The U.S. Olympic Committee finds itself in crisis mode a mere four months before a Winter Olympics. It has a lame-duck chief executive, sports chiefs accusing officials at the highest levels of incompetence and a potentially divisive battle for control in the offing.
It’s sad, and it never should have come to this. The athletes deserve better.
Benefiting from a painful reorganization, the USOC seemed poised for a long period of stability coming out of the 2004 Athens Olympics. Peter Ueberroth, the genius behind the highly successful 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, was its highly respected board chairman. Jim Scherr, an Olympian in wrestling and former head of the wrestling governing body, was chief executive. America’s Olympic movement appeared to be in good hands.
With a deep and abiding belief in the Olympic ideal, Scherr brought passion to the position. He wore it on his sleeve. He connected with those who shared his passion — athletes, administrators, even some of us whose job it is to cover the movement.
American athletes performed well in Athens, Turin and Beijing. Things were looking good for Vancouver. Then a year ago, Ueberroth’s term ended and he gave way to Larry Probst, the head of a successful video game company with no experience running a sports organization.
In March the USOC board decided to fix what didn’t appear broken, at least to outsiders. It dumped Scherr for Stephanie Streeter, a corporate chief executive who supposedly had a “skill set” that would help the USOC cope with a suddenly more challenging economic environment more effectively than Scherr.
This week a group composed of CEOs of Olympic sport national governing bodies in the U.S. voted unanimously — 40-0! — that they had no confidence in Streeter’s leadership abilities. Clearly, they had been holding their fire until after the International Olympic Committee decided which city would get to host the 2016 Summer Games, not wanting to hurt Chicago’s chances. Perhaps they didn’t realize the USOC’s leadership had already sabotaged Chicago’s chances by allowing a bad relationship with the IOC to worsen.
When Chicago went out in the first ballot last week in Copenhagen and IOC members pointed fingers at the USOC, it took only five days for the rebellion.
Under Streeter’s leadership, the USOC did manage to find more money for Vancouver athletes, navigate a perilous economy and sign new sponsors. But if she had a fraction of the passion Scherr demonstrated for the Olympic movement, it was well-hidden. Perhaps she has a personality behind closed doors she doesn’t share in public, but I found her cold and aloof, a poor representative for an organization charged with inspiring Americans to dream big.
Despite the sponsorship dollars it needs to operate, the product of the Olympics isn’t something easily reduced to a profit and loss statement. Its product line is comprised of the stories it generates that inspire young and old in a world that needs positive role models desperately. Running a corporation is a big responsibility. So is the running the USOC, but it’s also a sacred trust.
I feel bad for the hundreds of people who work in Colorado Springs to support Olympic athletes, who believe in the Olympic ideal, just like Scherr. I feel bad for the athletes too, although I am confident they will make America proud in Vancouver.
Unfortunately they are victims of an oft-repeated mistake. From time to time the USOC board decides someone from the corporate world with little or no sports background is just what the organization needs to run more efficiently and tap new veins of sponsorship dollars. Norm Blake lasted in the chief executive office for nine months in 2000. His successor, Lloyd Ward, lasted a year and a half.
And every time the USOC changed suits in the executive office, IOC members were dismayed anew.
NBC Sports chief Dick Ebersol, who issued withering critiques of the USOC in recent days, has suggested the USOC appoint the successful head of an NGB – USA Gymnastics CEO Steve Penny or his counterpart at USA Swimming, Chuck Wielgus – to replace Streeter. While some might be uncomfortable with NBC’s influence in the process, he happens to be right. The board needs to replace Streeter with someone who grew up eating Wheaties because of the Olympians on the box, someone who loves the Olympics and understands it’s an idea, not a commodity.
They need to hire someone like Jim Scherr. Too bad they blew it back in March by firing him.
John Meyer: 303-954-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com
