Editor’s note: This article was written by Rachel Axon and first appeared in Sports Business Journal, the industry’s leading source of sports business news, events and data.
For decades, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee couldn’t have found a better partner than the Pac-12 Conference in developing Olympians.
The Pac-12 dubbed itself the Conference of Champions, a byproduct of its record number of NCAA titles — ones it claimed heavily in Olympic sports. It stocked the U.S. team with talent and stars, including former Oregon decathlete Ashton Eaton and legendary Stanford swimmer Katie Ledecky.
So the demise of the Pac-12 over the summer, with eight more of the conference’s schools joining UCLA and USC in decamping for new homes, doesn’t just portend an earthquake in a rapidly evolving college sports landscape. To Olympic leaders, it represents anything from a challenge to an outright threat to the United States’ success in the Games.
“I don’t want to use hyperbole, but I feel like it needs to be treated as a massive crisis or potential crisis because it is a huge, huge area where the Olympic movement in the United States strongly benefits from the NCAA,” said Phil Andrews, CEO of USA Fencing. “I feel like that relationship needs to be brought closer.”
Since the Rio Olympics, that has been happening as the USOPC has worked to strengthen its relationship to the NCAA, conferences and universities. The urgency on those partnerships and how the Olympic movement can support its largest talent pipeline only increased in intensity during the COVID pandemic, when schools cut dozens of mostly Olympic programs.
Between that and realignment, the USOPC has monitored the broad shifts in the landscape while also working with individual schools and programs to offer support where it can. At the USOPC Assembly in Los Angeles earlier this month, it was a frequent topic of discussion.
“The good news is we continue to hear a consistent and passionate commitment by athletic directors, university presidents, even conference commissioners around the future of Olympic and Paralympic sport on campuses,” said Sarah Hirshland, CEO of the USOPC.
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The problem is especially felt at Stanford, winner of 26 of the 29 Learfield Directors’ Cups. “If we’re not careful and if we’re only mindful of the revenue-generating programs, we could lose sight of what we have or this jewel that we have called the Olympic movement, and we want to make sure that’s just as prominent,” said Bernard Muir, Stanford’s athletic director and chairman of the USOPC’s Collegiate Advisory Council.
The Cardinal and its nearby and frequent rival for Olympic sports supremacy, Cal, landed in the ACC earlier this month. Olympic officials are trying to show the value of sports both to the public and to the decision-makers on college campuses who control their fate.
“We just need to continue to make people understand 85% participate in college athletics,” said Bubba Cunningham, UNC athletic director and USOPC board member, “and if we do things that don’t support Olympic sports at the collegiate level we’ll see a reduction in our success internationally.”
That success is impossible to ignore. Roughly 75% of the U.S. team in Tokyo in 2021 competed collegiately. So did nearly 85% of medalists in Rio five years prior. While those connections are strongest in track and field and swimming, collegiate ties help develop athletes in many other sports, including volleyball, rowing and soccer. (Collegiate programs help with the development of Winter Olympians, as well, but to a lesser degree because many of the sports in those Games aren’t contested widely in the NCAA.)
The Pac-12 has led the way with the most Olympians in the past three summer Games, sending 326 athletes for 57 different national Olympic committees in Tokyo. The conference’s medal count in Tokyo and Rio would have ranked it fifth if it were a country.
Replacing the investment from colleges would be all but impossible for Olympic organizations as they’re currently structured. While many countries rely on a ministry of sport and direct funding from the government to fund their Olympic and Paralympic development, the United States does not, and the nearly 50 national governing bodies that run sports in the Games have a wide range of responsibilities and financial resources.
For every USA Swimming and USA Track & Field — which had revenue above $36 million and $33 million in 2021, respectively — there are a handful more NGBs like USA Archery or USA Table Tennis that operate on a few million dollars in revenue annually.
Shoring up that pipeline has long been a focus for the USOPC and for national governing bodies. In 2016, it hired Sarah Wilhelmi from the West Coast Conference as its director of collegiate partnerships. The USOPC created a Collegiate Advisory Council, made up largely of Division I athletic directors, with the aim of strengthening the connections between the Olympic movement and collegiate sports.
In 2021, the USOPC’s College Sports Sustainability Think Tank explored how the USOPC and NCAA could align to find efficiencies and potential untapped revenue. Among its recommendations were sport sustainability initiatives in swimming and diving and men’s gymnastics, partnerships between NGBs and the NCAA, content sharing and launching a Para-College Inclusion Project.
“For the longest time, the USOPC’s voice wasn’t really present in those collegiate discussions,” said Kendall Spencer, an attorney, track athlete and member of the CAC, “not nearly as much as it is now.”
The coordination has largely been one of messaging how much U.S Olympic strength stems from collegiate sports. The USOPC and NCAA launched an “Olympians and Paralympians Made Here” campaign to help use those stories. The USOPC has offered agreements to schools for use of its marks in the campaign.
To a lesser extent, national governing bodies have worked to strengthen relationships. USA Swimming offers an annual grant through the College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association of America, helping to support the collegiate coaches that lead Team USA during the Games. Building that support gives the sport advocates internally when athletic departments look to make cuts.
“It’s going to be important that we keep these athletic programs alive,” said Tim Hinchey, CEO of USA Swimming, “so I just hope that all the athletic directors and the powers-that-be remember how important these other student athletes are to their programs.”
Andrews has made it a priority to reach out to every NCAA program in his first year with USA Fencing, while water polo has looked at how it can help host championships. USA Triathlon, meanwhile, has an emerging grant program to help development of the sport for women at the collegiate level.
“My strong opinion is we’ve got to find a way to keep both entities, the NCAA and Team USA, in a growth mode,” said Kevin White, who retired as Duke athletic director in 2021 and served on the USOPC board of directors for eight years. “We have a great story to tell. That’s the best ammunition we have.”
Telling that story is one Olympic officials hope resonates with colleges. Because the developmental pipeline runs through them, it leaves the U.S. team’s success, to some degree, in the hands of athletic directors and university presidents juggling other interests.
The most recent round of realignment concerns some because of the financial issues it could spur in the future, especially related to travel costs.
“What scares me is cuts and what gets cut first like some of these smaller Olympic sports,” said Foti Mellis, commissioner of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, which runs championships in many of these Olympic sports for West Coast schools. “The concern is as budgets start to get cut and money starts to disappear, what happens next?”
The pandemic provides a good test case for the Olympics. Facing large budget shortfalls from a lack of games and ticket revenue, schools across the country slashed Olympic programs.
Division I schools cut more than 100, according to Sports Illustrated, though some were added back. Stanford initially said it would cut 11 sports before outcry and a coordinated campaign prompted the school to reverse course.
“A lot of the universities that have done this, it’s not surprising, their initial move has been to say, OK, can we keep the existing system going and maybe by doing a little judicious trimming?” said Chris Ramsey, CEO of USA Water Polo. “That has caused greater scrutiny of Olympic sport on campuses.”
Add to realignment a continued shift in collegiate sports that could include revenue sharing for athletes and the collegiate model is headed for more change. That means the Olympic movement is, too.
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