The mile is a Chuck Berry song from 1956.

It's the rusted shell of a Ford Thunderbird in the junkyard.

In other words, the mile still exists, but it's not as important or glamorous as it used to be. Berry never gets air play on conventional radio. Ford put the brakes on manufacturing Thunderbirds a few years ago.

And the mile? In track and field terms, it's a distance memory.

High school athletes in Iowa rarely - if ever - run it. The mile won't be on the schedule at the Missouri Valley Conference meet, and it's vanished from the Olympic Games. Sure, the Drake Relays brings it back every year and the International Amateur Athletics Federation still recognizes world records in the mile.

Nonetheless, the race belongs to another time. Like an oldies act, it makes an occasional appearance and then fades away.

It doesn't have to be that way. Alan Webb's mile at Drake last weekend showed that the magic of the mile can still pull a crowd to its feet.

Webb, the man who broke Jim Ryun's high school record a few years ago, put his opponents deep in the vault and briskly trotted to a Relays record of 3 minutes, 51.71 seconds. Down came the meet mark, set in 1979 by another very good miler named Steve Scott.

When the capacity crowd sensed Webb might break the record, the roar came and chased him around the track on that last lap. Webb's ambition, though, kept on running right through the finish line and into a press conference.

"I want to be one of the best milers in the world," said Webb, who qualified for the 2004 Olympics at 1,500 meters, but didn't medal.

Still, a thought came. If Webb wants to be the best, why give him only an occasional shot? Why not rehabilitate that old Thunderbird, or let Chuck Berry duckwalk to the music once more? And why not give the young Webbs in the high schools the opportunity to be the best?

To put it another way, bring the mile back all the way. Give it to the high schools, the colleges and the Olympics. Have the 1,600 and 1,500 step aside. Keep the 100-meter dash, the 200 and other metric races. Just give the old boy a chance.

To a degree, it's semantics. After all, the mile is only 9 meters longer than the 1,600 run by high school boys here.

But it goes beyond just measurement. The mile is history. It used to be track and field's version of the Daytona 500, or the Kentucky Derby. Now, a mile revival could be a link to the sport's glorious past, a way of comparing past to present that really doesn't exist.

Just as baseball fans still marvel over the accomplishments of Babe Ruth or Willie Mays, Roger Bannister could spring into action once more. He was the first to break the four-minute barrier in the mile on May 6, 1954. Forbes Magazine labeled Bannister's run the greatest athletic accomplishment in history.

Maybe a young runner could draw some inspiration from the Dream Mile. Back in May of 1971, Jim Ryun and Marty Liquori dueled during the Martin Luther King Freedom Games in Philadelphia.

Ryun, by then, was a record-holder and something of a tragic figure. He ran a 3:51.1 mile in 1967, a world mark that stood for eight years. But mononucleosis hit Ryun shortly before the 1968 Olympics. He recovered, only to finish second in the 1,500 at Mexico City behind another legend, Kip Keino of Kenya.

Liquori never won an Olympic medal of any sort. Yet he was a capable distance man. He passed Ryun on the third lap and did not surrender the edge. Liquori won narrowly; both men were clocked in 3:54.6.

And the world watched - live - on national television. Time didn't stand still. It ran with style and drama on that day 36 years ago.

The world and track have changed a lot. Maybe just putting new polish on an old race wouldn't matter very much, given that track and field can't seem to market itself like NASCAR or the NFL or other sports giants.

Still, the mile might remind us of what was great and magical once upon a time, and could be magical once more.

Johnny B. Goode, indeed.

Contact Jim Sullivan at (319) 291-1434 or jim.sullivan@wcfcourier.com