Change for better at USATF: believe it

EUGENE — Jackie Joyner-Kersee is arguably the greatest female American track and field athlete of all time. Competing across four editions of the Olympics in the long jump and the heptathlon, she won six medals, three gold. Before Max Siegel took over as chief executive of USA Track & Field, Jackie Joyner-Kersee had never — repeat, never — been invited to USATF headquarters in Indianapolis.

Let that sink in for a moment.

“I don’t want to believe the design was to leave people on the outside,” Joyner-Kersee said here amid the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials. “It was just business as usual. It became normal. You think that is the way it is supposed to be.”

Culture change is about the most difficult thing there is to effect, all the more so in the Olympic sports sphere.

At work now — in real time — is a profound culture shift for the better at USATF, which is, as Siegel put it Tuesday, both the economic engine and the governing body of track and field in the United States.

Of course there are critics, non-believers, doomsayers.

All constructive criticism is more than welcome, Siegel observing that such observations can “point out our weaknesses” and thus be “really healthy for us.” He added, “People should continue to express their criticism, their concern and hopefully their praise for the organization.”

To be sure, USATF is far from perfect. No institution is perfect. No institution can ever be perfect.

At the same time, praise where praise is due:

USATF, long the most-dysfunctional federation in the so-called U.S. “Olympic family,” has — in the four years since Siegel took over — taken concrete, demonstrative steps to become a leader in the field.

True — by virtually any metric.

Joyner-Kersee: “Change is hard. Most of the time, you don’t see change until years down the road. But there are certain things that are being put in place where, at the beginning, you might not understand why. But when the moment comes, you see it’s working out.”

For the first time in recent memory, these 2016 Trials are what they should be: a commemoration of the sport’s vibrant past as well as a well-run production at go time with an eye toward the future, in particular the 2021 world championships, back here at historic Hayward Field.

The evidence is all around Hayward, and Eugene:

Here was John Carlos, the legend from the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, singing autographs.

Here was Adam Nelson being presented the 2004 Athens Games shot put gold medal in a Hayward ceremony. Nelson, who had initially finished second, was moved up to gold when Ukraine’s Yuri Bilonoh was, to little surprise, confirmed a doper. In 2016, Nelson got what he deserved — a ceremony before thousands cheering for him, and for competing clean. Then he went out and tried to qualify for the 2016 team, making the finals and finishing seventh. All good for a guy who on Thursday turns 41.

https://twitter.com/AdamMcNelson/status/748907838584463362

https://twitter.com/ryanmfenton/status/750129069384019968

Here, during the next-to-last lap during a prelim in the men’s 5,000, came the javelin champion Cyrus Hosteler — waving an American flag, racing exuberantly down the curve and the homestretch in the outside lane while the pack zipped by on the inside.

Here, too, behind Hayward have been hundreds, maybe thousands, of kids racing in the “little sprinters” section. Or outside the stadium — kids and grown-ups trying their luck at throwing the shot.

All of it amid the county-fair smell of kettle corn, and under brilliant blue skies.

Vin Lananna, president of TrackTown, the local organizers, who is as well the 2016 U.S. Olympic track team men's head coach, said much strategizing had gone into what he called two “common themes — bringing the athletes into close contact with the fans and introducing as many boys and girls to running, jumping and throwing as possible.”

He also said, “It is my hope that by shining a spotlight on certain events, by working hard to attract boys and girls to the sport, and by celebrating the amazing heritage of our athletes at these 2016 Olympic Trials, that we’ll really grow the awareness of today’s track and field heroes in the mind of Americans.

“And I hope that by 2021, when the world comes to Oregon for the IAAF world championships, the stars of Team USA are household names. I’m sure that on the final night of these Trials we’ll be strategizing about what next steps we can take to make that happen.”

At this point, the skeptic cries — wait. NBC sent Bob Costas to Omaha last week for the swim Trials. There Costas interviewed the stars Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky.

Is Costas in Eugene? No.

Then again, on Sunday alone, U.S. athletes set seven world-leading marks; the hashtag “#TrackTown16” trended globally on Twitter; the USATF production team launched its first Snapchat story; and three of the five top trending items on Facebook were the U.S. track stars Allyson Felix, LaShawn Merritt and Justin Gatlin.

USATF will send a team of roughly 125 athlete to Rio, roughly a quarter of the entire U.S. delegation. Halfway through these Trials, 50 track and field athletes have been named. Of those 50, 35 are first-time Olympians. In these disciplines all three qualifiers will be first-timers: men’s and women’s 800; men’s pole vault, men’s long jump, women’s discus.

It’s all quite a change from four years ago.

