Ueberroth Expected to Head U.S. Olympic Committee Board

Peter Ueberroth, the entrepreneur who headed the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, is expected to be named chairman of a newly reconstituted U.S. Olympic Committee board of directors, sources said Sunday.

The USOC has scheduled a news conference for today at its Colorado Springs, Colo., headquarters. USOC officials declined to provide details, but sources familiar with the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the purpose was to formally introduce Ueberroth and the others on the USOC’s new board.

Ueberroth, reached Sunday, declined to comment.

The move comes as the USOC reinvents itself after a corruption scandal tied to the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, an ethics breach that led the 123-member board of directors to vote itself out of existence, and ongoing doping-related disclosures involving the U.S. track and field team.

In Ueberroth, the USOC gets a leader who is well-known in domestic and international sports circles, as well as a proven fundraiser with high-level business and political connections.

His appointment also could bolster New York’s bid for the 2012 Summer Games. The International Olympic Committee is due to pick the 2012 host city in July 2005; Paris, London, Madrid and Moscow are also in the race. Speaking in April, Ueberroth described the New York bid as “incredibly well done and very thoughtful and not arrogant,” although it was ranked fourth in an IOC survey of technical criteria, such as transportation, housing and security plans.

Ueberroth and the 10 others who will compose the new board of directors were selected by a four-person committee headed by Ted Boehm, a justice on the Indiana Supreme Court. About 200 people applied for the four slots on the new board to be filled by business people and others with no ties to the USOC.

As chairman, a volunteer position, Ueberroth would direct a board that would set policy for the USOC and determine the organization’s financial direction.

It was unclear if there were other candidates besides Ueberroth for the chairmanship.

The new board members are expected to be in their posts well before the Aug. 13 start of the Athens Games. The board is due to include representatives from U.S. Olympic sports federations as well as athletes and civic or business leaders.

The USOC’s chief executive officer, who is paid, will remain in charge of day-to-day operations and will continue to oversee the USOC’s 453-person staff, based in Colorado Springs. Jim Scherr, the acting CEO since March 2003, is widely expected to be a candidate for the permanent post. He was a member of the 1988 U.S. Olympic team in wrestling.

Scherr and Bill Martin, the University of Michigan athletic director and current acting USOC president, have drawn praise from the IOC for leading a crackdown on doping. Several top track and field athletes now stand accused by the quasi-independent U.S. Anti-Doping Agency of potential doping violations and may be barred from the Athens Olympics. Many Olympic historians say Ueberroth and Los Angeles saved the Olympic movement.

No other city wanted the 1984 Games, and his no-frills, sponsor-driven approach, which turned a $232.5-million profit, paved the way for future Games.

His performance as president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee made him Time magazine’s Man of the Year.

“He is someone who in his own way figured out the goals and objectives of the Los Angeles Games against all number of odds, local and national,” Dick Pound of Montreal, president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said Sunday night. “He has a demonstrated track record of success. He is his own man.”

Pound, who has known Ueberroth for 20 years, called him “a great choice.”

After the 1984 Games, Ueberroth, now 66, served as commissioner of Major League Baseball for five years. His tenure was marked both by financial turnaround and by an idea later decried by a union official as “immoral” -- collusion by team owners to circumvent free agency. Team owners later paid more than $100 million in penalties. His name later surfaced as a potential owner of the Angels’ franchise.

During the 1990s, Ueberroth stayed largely out of the public eye. Through his Newport Beach-based Contrarian Group Inc., he revived a number of troubled companies and vastly expanded his personal wealth; he is part owner of the fabled Pebble Beach golf course and holds stakes in a range of corporations.

During last year’s recall campaign, the Republican businessman launched a bid for governor, campaigning as a centrist with bipartisan appeal. But he withdrew after one month in the race, as one poll showed that only 5% of likely voters supported him. On the day he dropped out, Ueberroth said he had hoped to involve himself in public service and that he had learned much from his brief run for governor.

“I don’t know what it’s training me for,” he said, “but it’s been a great learning curve.”

The USOC has been reeling from such tumult over the last few years that, as one U.S. senator put it in a 2003 hearing, “Scandal seems to follow the [USOC] like dogs follow a meat wagon.”

The disarray has led to heavy management turnover: Scherr, the acting CEO, is the 12th person to hold the top staff job at the USOC since 1978.

The Salt Lake City corruption scandal, which erupted in late 1998, involved allegations that Salt Lake bidders, eager to win the 2002 Games, showered IOC members or their relatives with more than $1 million in cash, gifts, scholarships, healthcare and other inducements.

Ten IOC members resigned or were expelled, and the IOC enacted a 50-point reform plan that includes a ban on visits by IOC members to cities bidding for the Games.

The USOC was faulted for not exercising oversight authority over the local bid team in Salt Lake City. Last year, the USOC faced an ethics-related inquiry into then-chief executive Lloyd Ward.

Several USOC officials resigned in protest over the handling of that investigation. That led to dismay among sponsors, calls for financial auditing, congressional intervention, the launch of two reform committees and, finally, Ward’s resignation.

The volunteer president, Marty Mankamyer, had resigned weeks before.