For the Moment, USOC Is on Mind of Congress

With full-scale war apparently imminent in the Middle East, the U.S. Congress spent two hours Wednesday debating the role and function of the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Thousands of miles away in Kuwait, a coalition led by U.S. troops massed for an invasion of Iraq.

In a hushed conference room on Capitol Hill, however, in the very seat of American power, the talk -- at least for those two hours -- was of strengthening and streamlining the USOC, the world’s leading Olympic committee, and why such things matter.

“The question is, why should Congress really pay attention, especially while we’re on the brink of war? Why is it that this is so important to the American public?” asked Harvey Schiller, a former USOC executive director and one of several witnesses testifying Wednesday before a House Commerce Committee subcommittee.

In answering his question, Schiller -- a former Air Force pilot who flew more than 1,000 sorties over the former South Vietnam, whose pilot logs detail some 750 combat hours -- ticked off the exploits of Jesse Owens in Berlin in 1936, the U.S. hockey team in 1980 in Lake Placid and others.

“In peacetime,” he said, “the U.S. Olympic team has rallied the American public as none other.”

The hearing Wednesday marked the third before Congress since the eruption in late December of the USOC’s worst management and leadership crisis. Signs of a coming military conflict dominated the hearing -- which by the second hour was virtually emptied of members of the committee, many of whom were excused to attend a briefing offered by Tom Ridge, the director of homeland security.

Moreover, the session was punctuated by references to the recurring role the U.S. military, and some of its greatest personalities, have played in U.S. Olympic history:

Douglas MacArthur, it was recalled, was president of what was then called the American Olympic Committee, in the 1920s, before he went on to become one of the nation’s great generals.

George Patton, then a 26-year-old Army lieutenant whose World War II exploits were yet to come, finished fifth in the modern pentathlon in the Stockholm Olympics in 1912.

And U.S. Olympians were ferried across the Atlantic Ocean to the Antwerp Games in 1920, just two years after the end of World War I, in what had been troop ships.

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee, which held the hearing, said, “In this time of heightened international tension and [with] the possibility of war looming, devoting congressional attention to sports might not seem a high priority at first glance.

“But in the context of the Olympics, we recognize the value of the unifying qualities of international athletic competitions that highlight our similarities and ignore our differences.”

Rep. John B. Shadegg (R-Ariz.) added that “in many ways” the USOC is “the group that oversees how many in the world view the United States.” He said, “It must step up the challenges of its ambassadorial role.”

The USOC’s recent tumult was sparked by an ethics-related inquiry into then-chief executive Lloyd Ward. A slew of senior USOC officials resigned in protest over the handling of that investigation. That led to sponsor dismay, calls for financial auditing, congressional intervention, the launching of two reform committees and, on March 1, Ward’s resignation.

Ward also has resigned from the board of directors of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the company announced in a statement released Tuesday.

A USOC reform panel is to make recommendations next month. A five-person committee appointed by the U.S. Senate is due to report June 30.

Schiller is one of the members of that panel, led by Don Fehr, head of the players’ union for Major League Baseball.

Key lawmakers have said the 1978 Amateur Sports Act, through which Congress entrusted the Olympic franchise to the USOC, must now be rewritten to better define the committee’s role in American sports.

“We are as responsible for reducing obesity in the United States as we are for producing Olympic medals,” said Jim McCarthy, a USOC board member. “It’s a long way from the couch to the podium.”

The Senate has been driving the legislative push to rewrite the 1978 act, but the session Wednesday served both as a civics primer -- of the rule that any legislation needs the approval of both the Senate and House -- and as a signal that the House intends to be involved in the process.

Neither of the Senate hearings this year -- the first Jan. 28, the second Feb. 13 -- featured testimony from a current U.S. athlete. On Wednesday, Rulon Gardner, the gold medalist in the heavyweight division in Greco-Roman wrestling at the Sydney Games in 2000, appeared before the House.

“I, as an Olympic athlete, remind you that the Olympic committee was formed to help us win Olympic medals,” Gardner said.

No conclusions, however, were reached Wednesday. The time for that, witnesses and members of the committee said, is not now.

But, observed Jim Ryun, winner of the silver medal in the 1,500-meter run in Mexico City in 1968, now a Republican from Kansas in his fourth term as a member of the House of Representatives, the power of the Olympic ideal “reaches deep” into the fabric of American society.

Ryun also said, “The rest of the world is watching what is going to happen with the USOC. That’s why it’s important we get it right this time.”