Siegel had just taken over just weeks before as CEO. The 2012 Trials were marked by a bizarre dead-heat in the women’s 100 that became a worldwide source of ridicule. Plus, there was the weather.

As Siegel said Tuesday in a state-of-the-sport news conference, “It is a lot different for me. It was raining and I was in the middle of a dead heat a couple weeks on the job.”

Lots of things are indisputably a lot different.

First and foremost, USATF used to run with an annual budget of roughly $16 to $18 million. This year, it’s $36 million — the product of 17 new deals in the past 48 months, including 12 new corporate partnerships.

Has USATF figured out how to make track athletes the kind of money NFL or NBA players get?

No.

But, working in collaboration with its athletes’ council, chaired by long jump champion Dwight Phillips, for the first time an athlete who makes the U.S. national team gets $10,000 along with bonuses of up to $25,000 for Olympic gold medals. That’s all in addition to dollars that can come from the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Does that automatically make a track star a millionaire? No.

Is it a start? Yes. Just “scratching the surface,” Siegel said.

And, as Siegel pointed out, it’s reasonable to ask whether it’s fair to compare, on the one hand, track and field with, on the other, the NBA or NFL.

The pro leagues are for-profit enterprises. Moreover, they are unionized.

USATF is a not-for-profit entity. Plus, its charge is to serve not only elite athletes but also a variety of grass-roots programs.

“The conversation gets a little cloudy when people have whatever their personal definition is about sharing money with athletes,” he said. “If you host an event that gives an athlete a platform, some would say that’s not money in the athlete’s pocket. But someone needs to fund those things.”

Which leads directly to the central point.

When he took over, Siegel said, he saw two primary objectives: to effect organizational stability and to drive innovation.

Another innovation nugget: Wednesday’s hammer throw competition, to be held inside Hayward, will be available via desktop, tablet, mobile and connected TV devices. Here is the livestream link for the women's competition. And the men's.

Most important:

For the first time in maybe ever, USATF can pronounce itself stable.

Nothing — repeat, nothing — is possible without that stability, and anyone who is being reasonable would have to acknowledge that much of the criticism that attends USATF comes from those who for years have accepted intense variability as part of the landscape, often seeking to leverage that instability in the pursuit of petty politics or otherwise.

Before Siegel took over, Nelson said, “No one trusted the leadership,” adding, “When that trust is broken, a power grab goes on.”

He also said, “There is a culture change happening. There have been major changes at work at USATF in the last four years.”

Hawi Keflezeghi, the agent whose clients include Boris Berian, runner-up in the men’s 800, recently sent Siegel an email — quoted here with permission — that said, in part, “Your commitment to elite athletes through the high performance program is evident & greatly appreciated,” adding, “Thank you for all your efforts & leadership.”

Keflezighi, in an interview, said, speaking generally about the state of the sport, “If you are quick to criticize, be quick to acknowledge the good that is going on, too. Be objective enough to see it.”

Nelson, referring both to track and field generally and USATF specifically, said, “This is a family, and I genuinely mean that — even when a family fights, even when a family disagrees.

“But for a family to survive, you have to find ways to break down those barriers and re-establish communication.”

This is the key to Siegel’s style. And why USATF is on the upswing.

For students of management, he alluded to four different facets of his way in his Tuesday remarks.

One: “My style is not to discuss [in the press] things that are happening or resolutions that need to be made in the privacy of business.”

If you think that means he’s not transparent — wrong. All in, Siegel spent 50 minutes Tuesday at the lectern, half of that answering any and all questions. Beyond which, the USATF website holds the answer to almost every organizational or financial question.

Two, he and chief operating officer Renee Washington place a tremendous emphasis on — as much as possible — working collaboratively with the many stakeholders in the USATF universe.

The athlete revenue distribution — or sharing, if you like — plan?

“We worked collaboratively and painstakingly and long, and put in a collective effort with [the athlete council] … to come up with a system that was fair,” Siegel said, adding, “We continue to work in a fluid manner to improve it.”

Three, Siegel and Washington are quick to credit others.

USATF staffers, he said, “work tirelessly, are equally as passionate, care about the sport and wake up every day trying to do the best job possible.”

At Tuesday’s event, he singled out, among others in the room, Duffy Mahoney and Robert Chapman in the high performance division; and the four-time Olympian Aretha Thurmond, who has the complex job of overseeing logistics, travel and uniforms for international teams.

Too, he said, “I can not say enough about our partners at TrackTown and the city of Eugene.”

Four, Siegel can approach problems with either a macro or micro approach — whichever is, depending on the situation, most appropriate.

