrowed into a corner of my sports soul and stayed there. I was bummed when Steve Prefontaine was passed in the homestretch of the Munich Olympic 5000m and finished fourth; I was gutted when he died three years later in a car crash right here in the hills above Hayward Field. So we stayed one night in a cheap hotel on Franklin Boulevard near the University of Oregon, and the next morning, I ran over to Hayward Field and did a few miles in a light drizzle on the pale green track and then walked into the grandstand and just sat on one of the wooden benches. It was not a religious experience, but it was pretty cool.

It would be 12 more years, that one marriage, three more jobs (from Schenectady, N.Y. to Albany, N.Y. to New York City to Sports Illustrated), two moves and two children later before I returned, in the late spring of 1995 to cover the 1995 Prefontaine Classic meet. It was the 20th anniversary of Prefontaine's death, and on the night before the meet there was a vigil at Hayward. More than 500 attendees held small candles. A woman plaintively shouted Go Pre! and then as instructed by the host of the event, all of them rhythmically clapped Prefontaine's memory on a ghostly, 60-second lap, emblematic of the 20 races he won at Hayward, without a defeat. It was mesmerizing. I led with it.

It was on this first visit that I met Kenny Moore, the two-time Olympic marathoner who later became the best runner and track and field writer in history, with SI. Kenny went to high school and then ran for Bill Bowerman at Oregon just ahead of Prefontaine; he later wrote a book about all of that. I devoured Kenny's work as runner and reader, studied it as a writer. We traveled together for SI for a few years and I was thrilled to be exposed to Kenny's memories, his intellect and poet's view of the world. He also kicked my ass doing pull-ups on a soccer goal in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1995. Never challenge an Olympic marathoner to any kind of red-line athletic activity no matter how skinny his arms.

In the ensuing 29 years (so many gaacks), I have visited Eugene more than 20 times, always for work, never for pleasure. (That '83 trip was my only social visit). But the work was often a pleasure.

There was so much good track and field, and so many stories. Three years after that first visit, Marion Jones long-jumped almost 24 feet with such primitive form that she landed nearly standing up in the pit; it was clear that Jones would be a vital story in the sport and boy, did that turn out to be true. Three years after that, Alan Webb ran 3:53.43 to break Jim Ryun's 36-year-old high school record, which had been chased with a much futility as that horse racing triple crown, and for a time came to symbolize some sort of entropy in the sport at large. (More than two decades later, high school sub-fours are more commonplace, with little discernable effect on the sport writ large; we were chasing the wrong angle).

But here's the thing: The track and field was -- and is -- always good. In the last half century, most of the sport's best athletes competed in Eugene at either the charming, old Hayward Field or the very modern new one that opened in 2021. (Getting this out of the way: The new Hayward is fabulous, if likely too big for its intended purpose; I wish a stadium could have been built that incorporated more of the aforementioned charm, a retrofit like Fenway or Wrigley, rather than a full teardown/rebuild. But that's done). Fifty-two years ago during the first Olympic Trials at Hayward, Eddie Hart (100m) and Bob Seagren (pole vault) broke world records and Dave Wottle (800m) equaled one. Last September pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis (Sweden) and distance runner Gudaf Tsegay (Ethiopia) set world records here, and Athing Mu (800m) and Grant Fisher (10,000m) set American records. No argument about Eugene's efficacy as a host -- of home -- can center on the quality of the competition.

But sports places are more than competition. From a professional standpoint, for me, Eugene isn't just measured by times, heights and distances. It's also measured by moments far from the track: A lesson from electronic timing expert Roger Jennings, in the wake of a dead heat for third place (the most important place) in the women's 100m at the 2012 Olympic Trials. A quiet interview before the 2016 Trials with a self-described country girl named Tori Bowie who went on to win three medals in Rio and a 100m world title in 2017 and who died due to complications from childbirth in May of 2023, an awful outcome that forever shades the memory of my one extended meeting with her (a tiny price for me to pay compared to those who knew her much better than I did). Or a cloudy morning in 2012 when I went to the site of Prefontaine's death -- "Pre's Rock" -- and interviewed runners and fans who visited that day and left totems at the onyx memorial. (Twelve years later, Prefontaine's presence in Eugene at Hayward seems to have ebbed, nearly 50 years on from his passing; given the ways in which his memory has been commercially leveraged over the years, there is a certain merciful quality in this).

And even more than moments: Places welcome us with their presence on earth, a sensation that goes far beyond games or interactions. It is the feeling you get from history. It is almost visceral. Again, the sportswriter: It is something I always feel at Notre Dame (the Catholic altar boy in me or the memories of Sunday morning highlights), something I always feel on a snowy mountainside (all those winters), something I felt on my one trip to Augusta (the son of a golfing dad). It is a taste, a smell, an emotional resonance that can bring you to your knees.

Last week I worked five days at the Olympic Swimming Trials in Indianapolis for NBC Sports. Tried to figure out where Gordon Hayward took that shot from at the end of the 2010 NCAA Championship basketball game in Lucas Oil Stadium (Never could get oriented). I flew to Portland and drove to Eugene for the first weekend of the Track Trials, my seventh (missed 2021). It was a familiar trip: Down I-5, two hours on the nose. Got to the new Hayward and threw my stuff down on a table in the press tent behind the stadium and said hello to the few friends who remain on the beat, because, you know, I'm well onto the back nine. Looked around and imagined all the others I once sat with and wrote with here, who no longer attend, or in some cases, breathe. They weren't present, but I could see them just the same.

Sha'Carri Richardson won the women's 100m, like her coach, Dennis Mitchell, had done in 1992 and '96. I saw those. Noah Lyles won the men's 100m the next night, like Justin Gatlin and Maurice Greene had each done twice. Saw those, too. Different faces, everything else so much the same. On Monday evening, three finals in a half hour, with the sun setting behind the west side of the stadium, a thrilling night, but not for Athing Mu. Four days of action remained, through this weekend, although I would be heading home for other work. I walked out in twilight and said goodnight to two security guards who definitely watched Prefontaine run, and then detoured down Agate Street where the old wooden, East Grandstand once stood, and where fans in hiking boots and waffle trainers stomped their feet in distance races.

I'm supposed to write that I could hear it. I didn't. But I did sense it.