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≡ U.S. OLYMPIC DEVELOPMENT ≡
“That fork in the road is if football leaves the system and the money leaves the system, Team USA is over.
“We can pretend like that’s not the case. That is unequivocally the case. You add $20 million of expense to the athletic department. What’s the first thing you cut? … Olympic sports, non-revenue sports. You cut the sports that cost money that don’t generate revenue.
“A lot of schools will hang in, not just in California, but in the country, until 2028, until the games are in L.A. And after that, you’re going to see a lot more schools have SEC numbers of teams than former Pac-12 numbers of teams. The days of 25 and 30 teams are over. So now you’re going to have 15 to 17.”
That’s LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games organizing committee Chair Casey Wasserman, in comments at the Sports Business Journal’s Intercollegiate Athletics Forum in Las Vegas on Tuesday, warning once again of the imminent danger to the U.S. intercollegiate athletics system due to the massive changes coming from the oncoming transfer of billions of dollars (almost solely) to college football players.
He sounded the alarm in March, on “The Rich Eisen Show” on the Roku Channel, explaining:
● “I think we’re at this turning point which is, college [football] is absolutely the second-most popular and valuable sport in America; it’s not even a question.
“The question is, do they monetize that opportunity and keep all the money in college football and don’t share it, so college football becomes its own entity, away from the NCAA? So, Michigan basketball and UCLA basketball are part of the Big 10, but college football is its own thing? Michigan is in that, but it’s not really a Big 10 thing, it’s really just a college football thing?
“And then Michigan basketball and UCLA softball are over because there’s no money. Because the money – 90% of the value and the economics – come from college football.”
● “[I]n this country, all of our American athletes who are Olympians, are trained in universities. So if we lose that system, we don’t have Team USA any more.
“Our government does not provide funding to the U.S. Olympic Movement. There’s zero federal dollars going to any part of the U.S. Olympic Movement. All of our athletes are trained in colleges, and that’s a great source of pride. And that’s going to evaporate.”
● “I think what you’re going to have to do is the conference commissioners, there’s really the Big 10, the SEC, the ACC and the Big 12, are going to have to say, look, football is great and we can make a lot of money organizing college football in a different kind of way, but if we’re doing that and it’s not benefitting all the other student-athletes, we’re actually missing the mark here, and we’re not doing our job, and we’re not actually serving the universities.
“I mean, UCLA, we’re proud of all those athletes and student-athletes who do incredible things. So, we’re going to miss that if they don’t take that ownership of that responsibility and embrace it, they’re going to be the ones who get blamed for it, and the system right now is totally screwed.”
● “I actually think the NFL can say, look, we can help solve the problem, not take control of college football, but sort of create the pathway, and use that as a means to save all these Olympic sports that are good for this country and by the way, think about the Paris Olympics this summer: there’ll be 100 athletes competing in Paris for countries not for the United States, who went to college for free and got their athletic training at American universities.
“We train our competitors. Talk about power and soft power … that’s a powerful thing. All those things are going to go away if we don’t fix this problem.
“To push the institutions to do what’s right to maintain the sanctity of non-football sports, I think the NFL has a real opportunity to be a leader in that movement.”
At the SBJ conference, Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork suggested an approach to the Congress:
“[M]aybe instead of going to Congress to figure out what NIL [name-image-likeness payments] should look like, we should go to Congress to talk about the Olympic Movement and how do they help fund our university programs and train the athletes at the next generation. … There’s power there because society does not want college athletics to go away.”
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Among the many concepts for a new way to continue support for intercollegiate athletes in the U.S. beyond football was our 29 April column, “Can NCAA “non-revenue” sports survive? YES, it’s possible.”
You can check out the TSX solution, or suggest one of your own. But the U.S. collegiate sports system needs to survive.
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