Micro: “We have been trying really hard to pay attention to small details that people don’t see,” he said, down to the way team uniforms get packed in the bags, with care and attention, evidence of “what it feels like to be treated with dignity and respect and the kind of importance that an athlete deserves.”

Macro: “For us as a community, for all of us who really love track and field, who would love to see the sport grow, it is not rocket science: people have to want to consume the product. You have to have people who are willing to buy tickets to the event, sponsors who are willing to spend money, people who are willing to spend merchandise.

“As a community, I would love to change the tone of our conversation. To figure out, OK — true, this is where we are falling short. But what do we do as a community to make sure that our sport is front and center with all the other properties out there?”

Change can be hard. But it can also be good. When it's right in front of your face, you just have to see which way it's pointing, Joyner-Kersee saying, “With that change, now you have athletes wanting to know: where is the office?”

100-days-out memo: oh, right, there's an LA24 bid

Curious: why, with a Los Angeles bid for the 2024 Summer Games underway, would the U.S. Olympic Committee opt Wednesday to have its 100-days-to-Rio-2016 event in Times Square in New York City? What about that, given the LA24 bid, makes any sense?

1. Times Square, dressed in neon, is unquestionably many things. Like, if you’re lucky, you can catch a glimpse of the Naked Cowboy — big hat, small underwear — picking at his strategically placed guitar and panning for dollars. Wow!

New York? Biggest (and most self-important) city in the United States. So what? LA is No. 2, with a much-richer Olympic history. Also this about New York: big-time 2005 loser for the 2012 Summer Games, which went to London.

On Wednesday evening, as part of the 100-day countdown, the Empire State Building was lit up red, white and blue.

Which leads to: what is the particular relevance this summer of plans to light up the Freedom Tower, built on the destroyed World Trade Center site, with the Team USA Rio medals count? Even the New York 2012 bid did not play on the 9/11 terror attacks. So what is it? There are tall buildings in New York? Please. Light up the top of the 73-story U.S. Bank Tower in downtown LA. Or Staples Center a few blocks away. Or the Hollywood sign.

2. If you're trying to convey the notion that Times Square is akin to Town Square USA, which is ridiculous in the first instance, how in the world does that promote an LA bid? The plaza at LA Live, which holds Staples and the Microsoft Theater, is plenty big enough, and has proven plenty cool enough for virtually every awards show there is.

3. If the USOC believes New York is all that great, move your entire office there. But no. The USOC manages quite nicely to do the bulk of its business from Colorado Springs, Colorado. So why New York? Bottom line: it would have been just as easy, and way more consistent with the 2024 bid, to stage this 100-days-out event in Los Angeles.

4. If the suggestion is that the event was not just for media and Olympic fans but for sponsors and donors (party Tuesday evening at the Museum of Modern Art for 300 “Team USA supporters”) — uh, sophisticated donors and businesspeople do business, and lots of it, in California. If California was a stand-alone country, it would be the eighth-largest economy in the world as measured by gross domestic (or, the case of California, state) product, immediately behind Brazil, where — oh — the Games will be held in 100 days.

Rhetorical question: wouldn’t it make sense to invite important people to SoCal and showcase not only Rio 2016 but LA24?

As for parties — again, it’s awards season, and more, every week in Los Angeles and Southern California.

Another rhetorical question: so you want, like the IOC and USOC, to find imaginative ways to connect young people with the Games? Music and sport are the two universal languages. The Coachella festival just ran for the past two weekends. Come on.

5. The Paris people had their 100 days out in — Paris. Not Lyon or Marseilles. And not just any old spot in Paris. It was at the Palais de Chaillot at the Trocadero by the Eiffel Tower.

Incidentally, the Paris 2024 team — including the city's first female mayor, Anne Hidalgo — did go earlier this week to Marseilles, to promote the bid. But when it came to 100 days out, it was back in Paris all the way. Just like the USOC should have been Wednesday in LA.

6. The Associated Press story out of Times Square dutifully noted that First Lady Michelle Obama appeared in front of dozens of U.S. athletes, and quoted her as saying she was a “real, lifelong, die-hard Olympics fan.”

For an American audience, that’s perhaps lovely. But in the midst of a spirited bid campaign, who are the target audiences?

If the point was to appeal to a U.S. audience exclusively — why? There’s a bid campaign going on! Kill two birds with the one stone, please.

Not to mention: the Obamas, after their appearance at the IOC session in Copenhagen in 2009 at which Chicago got kicked out of 2016 voting in the first round, are the favorites of few, at best, in the International Olympic Committee.

