Real life is always better than fiction. You can’t make stuff up that’s better than what happens for real.
Example: the Netflix series Tiger King. Come on now. Just — wow. As an aside, if Carole Baskin doesn’t already have the best legal representation, someone ought to be advising her that, maybe, just maybe, this series might well bring the federal authorities around to look into her many and varied business and personal affairs.
Example: the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, asking Congress for $200 million, per reports in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Come on now. Just — what in the world could the USOPC have been thinking?
Consider the optics.
USOPC chief executive Sarah Hirshland, left, and board chair Susanne Lyons last November at the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame induction ceremony // Getty Images
People are dying. Hospitals are desperate for ventilators. Ordinary life is upside-down, with millions on lockdown. And the USOPC, inexplicably, in a move that seemingly belies decades of operation and, moreover, a if not the central mantra of its governance model, is suddenly seeking to belly up to the federal trough?
Some historical context:
Until very recently, the USOPC was called the USOC. Congress chartered the USOC in 1978.
The guiding philosophy was that the USOC was to be financially self-sustaining.
To reiterate, and for emphasis, because this is central:
The USOC was to be financially self-sustaining.
In virtually every other country in the world — and for purposes of this discussion, every other major competing nation — Olympic sport is a federally funded enterprise.
Germany. France. Spain. China. Russia. Hungary. (Historical note: Hungary is a top-10 Summer Games medal winner.)
And on and on.
To enable the USOC to be financially independent, Congress awarded it, and by extension the national governing bodies for each associated Olympic sport, the rights to what we would now call “intellectual property.” Crucially, this means the word ‘Olympic’ and the five rings. Literally, the USOC — now the USOPC — owns the word ‘Olympic’ in these United States. See Chapter 36 of the United States Code.
This is why, every now and then, you read a news account of the USO(P)C lawyers suing some ‘Olympic’ diner or cleaner in some town somewhere.
There is no doubt — again, no doubt — that the coronavirus pandemic, and the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games until some date in 2021 may well mean financial uncertainty if not more for some considerable number of U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes who already have qualified for those Games, or are seeking to so qualify.
This is the corollary to the unavoidable decision to postpone.
The hard question is why the USOPC sought money from Congress.
The harder question — this is very, very hard — is why the USOPC had the gumption to say to Congress, in the face of this crisis, that the talents of, say, a backstroker or a rhythmic gymnast or a skateboarder ought to be worth as much or more than the likes of their fellow Americans — truck drivers, janitors, waiters, teachers, salespeople, bartenders, you know, everyday folks.
In essence: the USOPC was saying that American Olympic hopefuls deserved special consideration.
And, moreover, that these athletes and the national governing bodies serving communities in the 50 states deserved — let’s see, we’ve got the USOPC’s rough calculation — $200 million.
For context, and keep in mind that USOPC revenues fluctuate considerably — up in even-numbered years, which are Olympic years, down in odd, or off years — $200 million is more than the organization’s entire revenue in 2017, $183.7 million, though way less than $322.8 million it registered in the Winter Games year of 2018, according to its most recent publicly available tax returns.
The USOPC’s take is that the $200 million was not for the USOC. It was just, you know, making the ask.
Isn’t this a little, you know, squishy?
Oh, hey, Congress, it’s us, the USOPC! We’re asking for $200 million. But, no, not for us. Just, you know — for some friends!
Of the $200 million, per the Post, $50 million was for 2,550 U.S. athletes. This after a record 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits, according to the Labor Department, last week seeing the biggest jump in new jobless claims in history, surpassing the record of 695,000 set in 1982.
What are the optics of those numbers?
The other $150 million would go to the 50 national governing bodies. In response to a USOPC request for data, the NGBs collectively estimated they will cancel more than 8,000 events by June, leading directly to losses of $122 million. The number got bumped to $150 million to account for those NGBs that didn’t respond to the survey.
This would be like our youngest, the junior in college, asking for money and me saying, how much, and she responding, I don’t know, maybe, like, $1,000 to get me through the month? And me saying, what’s that based on? And she saying, dad, come on, you know.
Those NGBs that didn’t account for the survey!!!
