U.S. Olympic Committee is in reality mode

Vancouver has held its closing ceremony. Well done, eh?

But the real Olympic sport, political jockeying, is in full stride.

Let the Games begin.

Last week, the new chief executive of the United States Olympic Committee, Scott Blackmun, tossed a chip on the Olympic poker table when he told a Washington Post reporter that the USOC “does not plan to enter a U.S. city in the race for the 2020 Summer Games.”

He also said he doesn’t know when there will be the next attempt to “bring a Games to U.S. soil.”

The ripples were a grain field in the wind. Did Blackmun mean it? Was he bluffing? Was this a gesture of peace or a head fake before the USOC goes all in?

There is much at stake here, much to unravel.

And, as usual, Los Angeles might be a key player.

Blackmun is a new face on the Olympic scene. He is a Colorado lawyer who spent recent time as one of the key players on Tim Leiweke’s Anschutz Entertainment team. Just a few years ago, he was helping bring big buildings and big events to our downtown, helping make LA Live.

He is smart, well-liked and characterized by one local Olympic official as “a guy with not a lot of flash and dazzle who thinks before he talks.”

Blackmun succeeded another popular leader, Jim Scherr, who left amid internal rumblings never fully explained just about the time Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics was in its most dire need of no USOC rumblings.

Peter Ueberroth was the chairman of the USOC then, and the stability he and Scherr had brought to this frequently chaotic group was a plus for the Chicago bid. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t.

Rio de Janiero got the Games and Chicago got left with an immediately evaporating $80-million investment for its bid process. The IOC said thanks, nice try, see ya, the same thing it said to New York, which had spent lavishly and lost to London in the 2012 bid.

Granted, cities go into these things with eyes and wallets open. But the return on investment for the losers is akin to writing checks to Bernie Madoff.

Blackmun addressed that in the Post story, saying these kinds of investments need to come with a “realistic chance of winning.” Getting hints of that from the IOC is, well, unrealistic.

Factored into everything is that, in the 30 Summer Olympics awarded, going back to 1896 and including London and Rio, the United States has played host to four — 1904 in St. Louis, 1932 and 1984 in L.A., and 1996 in Atlanta. OK, it’s a big world and that represents a tad more than 10% of the action.

Other factors are that, while other countries pay television rights fees, NBC is the big guy at the end of the restaurant table, picking up most of the checks. Also, much of the rest of the wealth of the IOC comes from a group of major sponsors. While that number varies and companies sign in and out, U.S. corporate representation is usually at least 50%.

One more factor. When the IOC was teetering on the edge of public rejection after the human horror of Mexico City and Munich, the financial horror of Montreal and major boycotts of Moscow and Los Angeles, the L.A. Games bailed them out. Good, old-fashioned capitalism and business acumen, a la Ueberroth and Harry Usher, made the Games viable again.

Naturally, there is an ugly American side to this, at least in the eyes of the IOC. Of the Fort Knox-size money created by NBC’s rights fees and the main Ring Sponsors, the USOC gets what the IOC now considers a disproportionate share — by some reports 12.75% of TV rights and 20% of sponsorship money.

The USOC is not eager to give up its golden egg, and the IOC, although contractually tied up, is not happy hearing from France and Germany and the Cayman Islands about their shortfalls.

Blackmun also said that USOC Chairman Larry Probst, Ueberroth’s successor last year, “is busy around the clock, trying to restore the organization’s international credibility one handshake at a time.”

So, in the Olympic movement, we are the unloved rich guys.

Circling in the background is the Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games, created back in 1939. Its mandate was to keep bidding for Olympic Games, and the SCCOG has done just that, tossing its hat in the ring almost every time it made sense, the exceptions being right after the 1984 Games and the Atlanta Games in 1996.

The group, some 60 strong and led by Chairman Barry Sanders and President David Simon, bid for 2012 and 2016 and were turned aside by the USOC for New York and Chicago. The Los Angeles bids were less flashy, less sexy and less costly.

Now, the USOC is making nice with the IOC, apparently in hopes of getting back in the game. And the economy of the world is such that less flashy, less sexy, less costly — things such as venues already built and ready-to-go athlete villages at UCLA and USC — are seen in a better light.

So who knows? The 2020 Games in the U.S. are probably a dead issue, based on Blackmun’s view of the need to repair international relations.

But how does 2024 sound? That would be 28 years after the last Summer Games in the U.S., Atlanta 1996. That doesn’t seem unreasonable, especially for a country picking up a big part of the IOC tab.

But boys will be boys and the IOC will be the IOC, so there’s just no telling. Simon says he can only guess how the politics will play out. But he knows one thing.

“There will be another Olympic bid, at some point, by Los Angeles,” he says.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com