At any rate, not one word in that AP story about Los Angeles bidding for 2024. Maybe the reporter opted not to include anything. Or maybe it wasn’t a USOC point of emphasis Wednesday that, you know, LA is bidding for the 2024 Olympics, even though — outside of the performance of the team at the Rio Games — the bid is the undeniable No. 1 USOC priority for the next 17 or so months, until the IOC election in September 2017 in Lima, Peru.

As a maybe-not-so-helpful reminder Wednesday of that trip by President Obama and First Lady to Copenhagen, here was Republican front-runner Donald Trump, speaking in Washington at the Center for the National Interest, in a story reported at length by the Chicago Tribune:

"Do you remember when the president made a long, expensive trip to Copenhagen, Denmark, to get the Olympics for our country? And, after this unprecedented effort, it was announced that the United States came in fourth. Fourth place.

"The president of the United States making this trip, unprecedented, comes in fourth place. He should have known the result before making such an embarrassing commitment. We were laughed at all over the world as we have been many, many times. The list of humiliations go on and on and on.”

It’s easy to dismiss Trump’s comments, to assert they bear no relevance to the Times Square event. But maybe they do. If only one IOC voter reads his rant and goes, yep, maybe he’s right, then what? Especially since that Tribune story duly connected Trump’s remarks with Mrs. Obama’s appearance at the Times Square production, quoting the First Lady at length:

"’To this day, I still remember the excitement that I felt as a little girl growing up on the South Side of Chicago when Olympic season would roll around,’ she said, adding how her friends would gather with her to watch the Games on TV. ‘I mean, these times meant the world to kids in neighborhoods all over the country.’” Especially, obviously, Southern California, where there’s an Olympic bid going on.

7. At any rate, compare and contrast the AP story Wednesday out of Paris.

Headline: “Passing Security Test at Euro 2016 Will Help 2024 Paris Bid.”

Sixth paragraph, quoting French Olympic Committee president Denis Masseglia: “‘It's important to prove that our system — to guarantee everybody's security — is the best system, and the [April 3] Paris marathon was a success,’ said Masseglia, who was speaking at an event to mark 100 days until the start of the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro.”

8. If the reason the USOC event went down in New York is because it's easier for NBC, the U.S. television rights-holder, that doesn't really make a lot of sense.

NBC has a travel budget; see the social media shots posted Tuesday of longtime Olympic host Bob Costas along with senior executives Jim Bell and Joe Gesue, and others, in Rio. Moreover, NBC has a brand-new newsroom in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, in Universal City (where the main press and broadcast centers would be if LA wins for 2024). Other networks: CBS? Big facility in midtown LA. ESPN? Studio downtown at Staples. Fox? Century City studio.

Wheels up for day of 100 days prep work in Rio #RoadToRio #BobInRio

A photo posted by NBC Olympics (@nbcolympics) on Apr 26, 2016 at 6:23am PDT

9. If the thinking was that the other 'important' media are in New York, that is way old school, and not remotely true anymore, a nod to the East Coast bias that regrettably permeates way too much regressive thinking about the way our country works. Plain and simple: Los Angeles and California are the present and, more important, the future. That’s why LA is the 2024 bid.

At the risk of being super-obvious, having this kind of promotional event in New York serves as a profound disconnect from the core message the USOC purportedly is seeking to send the IOC about LA and California as the future of media and technology.

When IOC president Thomas Bach came to the United States earlier this year, his check-the-box visit to LA — in keeping with similar trips he had made to the other three 2024 bid cities, Paris, Rome and Budapest — provided necessary cover to meet with Google, Facebook, Twitter and other California-based technology executives. At the SportAccord convention last week in Switzerland, who served as key presenters at the so-called “Digital Summit”? Executives from Facebook, Twitter and Venice, California-based Snapchat.

Why give even one IOC member any opportunity to think the institution can count on the full support of those companies, along with others up and down California, if LA doesn’t win?

10. You want a disconnect? One of the promoted features of the Times Square event involved the unveiling of 47 full-sized surfboards, one for each Team USA sponsor, that had been individually decorated and turned into what a USOC release called a “piece of customized art.”

Everyone knows that surfing and Times Square go together like pickles and maple syrup.

If you want to buy tickets to “Les Miserables,” cool, see you at TKTS at Times Square. But surfing? See ya at Zuma, dude.

Further, as the USOC pointed out, three extra surfboards — an Olympic, Paralympic and Team USA board, bringing the total to 50 — were designed by Hurley. The company traces its roots to the Southern California surf industry in the 1970s. Maybe that’s because it’s based in Costa Mesa, California.

A photo posted by NBC Olympics (@nbcolympics) on Apr 26, 2016 at 6:14pm PDT

Let’s not forget that the USOC is the institution that a year and a half ago couldn’t figure out that it should have gone to Los Angeles in the first instance, not Boston.