The Senate ignored the request, leaving the USOPC out of the $2.2 trillion package forwarded Thursday to the House, the Post reported. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said she expects to bring the package to the House floor on Friday.
All around, the USOPC action boggles the mind. Why?
1. For more than 40 years, the USOPC has lived by the notion that it is financially self-sustaining. Can’t say this enough.
2. In exchange for being financially on its own, the USOC has historically been left to govern itself — that is, with built-in congressional oversight, such oversight amplified (or, the skeptic would note, sought to be played by members of Congress for political advantage on television) at moments of scandal or crisis.
If you believe that our divided and mostly do-nothing Congress can get an Olympic team together every two years, you are in the decided minority.
Further, if you believe that Congress has the subject-matter expertise to run an Olympic team, or that it suddenly now has such acquired or can develop such expertise and ought to be given the mandate to run an Olympic team, you are in the minority.
3. That financial independence has been the source of literally years if not decades of conflict with the International Olympic Committee over broadcast and other revenue shares due the then-named USOC. It was because it did not get federal funding that the USOC asserted, kept asserting, had to assert it needed as much money as it could get in its arrangements with the IOC; the totals due the USOC were considerable.
This dispute took a l-o-n-g time to resolve, ironed out, finally, by former USOC chair Larry Probst and chief executive Scott Blackmun.
Did anyone consider the ramifications of U.S. relations with the IOC or the greater international Olympic community before asking Congress for $200 million?
4. If Congress had said yes to that $200 million, just a little realpolitik: Olympic sport In the United States would have been funded, or at least the charge surely would have gone, just like the Russians and the Chinese.
Did anyone at the USOPC pause to consider the optics of that before asking Congress? In an election year?
5. How did the USOPC come up with that $200 million figure? For the $150 million part, per the news accounts, it came from “back-of-the-envelope” estimates and was, moreover, “something of a rough estimate.”
For this, for the perhaps unintended but completely foreseeable consequence of an ask made amid a crisis, the USOPC would be willing to consider inviting Congress — and in perpetuity — into its figurative tent? Potentially trading literally decades of independence? For a “back-of-the-envelope” estimate and a “rough estimate”?
If the USOPC wants to be like every other country everywhere and be federally funded, with Olympic sport the arm of a federal ministry, reasonable people can debate the merits.
Properly, though, that ought to be the subject of a white paper, or a presidential commission, just like the study that brought about the 1978 Act itself.
6. Because of the Nassar matter, Congress is investigating the USOPC. That investigation is ongoing. Yet the USOPC now asks Congress, the very same Congress that is investigating the USOPC, for $200 million.
The very same Congress that you are trying to convince *not* to mettle in your affairs — this is who you ask for $200 million?
The logic there is — what? The optics there are — what?
7. Before going to Congress, did the USOPC seek financial help from various, or any, private foundations, or corporate entities? Starting with seed money perhaps from the El Pomar Foundation, in Colorado Springs?
Who else? Nike, maybe? Any other U.S. corporate entities?
The IOC and Tokyo 2020 are, very suddenly, having to be as creative and resourceful as possible to get to the opening ceremony next year. Wouldn’t now would be the time for the USOPC to be the same? To rally Americans behind the athletes, the team and the institution? To be — in words that have rounded around the entire world this week in connection with the Tokyo Olympics — that “beacon of hope.”
Instead of asking Congress to solve its problems.
—
As a point of contrast:
You know who looks good, very good, right now?
USA Track & Field.
A lot of haters wanted to hate when Max Siegel, the chief executive, set about changing the culture at USATF. The key piece: a 23-year deal with Nike, from 2017 to 2040, purportedly worth an overall $450 to $500 million in cash and goods.
The deal ensured USATF’s financial stability and, Siegel has said many times, came about precisely because he knew the value of having such stability, having lived through the downtown of 2009-09.
As Siegel has said about that deal, “If any owner or CEO out there is not interested in nearly tripling the operating budget for the foreseeable future and guaranteeing the financial stability of an organization, rolling the dice about what the economy will be and how people will perform over a period of time, I’d be shocked.”
Who wouldn’t want that now? That’s called, in a word, leadership.