I thought this interesting in light of the recent action between USAT and USOC.
In addition, federations are expected to get guidelines on suggested composition and size of each of their volunteer governance boards next week.
… Ueberroth and Scherr each delivered strongly worded luncheon addresses earlier in the day to the Olympic Assembly audience, including many federations and athlete representatives. Ueberroth said governance boards, like the 11-member board that runs the USOC, should reflect no special or private interests. For instance, USA Triathlon’s board was recently targeted by the USOC because some members are race directors.
God forbid we have people who have a vested interest in seeing the sport grow involved. We need a bunch of ball and stick game people to get us on track. Yeah, right.
Yes, we hear this repeatedly from the USOC - but when you point out that they welcome board members who are olympic athletes, former olympic athletes, coaches of olympic athletes, executives of companies who support the Olympic movement, and the like, they say “yeah, so what’s your point?” They aren’t against special interests - they are against special interests other than their own.
what’s going on, if i read this right, is that the USOC is blackmailing its own daughter federations. it’s saying, instead of paying you $100, and having you disburse it the way you want, we’re going to give YOUR athletes $50, give you $25 to help you run your organization, and if you want the LAST $25 you’ll put board members on your board, enact bylaws, etc., that we approve of. absent that, you’re going to lose 25% (or whatever the appropriate amount) of your budget.
thing is, we don’t take USAT’s money for office/overhead purposes anyway. the AGers fund the USAT office. so, if the USOC thinks this is going to affect USAT badly, it’s doing the opposite. if it doubles our athlete funding and cuts our overhead money, we make out like bandits.
what the USOC doesn’t seem to understand is, USAT is the very sort of organization it wants, but it just doesn’t realize it. the USOC has made COSMETIC changes to its own organization which, a year ago, was absolutely corrupt. the BASIC problem with the USOC is that it values obedience more than medals. it will have REALLY transformed itself when it values medals over obedience, and hiring the successful L.A. Olympics CEO to push its obedience program forward is not going to shine the USOC’s badge, but simply serve to tarnish those with heretofore good reputations.
I wonder if sports will still receive their funding if they implement the USOCs requested changes, but still don’t win medals. And likewise, we’ll see if sports like triathlon will lose funding for not bending over even though we will still win medals.
That is the most captial letters I have ever seen Slowman use in a post.
I give you xc skiing as exhibit A The results produced by this federation has been uniformly mediocre forever (actually, “mediocre” gives them more credit than they deserve). One friggin’ medal (a complete surprise silver by Bill Koch in 1976) in the history of the winter olympics - and remember, they have multiple events in each games. The federation leader is Luke Bodensteiner, who was mediocre as a competitor and now directs a program which NEVER gets close to the top in international competition. But they apparently kiss USOC’s rear, so they always get funded.