Memo to the USOC: there is a 2024 campaign going on, and LA is your candidate. Why make this even the least bit difficult  when some things should be so easy?

Figure skating's got problems

If you are lucky enough, as I am, to be the father of teenage daughters, you learn quickly that teen girls are the knowers, indeed the arbiters, of all things. The 19-year-old is back at college, enduring the frozen winter quarter of her sophomore year at Northwestern. So the 14-year-old ruled the dinner-table focus group. Just the way she likes it.

The Sochi Winter Olympics, as we all know, are just weeks away. Name a figure skater, I said. Just one. She couldn’t do it. Now, I said, name a snowboarder. She perked right up. “The ginger guy,” she said. “Shaun White!”

Ladies and gentlemen, in journalism school long ago, they cautioned us not to rely on anecdotal evidence. In this instance, that axiom must give way to the teen-girls-know-everything rule.

Which is why, as the U.S. figure skating trials get underway Thursday in Boston, it has to be said: figure skating has big, big problems.

Figure skating is seemingly so stuck in the past it doesn’t know what it is now or what it wants to be. The generation gap is immense, intense and profound.

A Sochi prediction or two: Yuna Kim of South Korea, the ladies’ champion from Vancouver 2010, will again be ethereal. The ice dancing competition will be fine, with Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White fighting for gold with their training partners in Detroit, Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada. Aside from that — what?

All these anniversary stories this week about Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan and the specials yet to come — people, that was 20 years ago. My college sophomore wasn’t even born yet! She doesn’t know about either of them and, frankly, why should she?

To turn the infamous tagline from the sordid affair around, my sophomore might as well ask if confronted with a Tonya-Nancy story: why me?

Snowboarding, snowboardcross, slopestyle — those are the events that are now, that are fun, that are riveting. At the Sochi Olympics, these are the disciplines that are going to go flying across cellphones and tablets. It’s no wonder Shaun White’s new trick, the Frontside Double Cork 1440, is already up on YouTube.

In a little-noticed decision taken at its general assembly in South Africa in the summer of 2011, the International Olympic Committee approved the introduction of a variety of new events for Sochi 2014, including (for both men and women) ski halfpipe and ski slopestyle as well as snowboard slopestyle.

For the unfamiliar, slopestyle requires a rider to execute tricks for amplitude and style while ripping through rails, jumps and other obstacles. White is trying to make the U.S. team riding the snowboard in the halfpipe and again in slopestyle.

Math for a moment: in all, there will be 10 medal events in both snowboarding and freeskiing … multiplying 10 (medal events) across those two disciplines equals 20 … three medals apiece times 20 means 60.

In this instance, the IOC understand the teen-age girl rule, too. It gets where the action is at. It’s in action sports.

You know who else gets it? Bob Costas. The longtime NBC host made a joke about it in a conversation earlier this week with Matt Lauer on the Today show:

“Basically,” Costas said, “I think the president of the IOC should be Johnny Knoxville. Because basically this stuff is just ‘Jackass’ stuff that they invented and called Olympic sports.”

Lauer, laughing: “You mean that in the best possible way, though?”

Costas: “I mean it in the kindest possible sense, yes.”

Lauer: “We could see Shaun White, though, take center stage in slopestyle.”

Costas: “We could very well — and, god knows, if there’s anyone who knows slopestyle, it’s me.”

You know who should have gotten that — who should have appreciated the in-joke — but didn’t? The snowboarders, especially the slopestyle riders. The round of social-media criticism that ensued seemed aimed primarily at Costas. Dudes, it was a joke — lighten up. He gets you. Stay tuned. Or would you rather be at the figure-skating rink?

True, figure skating did get one new gig for 2014, a “team event.” That upped the number of figure-skating medals events in Sochi to all of five, meaning 15 medals.

If you were running things and your job was to win medals and you had to allocate resources … just looking at those numbers alone … 60 opportunities against 15 … what would you say is more relevant? Action sports, or figure skating? Where would you cast not just the present but the future?

Doubtlessly, however, figure skating will be at the core of most television production of the 2014 Games — whatever network. Another life rule: no sensible dad grabs the remote when mom declares, let’s watch skating. That said, the metrics charting the sport’s decline are irrefutable, particularly in the United States, and especially at the elite level:

Eight years after Tonya-Nancy, the French judge scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake Games put figure skating in worldwide disrepute.

In response, the sport did away with perhaps the one thing that everyone understood come the Olympics, the 6.0 scoring system. Scoring now is somewhat more fair. But who — aside from coaches, skaters and a few broadcasters and sports writers — understands it?

