Getting Down to Business

You win Olympic medals, you get funded.

You don’t--well, as new U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Norman P. Blake Jr. said Tuesday, “There are finite resources to be had here.”

As part of a sweeping reorganization aimed at making the USOC more businesslike, Blake intends to propose to its policy-making Executive Committee that the USOC tie funding for 39 U.S. sports federations to medal counts at the Games.

Briefing reporters in advance of the Executive Committee meeting this weekend in Boston, Blake also confirmed that he intends to trim the USOC’s staff of about 500 employees by 13% even as he recruits a new senior management team.

He also said he plans to sharpen the USOC’s marketing focus--and, he stressed, make sure its corporate sponsors “realize the economic value they bargained for.”

Blake, most recently an insurance and hotel company executive, was lured to the USOC in February to bring a corporate sensibility to what is now a $115-million-per-year operation. In an hourlong phone call, he made plain Tuesday his view that the business of the USOC ought to be business--the better, he said, to serve “our end customers,” American athletes.

Deliberately vague on details, he launched frequently Tuesday into business-speak to preview the weekend meeting:

In explaining the 13% staff reduction, he said the “top-heavy” USOC needs “to blow away some of the low value-added infrastructure” now in place.

New senior managers must be “difference makers” and “effective change agents.”

Marketing-wise, “We have an enviable brand that frankly can be even stronger and more valuable to our corporate sponsors.”

And, in what could be a significant shift in the “resource allocation process,” he said he views the USOC as “franchiser” and the sports federations--everything from biathlon to gymnastics--as “franchisees,” with USOC funds to be doled out based on “business plans” that result in medals at the Olympic Games.

Blake did say the USOC might well invest in a sport whose athletes turn in a below-par Games performance if it believes the “business plan” is on track to produce medals.

But he did not mince words in speaking Monday to executives of the sports federations: “I told them this is strictly a business equation.”

Sources said Blake has also proposed a significant cut in funds to the five sports federations that compete in the Pan-American Games but don’t compete in the Olympics--among them, water skiing and roller skating. Blake did not provide details.

He said Tuesday he understands his plan may provoke unease, even conflict, this weekend in Boston. But he said: “I never enter into a fight unless I think I can win it.”