Ueberroth Takes Helm of USOC

Twenty years after directing the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games, Peter Ueberroth was named chairman Monday of the U.S. Olympic Committee as the organization seeks to erase the taint of several scandals while preparing teams for this summer’s Athens Games.

Ueberroth, 66, will head an 11-member volunteer board of directors that includes the president emeritus of Princeton, the chief executives of two major corporations, sports officials and former Olympic athletes.

He said the challenge before the board is to find “more efficient ways to help the athletes in this country,” adding that the USOC “is not going to be changing directions in any meaningful way” before Athens. The opening ceremony is set for Aug. 13.

Ueberroth also addressed the steroid scandal that is enveloping U.S. track and field and linked to the BALCO criminal case, saying, “We have a lot to do. The crisis is real.”

In seeking to move beyond doping and corruption woes, as well as years of internal squabbling, the USOC turned to the architect of perhaps the Olympics’ finest moment in the U.S.

Ueberroth and his lieutenants organized a festive yet frugal event that aggressively sought corporate sponsorships while relying largely on sports venues and housing that had been built for other purposes. The Games, though tarnished competitively by an East Bloc boycott, turned a $232.5-million profit and provided a template for future host cities.

“This is a huge home run for the U.S. Olympic Committee,” said NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol, whose network is spending at least $5.5 billion for Olympic broadcast rights through 2012. “In Peter Ueberroth, you get someone who not only knows the world of business, but the business of sports and the Olympic movement.... No other person could have touched Peter in any of these three categories.”

As chairman, Ueberroth will direct a board that sets policy for the USOC as well its financial direction. The organization has 453 paid employees and oversees 35 Olympic sports. Its annual budget is more than $100 million, with most of the money coming from corporate sponsors and TV contracts.

The USOC was rocked in 1998 by disclosures that bidders in Salt Lake City, site of the 2002 Winter Games, had given more than $1 million in cash, gifts and other inducements to IOC members and their relatives. Four years later, USOC chief executive Lloyd Ward ran afoul of ethics rules in directing staffers to help his brother’s company in its bid to secure a deal to provide power generators to the Dominican Republic. And the doping allegations growing out of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative case threaten to keep several world-class athletes off the Olympic track and field team.

For more than 25 years, meanwhile, the USOC has suffered management turmoil as directors frequently sparred with the paid staff. In Congress last year, one senator decried what he called the ongoing “Olympic-sized food fight.” In October, the 123-person board voted itself out of existence, replaced by the 11 directors announced Monday.

Ueberroth’s job is to fix what is broken -- “to right the wrongs and the culture of the USOC and therefore put U.S. sport in the right direction,” said Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Officials say that process already had begun.

“Sixteen months ago we were mentioned in the same breath with Enron and Arthur Andersen.... That’s no longer the case,” said Bill Martin, the Michigan athletic director, who served as acting USOC president for the last 16 months. “The public knows we’ve done a 180, Congress knows we’ve done a 180,” he added in reference to a turnaround.

Asked at a news conference here why he took the job, Ueberroth said, “I think you do it because you think you can make a difference in your country.”

He gave USOC acting Chief Executive Jim Scherr a vote of confidence, saying the committee’s top paid official is “doing a good job, a very good job.”

Dan Doctoroff, head of the New York bid for the 2012 Summer Games, called Ueberroth “one of the towering giants of the Olympic movement” and said he looked forward to working with Ueberroth as “mentor, partner and friend.”

Three other “independents” -- those with no formal ties to the USOC -- also were named to the board: Harold Shapiro, president emeritus of Princeton; Erroll Davis Jr. of Madison, Wis., chairman and chief executive of Alliant Energy; and Stephanie Streeter of Neenah, Wis., chairman, president and chief executive of Banta Corp.

Sports officials fill two slots: Mike Plant of Peachtree, Ga., an executive vice president of the Atlanta Braves and former president of USA Cycling; and Jim McCarthy of Chicago, a former chairman of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn.

Also appointed were former Olympians Mary McCagg of Cambridge, Mass., a rower who competed in the 1992 and 1996 Games and is now a manager at a publishing house; and Jair Lynch of Washington, D.C., a gymnast who won a silver medal at the 1996 Games. He is now a real estate developer.

Rounding out the board are the three U.S.-based IOC members: Anita DeFrantz, Jim Easton and Bob Ctvrtlik. All are based in Southern California.

Ueberroth, now a resident of Laguna Beach, was a successful but little-known travel entrepreneur when he was tapped to head the 1984 organizing committee. His approach was tough and unsparing: “It wasn’t a time for kindness, to take the time and help people through problems, and people had to be moved aside and shunted,” he said later. “And all that happened. But the result worked.”

His efforts catapulted him into the job of Major League Baseball commissioner.

New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, who helped lead earlier USOC reforms, hailed the USOC selection. “They need leadership,” he said. “He will give them forceful leadership.”

During his tenure as commissioner, baseball owners conspired to depress free-agent salaries, and paid $280 million in damages -- a total that grew to $434 million with interest -- to 650 players. “I don’t think there was any actual collusion,” Ueberroth said later, contending that owners had taken reasonable actions to stem red ink.

He left the job in 1989 and concentrated on business and civic ventures. He served on an IOC reform commission in 2000 sparked by the Salt Lake City bidding scandal. Last year he entered the California governor’s race, only to pull out just weeks before election day as polls showed him with little support.