Skating retains significant allure in South Korea — any appearance by Kim sells out in, literally, minutes — and in Russia.

Here’s how much of a challenge it now faces in North America:

At last year’s world championships in London, Ontario, in purportedly ice-crazy Canada, they couldn’t even fill a 7,000-seat arena to capacity for any single event until more than halfway through the competition. The president of the international skating union didn’t go. The event wasn’t televised live in the (neighboring) United States. Of course there was, inevitably, a judging controversy.

As for the U.S. team, it has traditionally been so strong that you have to go all the way back to 1936 to find a Games with no medals for the Americans in men’s and women’s singles. It might well happen in Sochi.

The top American woman, Ashley Wagner, has said she would have to be nearly perfect to reach the Olympic podium.

At those 2013 world championships, the two best Americans, Wagner and Gracie Gold, went 5-6. In 2012, Wagner finished fourth; the next-best American, Alissa Czisny, 22nd. In 2011, Czisny took fifth while Rachael Flatt managed 12th.

No American woman medaled in Vancouver,  the first time a U.S. woman had not won a medal at the Games since 1964.

On the men’s side in 2010, American Evan Lysacek won gold. He won’t skate in Sochi because of injury. At last year’s worlds, the two best Americans finished seventh and 14th.

In Vancouver, the contrast between the way Lysacek won and Shaun White’s win in snowboard halfpipe speaks volumes.

Lysacek skated a technically brilliant but safe program. He could have opted to but did not throw any quadruple jumps, only triples. His main rival, Russia’s Evgeny Plushenko, did throw some quads, on the theory that he was — as they would say in snowboarding — progressing the sport.

Plushenko’s quads were slightly off-axis. The judges went for Lysacek.

At the pipe, White won gold with the first of his two runs.

For his second, he chose to unveil a new trick, the Double McTwist 1260, three and a half spins inside two somersaults. He did not have to do it but did so, anyway; at issue was an ethos, the snowboarder’s quest to be ever better through progression; he was thinking not just of the sport’s present but its future.

White landed the McTwist.

For Sochi, White has added another 180 degrees of revolution inside the somersaults. Thus it’s now the Frontside Double Cork 1440.

You want to know why teenagers want to be like Shaun White? Why the IOC shrewdly wants to tap into that energy?

Here’s why: because, standing on top of that hill that night in Vancouver, Shaun White dared to dream big, and then he went big. That is what the best of the Olympic spirit is all about. And that is why snowboarding, and slopestyle, and snowboardcross are where it’s at.

What does figure skating have that even begins to match that?

Sequins? Dreamy music? For real?

Four years after Vancouver, the best male skaters are seemingly all trying to throw quads. Some can even land them.

Is it already, however, a case of too little, too late?

My 14-year-old couldn’t tell you who Max Aaron, the 2013 U.S. champion is, if her life depended on it.

Shaun White — he’s the cool ginger guy.

USA Swimming's night to celebrate

NEW YORK -- Bob Bowman, Michael Phelps' coach, came first. At a filled-to-the-max ballroom here at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square, Bowman won USA Swimming's "coach of the year" award at its annual gala, called the "Golden Goggles," and when he took to the stage he had this to say: "Michael, it has been a privilege to be your coach. It has been even better to be your friend."

A few moments later came Phelps, introduced by the strange-but-awesome pairing of Donald Trump and Gary Hall Jr., the former sprint champion -- on a night when the invite said, "Black Tie" -- wearing, indeed, a funky black-and-white tie draped over a black T-shirt that blared out in pink letters, "Barbie," the ensemble dressed up with a black jacket.

Phelps, Trump allowed, was "a friend of mine." He riffed a little bit more, "You think he's going to win?

Of course he was going to win for "male athlete of the year," and when Phelps got to the stage, he said, referring to London 2012, his fourth Games, "This Olympics was the best Olympics I have ever been a part of."

No one in the American Olympic scene -- arguably not even the U.S. Olympic Committee -- puts on a show like USA Swimming. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was also among the celebrity presenters. The comic Jim Gaffigan came out for a 20-minute riff that only marginally touched on swimming but did include references to Phelps and Subway sandwiches as well as Gaffigan's much-applauded routine on Hot Pockets, the microwaveable turnover.

Out in the hall there was a silent auction with all manner of stuff for sale -- including a framed picture, signed by both Phelps and Serbia's Milorad Cavic, of the 2008 Beijing 100-meter butterfly, which Phelps famously won by one-hundredth of a second.

It's not simply that American swimmers are so good.

It's that the culture of the U.S. swim team creates success.

