EUGENE, Ore. — This story might make a great commercial some day: A kid stuck selling shoes in a parking lot turns around his career and comes out with a gold medal around his neck.

That tale has already been written by America's newest track star, Mike Rodgers.

This time, he won the medal at the U.S. championships. In a few more years, it might come from the London Olympics.

"He doesn't know enough to be scared," said Tyson Gay, who sees similarities between his climb to the top and where Rodgers is right now.

USA Track and Field only wishes it had 10 of these stories to tell, and maybe, in fact, a few more will pan out.

But after the national championships that wrapped up Sunday, Rodgers stands out as the best prospect of the bunch.

"Mike Rodgers has worked his butt off to get to where he is," said Doug Logan, the CEO of USATF. "Mike has been on our radar screen ... We've got this incredible pipeline at the youth level and at the collegiate level that is there as far as the eye can see."

The pipeline also helped produce Charles Clark (200), Galen Rupp (10,000), Jessica Beard (400) and Johnny Dutch (400 hurdles), among others who earned spots on their first U.S. worlds team. Dutch stood in awe after his race, watching Angelo Taylor do interviews right next to him. Taylor won an Olympic gold in 2008 and 2000.

"I think I was 11 and watching that" Olympics in 2000, said Dutch, who's going to be a junior at South Carolina.

The big question, though, is whether runners like Dutch are starting something special, or if they made it simply because the year after the Olympics almost always brings with it watered-down fields at nationals.

Outside of Rodgers' win in the men's 100, and a handful of second- and third-place finishes by newcomers, familiar names dominated wherever they competed. Among them were Allyson Felix (200), Shawn Crawford (200), Sanya Richards (400), LaShawn Merritt (400), Dawn Harper (100 hurdles) and Stephanie Brown Trafton (discus).

National shot put champion Christian Cantwell is sure there will come a day when the veteran throwing combination of himself, Reese Hoffa, Dan Taylor and Adam Nelson don't dominate every meet they enter.

"It's only a matter of time before they're really pushing us," Cantwell said of up and comers like Ryan Whiting and Zack Lloyd, who finished ninth and 13th, respectively. "They're going to be making teams soon. Hopefully, Reese and Adam will call it a day sometime this century."

Pick almost any event and the story's the same.

Crawford, at 31, saw a lineup full of young, spry sprinters lining up against him in the 200 and figured he'd be in trouble.

Not quite. He routed the field for his fourth national championship.

"After this, maybe I got a little bit more in me than I thought," Crawford said.

Of course, a lot of this still has to play out and the next big American star might still be running in relative obscurity in college or on a high school track somewhere. Remember, Usain Bolt wasn't exactly a household name in 2005.

USA Track, meanwhile, is determined to build a better pipeline. That is an integral part of Logan's "Project 30" endeavor, which is designed to revamp track while leading toward winning 30 medals at the London Olympics in 2012.

"We know where the competition is at, we respect it," Logan said. "But we are going to concede nothing."

Logan is thinking big for this organization, and he's got some people believing along with him. Last week, Nike signed a $10 million-plus a year contract, which represented about a 30 percent increase over the last deal. That's a significant vote of confidence from a company that bankrolls a hefty portion of the sport's athletes.

They include Rodgers, who sprinted down the track in the 100 finals wearing a neon orange headband that is becoming his trademark.

With Gay out of the field, it was Rodgers' stage and he had a compelling story to go with it.

The 24-year-old said he was living the good life when he was buying shoes at a discounted rate thanks to his job at a sporting goods store, then taking them to his car, where he would sell them for a profit out of his trunk.

"I'd buy like 20 pairs of shoes, and double my money," Rodgers said, smiling at a memory that wasn't all that long ago.

Eventually he decided there was more for him at the track.

"He's working with lot of talent, a lot of heart and some really good coaching, as well," Gay said.

When he travels to Berlin for worlds, Rodgers — and the rest of America's young faces — will get to see if that's enough.