USOC Is Trying to Polish Its Act Following Turmoil

In crisis, it is said, there is opportunity.

A year ago, the U.S. Olympic Committee was reeling from such turmoil that one U.S. senator said, “Scandal seems to follow the [USOC] like dogs follow a meat wagon.” Another decried an “Olympic-sized food fight” and the “whole sordid mess.”

Heading into a meeting today of the USOC’s policymaking executive committee in Chicago, the USOC says U.S. athletes could win 100 or more medals this summer at the Athens Games -- with the USOC boasting of a modest budget surplus, sponsor and television commitments of more than $400 million for the coming four-year Olympic cycle, a number of new high-profile corporate backers, a revamped management structure and soaring staff morale at its Colorado Springs, Colo., headquarters.

In addition, senior USOC leaders -- departing markedly from positions adopted in years past by U.S. officials -- have in recent months taken a forceful role in anti-doping issues. That stance has gone far in mending relationships that had soured with the International Olympic Committee and other global sports bodies.

For the first time in years, the USOC appears on the verge of long-term stability.

“I welcome the evolutions taking place at the USOC and commend the new leadership, which wants to fight against doping and for transparency,” IOC President Jacques Rogge said.

Dick Pound, a longtime IOC member from Canada and current president of the Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency, observed, “There is some indication there might be some movement there,” adding, “If that reflects the new attitude and we can get past the past, frankly, we need the United States to lead.”

The turmoil that consumed the USOC last year is traceable to 1978, when Congress chartered the USOC through the Amateur Sports Act. The act gave the USOC responsibility for fielding a U.S. Olympic team.

From virtually the start, however, the USOC was divided into rival camps -- volunteers and paid staff.

The spark that lighted the fuse, catapulting the USOC into disarray, proved to be an ethics-related inquiry into then-chief executive Lloyd Ward. A slew of 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, last March 1, Ward’s resignation. Marty Mankamyer, the volunteer president, had resigned weeks before.

The two reform committees -- acting separately, one congressional, the other an internal USOC panel -- agreed on the source of the problem and even the basic solution: a far smaller board of directors. Each agreed on the USOC’s core mission: win Olympic medals.

They have differed, however, on how best to implement meaningful reform.

The USOC -- under the direction of one of Hollywood’s leading producers, Frank Marshall, and the committee’s lawyer, Jeff Benz -- proposed a plan to shrink the size of the board of directors from 123 to 11, with greater day-to-day authority vested in a chief executive.

Proposals Congress is considering also would shrink the size of the board to about a dozen. But Congress has been more focused on the number of directors who should come from outside the Olympic movement -- and so, in theory, “independent” -- and how votes on a reconstituted board should be weighted.

The USOC has approved its own plan. A congressional version is through the Senate but not the House of Representatives. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the key lawmaker in the process, said: “While I commend the organization for its commitment to self-reform, I do not think the USOC will function properly without a majority of independent directors on its board,” adding that he “will continue to press the House.”

The USOC, however, unsure when -- or if -- Congress will act, has opted to move ahead with its own plan. In this regard, current USOC leadership has been consistent, repeatedly taking the position that decisive action is a key function of leadership.

That concept, for instance, marked the USOC’s confirmation in September to the IOC that U.S. sprinter Jerome Young had tested positive for the banned steroid nandrolone in 1999 but been cleared by a USA Track & Field panel to compete at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The USOC has aggressively since sought USATF’s full file on the matter. Interim President Bill Martin, who is also athletic director at the University of Michigan, said: “We want only clean medals. Our country doesn’t want to win medals tainted by athletes who are performing better through chemistry. That’s totally against the American way.”

In the same vein, Marshall, while acknowledging that Congress “made us take a hard look at ourselves,” said, “I believe we have responded and hopefully come up with a solution that is in the best interests of the athletes.”

Although Russian and Chinese athletes finished 2003 with momentum, USOC officials are sticking to projections that U.S. athletes can win 100 or more medals in Athens. The U.S. won 97 in Sydney, 101 in Atlanta in 1996. The best U.S. performance in a Games not boycotted came in Barcelona in 1992, 108 medals.

Jim Scherr, the USOC’s chief of sport performance, said, “We think we’re well situated to have a great performance.”

Scherr, who has been acting chief executive since March, has won wide acclaim, including on Capitol Hill, and various constituencies are urging the new board of directors, in whatever form it takes, to keep him on.

A 1988 Olympian (fifth at 198 pounds in freestyle wrestling), Scherr earned a master’s degree in business from Northwestern and was the former executive director of USA Wrestling, leading that federation to financial stability and Olympic success (eight medals for the U.S. team in 1996, most of any nation).

Mark Mastrov, chief executive and chairman of 24 Hour Fitness, a new USOC sponsor, said Scherr has been “nothing but first class all the way,” adding, “We hope the folks are wise enough to leave him where he’s at, to keep doing his good work.”

Perhaps nothing, however, conveys the change with Scherr at the helm so much as the USOC’s most recent sponsor announcement. Last week in New York, the USOC announced that Nike had signed a four-year deal to become the official outfitter for the U.S. team beginning in 2005. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The new relationship ends years of friction that sometimes boiled over into public acrimony -- as in 1992, when members of the U.S. men’s basketball team, including Michael Jordan, draped American flags over their shoulders during the gold-medal ceremony to cover up a Reebok logo on their U.S. warmup suits.

Adam Helfant, Nike’s vice president of marketing, said in remarks that only a year ago might have invited incredulity: “We’re confident in the direction the USOC is heading, and we’re supportive of their leadership team. We like what we see.”