That is what was fully and richly on display Monday night at the Marriott Marquis ballroom: a program that dares to dream big and that celebrates the role everyone plays in achieving those dreams, from support staff to coaches to athletes.

Indeed, when the night began with introductions across the stage, it wasn't the athletes or the coaches who came first. It was the support staff. And they got just as loud a round of applause from those on hand.

There are other well-run national governing bodies -- the ski and snowboard team, for instance, which claimed 21 of the world-best 37 medals the U.S. team won in Vancouver in 2010.

That said, virtually every other U.S. Olympic federation could learn a little something, or maybe a lot, from how the swim team gets things done. In London, the swim team won 31 medals -- 16 gold, nine silver, six bronze.

As good as the U.S. track team was -- it won 29 medals -- the numbers don't lie. The No. 1 performance in London came in the water.

It was observed by NBC's Bob Costas, the night's emcee, that if the American swim team had been a stand-alone country it would have finished ninth in the overall medals table -- and fifth in the gold-medal count.

When the 49 athletes on the London 2012 team were introduced, two by two, they showed just how much they genuinely liked each other -- the fun that was so vividly on display in the "Call Me Maybe" video they had produced before the Games, which became a viral internet sensation.

Ricky Berens and Elizabeth Beisel didn't just shake hands when they met at center stage; they executed a chest-bump. Missy Franklin did a twirl, courtesy of Jimmy Feigin. Cullen Jones and Kara Lynn Joyce struck "007" poses.

Time and again, the winners Monday took time to say thank you to their families, coaches, staff and teammates.

"It's just -- just amazing to be here," said Katie Ledecky, the Maryland high school sensation who took home two awards, "breakout performer" and "female race of the year," for her dominating 800 freestyle victory in London. She said of the London Games, "I just had a blast … I got to be inspired by all of you."

Nathan Adrian, the "male race of the year winner" for his one-hundredth of a second victory in the 100-meter freestyle, said, "One last note. Thank you to my mom. I know you're watching online. I love you."

"I've never been on a team that was a close as this one," Dana Vollmer, the 100 fly winner who swam in the world record-breaking, gold medal-winning 4 x 100 women's medley relay, along with Franklin, Rebecca Soni and Allison Schmitt, said.

Of the relay team, she said, "We were called the 'Smiley Club.' "

Echoed Franklin, "My teammates are the best people you would ever meet in your entire life." She also said, "With Thanksgiving coming up, I realized I don't have a single thing in my life not to be thankful for."

Phelps provided the valedictory. He was up for "male athlete of the year" against Ryan Lochte (five medals, two gold), Adrian (three medals, two gold) and Matt Grevers (three medals, two gold).

Phelps followed up his eight-for-eight in Beijing with six medals in London, four gold. He became the first male swimmer to execute the Olympic three-peat, and he did it in not just one event but two, the 200 IM and the 100 fly. His 22 Olympic medals stand as the most-ever. Eighteen of those 22 are gold.

Trump, ever the sage, opined, "No athlete has ever come close," a reference to the arc of Phelps' dominating career, adding, "I don't think they ever will."

All of that is why Phelps, who has repeatedly announced that London marked his last Games as a competitive swimmer, had to be the slam-dunk winner. And if it felt Monday like USA Swimming was maybe -- if reluctantly -- turning the page from the Phelps years, there was that, too.

In London, Phelps embraced his role as veteran team leader. He showed anew Monday how much that meant to him.

The others in the "male athlete" category? "We were all in the same apartment in the [Olympic] village," Phelps said, making it clear that while they might sometimes be rivals in the pool, they were, beyond that, teammates, now and forever.

And, he said, as for that "Call Me Maybe" video: "At first I didn't want to do it. And now I'm really glad I did it because," like the swim team's Olympic year and the celebration Monday of that season, "it turned out to be something really special."

NBC's $4.38 billion knockout punch

There's an old maxim in boxing. If you want to beat the champ, you have to knock him out. That's pretty much the way it was always going to play out when it came to the contest for the U.S. broadcast rights for the coming editions of the Olympic Games, which the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday awarded to NBC -- a $4.38 billion deal that stretches through the 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020 Games.

Fox was in the game. The ESPN/ABC combination was, too.

Even so, NBC, which has televised every Summer Olympics in the United States since 1988, every Winter Games since 2002, was always the favorite, despite the resignation May 19 of Dick Ebersol. This process was always bigger than one man, no matter how towering a figure.

Eight years ago, the last time this process played out, NBC agreed to pay $2 billion for the rights to the 2010 and 2012 Games. A General Electric sponsorship bumped the full package up to $2.2 billion. That time around, Fox bid $1.3 billion. ESPN offered to share revenues with the IOC but never specified dollar figures.

