U.S. Olympic Festival Still Has an Identity Crisis : Even With Successful Turnout, Exact Nature of Competition Is Uncertain

Here is the kind of event the U.S. Olympic Festival was these past 13 days in Oklahoma: Ken Evans, the man inside the furry critter that was the festival mascot, found as he wandered among the 38 sports that “the big question is, ‘What am I?’ Am I a bear or a gopher or what?”

He was a prairie dog named Boomer. But he should not feel bad. For the ninth time since it first was staged in 1978, and despite fabulous success on some levels and a perfect-fitting-of-the-bill on others, the big question of the festival continues to be: What is it?

Oklahoma City organizers, working with a $10 million budget, raised some $8 million in funding and in-kind services from corporate sources, and the U.S. Olympic Committee cheerfully tossed in another $2 million-plus to pay for athletes’ travel and meal expenses. For this, the return was roughly $2 million in ticket sales. “The spiritual impact” meant more than the economic impact, figured local organizing committee chief Clay Bennett. “The true measure of success is whether or not the athletes had a good experience.”

The festival does not make money. It doesn’t even make news, especially in the post-Olympic year when the committee’s various sports federations are retooling for the Barcelona Games in Spain three years hence while the celebrities of Seoul, South Korea, are, by and large, retired or resting. Still, the festival is doing what it originally was meant to do: expand the participant pool and encourage the spinoff of state games, now held in 37 states.

There has been some concern that the committee can’t continue to ask cities to spend millions to host a festival or ask ESPN to continue televising a festival if the event remains on such a developmental level. Maybe, Festival Committee chairman Don Porter pointed out, the committee should lean a bit more on the sports’ national governing bodies to raise the level of competition to something approaching national championships.

Then again, there were representatives from 16 cities here, considering bidding for festivals in the next quadrennium (Minneapolis-St. Paul already has the ’90 festival and Los Angeles the ’91 festival). And ESPN already is on board for the rest of the quadrennium.

And the festival in fact is serving the athletes, the stated purpose of the committee.

To some extent, Oklahoma City sold this event to local leaders based on the Indianapolis Model: In ‘82, with the Hoosier Dome half built but no professional team lined up, Indianapolis engaged in a we’ll-show-the-world-we’re-a-big-time-sports-city flurry of building arenas and tracks and gymnasiums, with the considerable backing of the Lilly Foundation.

Here, similarly, publisher Edward Gaylord, the richest man in Oklahoma (and father-in-law of festival organizing director Bennett), has been instrumental in getting the corporate support behind the event. The theme to this festival was, “Winning a Place in the World,” and there actually are those in Oklahoma City who believe an NFL franchise somehow could materialize.

The differences from Indy: Oklahoma City has a drastically smaller population. And, without spanking new facilities here, this festival did not have the same curiosity lure that Indianapolis had. And, while Indianapolis followed the festival with a concerted effort that brought six U.S. Olympic Committee national governing body headquarters to town, Oklahoma City seemed most interested in the festival as a one-shot deal--to be another event in the state’s centennial celebration.

There was unprecedented attention to opening and closing ceremonies, featuring celebrities from Ronald Reagan to Bob Hope. So, while 76,014 paid for the Opening and more than 30,000 for the closing, the largest crowd to watch any single festival sport was 9,446 at the final figure skating session. Oklahoma City fell just short of North Carolina’s 1987 attendance record of 464,423 and Oklahoma City lacked the energy that Chapel Hill-Durham-Raleigh-Greensboro had.

In part, it was due to this region’s preoccupation with football. Barry Switzer got the biggest cheer of the 13 days when he was introduced during the opening.

Boomer was popular, too. Whatever he was.