FIFA isn’t the only International Sports Federation (IF) with a Presidential election on at the moment. And, looking at the way the campaign for the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Presidency has started, it is hard not to conclude that world football’s governing body has a few lessons to learn.
For one thing, the 81-year-old gentleman who has occupied the IAAF President’s post since 1999, Senegal’s Lamine Diack, is sitting this one out.
For another, the individuals who are probably the two best-qualified candidates to succeed him at the athletics body’s Congress in Beijing in August – Britain’s Sebastian Coe and Sergey Bubka from Ukraine – are running.
Not only were both in their day out-and-out superstars of the sport, but the two men have also taken time to absorb the many and varied arts of effective administration, Lord Coe by overseeing London 2012, his rival through a succession of challenging roles, notably on various International Olympic Committee (IOC) Commissions.
The six-month-plus campaign consequently represents a golden opportunity for athletics to shrug off recent negative publicity and bask in the glow of what should be a genuinely stimulating contest between two Big Beasts, not just of world athletics but of world sport.
What a contrast with another sporting election currently unfolding before our astonished, if rather world-weary, gaze.
In this one, a wider assortment of characters have declared their intention to run.
But this time the 78-year-old gentleman who has occupied the FIFA President’s post since 1998 fights on. What is more, such is Joseph Blatter’s enduring grasp on the levers of power that hardly anyone expects a remotely close contest, in spite of the generous list of alternatives.
In the list of prices Tweeted this week by Graham Sharpe, bookmaker William Hill’s media relations director, Blatter, 79 in March, was white-hot favourite at an almost unbackable 1/16.
If there is an opposition strategy, it seems to be to weaken the incumbent over time so as to leave him in no doubt that he should not even think about presenting himself yet again in 2019.
So, full marks to athletics for the way the succession is being managed, and C-minus (at best) to football.
And yet: let’s pause for a moment to reflect on the two sports’ respective positions in the world.
One is almost certainly the biggest such pursuit the planet has ever known, both in terms of the income it generates and its grip on popular imagination.
The other, 26 years on from the Seoul Olympics where Ben Johnson tested positive after running a scorching 9.79 secs in his 100 metres final, is still mired in doping allegations and afflicted by public scepticism.
One can stop the world for a minute, once every four years, when the Olympic men’s 100 metres final is on; the other does so for weeks on end when its flagship tournament, also a quadrennial affair, is in full swing.
But football also, I am confident, animates more water cooler conversations, day in day out, than any other sport and most other topics.
Indeed, with the advent of digital media, even the sport’s best-known national club game – the clásico between Barcelona and Real Madrid – shows signs of going global.
Or look at the London 2012 Olympic stadium, theatre for the exploits of local heroes such as Jess Ennis, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford, but now being made fit for Premier League football, at great expense, to give it a shot at a viable future.
Look, for that matter, at the sports pages of my daily newspaper, just over 50% of whose acreage on Thursday was devoted to, yes, football.
This newspaper finds room for a solid 500 or so words, maybe more, on Luis Figo, a big-name candidate in the FIFA election who, for all that, stands a vanishingly small chance of winning.
As for Bubka confirming his challenge: 113 words of wire copy – and that includes the headline.
So, conclusion – in spite of its many problems football has got the most important bit right: the product.
Yes, there are still lacunae; yes, it remains hard, even after last year’s World Cup, to imagine soccer amounting to more than the third- or fourth-biggest team sport in the United States, the world’s economic powerhouse.
But there are fewer and fewer places where a winning national football team won’t get a substantial proportion of the country’s population glued to their TV sets when they play.
The sport’s three or four biggest stars, meanwhile, are global icons on a par with anything Hollywood can offer.
One other area where FIFA scores over the IAAF, incidentally, and this may surprise you, is financial transparency.
You can actually get a reasonable picture of FIFA’s finances from its annual accounts, especially if you look at all four sets published over a World Cup cycle in conjunction with one another.
I was stunned to be told recently that the IAAF has not published its audited accounts beyond its national members since moving from London to Monte Carlo in 1984, three decades ago.
Athletics – and many other sports – could then, it is reasonable to suppose, draw valuable lessons from the global success story that is football.
One thing that football has done better than any other sport, of course, is to transform itself into soap opera.
Yes, it is straightforward enough to argue that this is not a wholly positive development. But it does much to explain all those football-themed water cooler conversations: ‘What happens next?’ is a hugely compelling question when people care about the protagonists.
In short, it sustains interest, keeping society talking about you in the intervals between periodic doses of sporting action.
From that perspective, this latest FIFA election, highly unpredictable in every respect save its final outcome, should help to ensure that football retains its customary position at the centre of the sporting public’s attention, even on an inclement Thursday when there are no games on.
And we can always hope that the 2019 Presidential election when it comes will be the football equivalent of Coe versus Bubka.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938.