This time, NBC swung the knockout punch -- again.

ESPN opted to bid only for the 2014 and 2016 Games. According to Associated Press and Sports Business Daily, it offered $1.4 billion.

Fox put in a bid for 2014/16 and, as well, for 2018/20. Its two-Games bid was $1.5 billion, its four-Games bid $3.4 billion, AP and SBD reported.

NBC went big, for four Games and $4.38 billion.

What else did you expect?

As IOC president Jacques Rogge put it in a news conference Tuesday, referring to NBC, "I can say really that the Olympics are in their DNA."

The IOC, like any institution, has a comfort zone. With NBC, the IOC has enjoyed growth, prosperity and -- under Rogge's direction in particular -- financial security. While it might well have achieved those things in partnership with other networks, the fact is it is NBC that has been there through the ups, the downs, the Salt Lake scandal -- everything.

This deal anchors the IOC's finances through 2020. It figures to do the same for the U.S. Olympic Committee, which now gets 12.75 percent of the U.S. rights fee. The USOC and IOC are currently in active negotiations over the USOC's broadcast and marketing rights shares, Rogge saying the new NBC deal figures to be a "positive factor" in those talks.

Here are the numbers: NBC will pay $775 million for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia and $1.226 billion for the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics.

It will pay $963 million for the 2018 Winter Games and $1.418 billion for the 2020 Summer Olympics. Neither the 2018 nor 2020 site has been decided. The IOC will pick the 2018 city on July 6. Three cities are in that 2018 race: Munich; Annecy, France; and Pyeongchang, South Korea.

The IOC still hopes to reach a separate extension of the GE sponsorship, officials said Tuesday.

The IOC's relationships with NBC, beyond Ebersol, run deep indeed.

To be clear: The IOC did not structure the process so that NBC could win. Hardly. The bids were what they were. The IOC didn't tell anyone what to offer.

Nonetheless: If it was the case that the process was delayed so that there could be signs of life amid the global economic downturn, wasn't it also patently obvious that the auction was pushed back so that the Comcast/NBC merger could be fully completed?

Wasn't it equally obvious when the IOC went around dropping hints that a four-Games package would be welcomed? All those hints came after NBC lost $223 million in Vancouver. A four-Games package clearly would enable bidders for the next package to amortize costs over a longer term.

Brian Roberts, the Comcast chairman, said in that same news conference that the longer term was "strategically important" and of "great value to us." He said Comcast expects to make money on the $4.38 billion deal, calling the company's position "very comfortable."

Roberts added, "We said all along we were going to take a disciplined approach were we would have a path to profitability. By having a longer term, we were able to come out and achieve that goal."

It's far too facile, meanwhile, to say that Tuesday's deal is only about the money. To know even the first thing about the IOC and its culture is to know that.

So what else?

The IOC is actively trying to engage with young people. It last year launched a Youth Olympic Games in Singapore. It has a lively Facebook site.

NBC's deal gives it the rights to television, tablets, mobile phones, broadband -- to every platform now known or to be conceived, as Mark Lazarus, the new chairman of the NBC Sports Group, put it in that same news conference. "That's part of the value for our new company, to bring the Games to more people across more platforms," he said.

For years, the knock on NBC was that it held the good stuff back and showed it only in prime-time.

Fox and ESPN made clear they would show events live. But everyone knew NBC would be doing so, too -- that was one of the main benefits of the Comcast merger. Before, NBC had to rely on prime-time advertising sales. Now there would be considerably less financial pressure because of the added revenue stream from cable sub-fees.

Starting in 2014, Lazarus said, NBC would make every event available live, on one platform or another. Of course, the best stuff presumably will be shown again, in prime-time. Prime-time still draws families together before the big screen; that remains one of the main lures for sponsors.

Beyond that, what the Olympics are about -- what makes them different from every other property -- is story-telling. That's what Roone Arledge understood at ABC, when the Olympics first became a television event in the United States, when screens showed only black-and-white grainy pictures.

Story-telling is Ebersol's passion.

That passion has been passed on to the NBC team. It's the DNA thing Rogge talked of. It was at the core of the message delivered Tuesday to the IOC in a presentation that included Bob Costas and that, by all accounts, was simply first-rate.

"We were blown away by the presentation," Richard Carrion, the IOC's lead negotiator, said. "The passion [the NBC team] had for the Olympic Games was very impressive and very evident to all of us. They know -- they have been doing this for quite a while. We knew that they know what this is about. They know the values that are important to all of us. It was a combination of all those things.

"… We are happy to renew it."