USOC seeks ways to bolster Olympic sports at colleges

WASHINGTON – With major college athletics departments under increasing financial pressure that seems likely to threaten many Olympic sport programs, U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun on Tuesday outlined several ways his organization may become involved with helping support those sports within the NCAA structure.

In remarks at the National Press Club, Blackmun talked about the prospect of U.S. national sport governing bodies working with the NCAA to sponsor national championships in various sports and about the USOC finding ways to support endowments of Olympic sports teams, coaching positions and scholarships.

He also said the USOC will meet with a group of athletics directors under the auspices of the National Association of College Directors of Athletics to form a working group to explore other ideas. He added that the USOC has identified a donor willing to provide $5 million to back this effort if the right ideas can be found.

"The 30,000-foot conclusion is that we have to focus on this," Blackmun said in an interview with USA TODAY Sports after the appearance. "It's important. There are so many things that we can do. What we need to do is get together and decide what is our top priority, what are our top three priorities. We have identified a donor who's willing to support us, subject to us collectively — and by that I mean the athletic directors and the USOC — finding a program that we think is really going to move the needle. … We need to preserve these Olympic sport programs."

Blackmun said he did not foresee the USOC directly providing endowment money to college athletic programs, but he said he is a believer in this type of fundraising, and the USOC would like to see "if we can throw our support behind that concept and get people who believe in their universities as well as people who believe in the Olympics to support the endowment."

During his remarks, Blackmun said the "inevitable reallocation" of college sports funding is a threat to U.S. Olympic success in the future. The U.S. was second in overall medals behind Russia at the Winter Games in February after finishing atop the medal count at the 2012 and 2010 Games.

Elite programs are aiming to start offering scholarships that cover the full cost of attending college, rather than the current tuition, room, board, books and fees. They also potentially will be able to offer football and men's basketball players deferred compensation as a result of the Ed O'Bannon legal case. And there is other litigation that could result in further changes to how college athletes are compensated for playing.

One possible result is that schools will continue to drop Olympic sports or reduce funding.

Blackmun said there are now just 16 college men's gymnastics programs and the number of wrestling teams has fallen to 77, from the 146 that existed 35 years ago.

Colleges and the USOC must "build partnerships that benefit them in addition to us," Blackmum said.

On other topics related to the Olympic movement:

• Blackmun called Washington an "iconic American city" while praising Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco as "equally as good." The USOC is considering the cities for a potential bid for the 2024 Summer Games. No decision has been made to put forth a bid, but "it looks Iike we're headed in that direction," he said.
• With just two cities bidding for the 2022 Winter Games and Oslo recently dropping out, Blackmun was asked what can be done to encourage more countries to bid on the Olympics. "If a democracy were to spend as much as Sochi spent on the Winter Olympic Games it would be a problem," he said, noting Russia spent $51 billion on infrastructure that didn't exist such as bridges, roads and railways. He added that the U.S. has to be "fiscally responsible to our citizens" when weighing a potential bid.
• The IOC needs to keep the Games relevant to young people, Blackmun said. "How do we get skateboarding in the Games?"