A Congressional panel issued 12 recommendations on Friday to reform the U.S. Olympic structure, including funding the U.S. Center for SafeSport entirely from the government as opposed to mostly through the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC).
As of last summer, the government was providing just $2.3 million of SafeSport’s $23 million budget, which only supported about 60 full-time investigators. SafeSport CEO Ju’Riese Colon has said previously that her organization needs about double the resources it currently has in order to meet growing demands moving forward.
In 2022, ESPN and ABC News learned that the USOPC raises part of its $20 million portion by making individual sports federations pay fees based on the number of allegations reported to SafeSport and the amount of work required to resolve them. The revelation raised concern over apparent conflict of interest as the funding structure inherently disincentivizes national governing bodies (NGBs) from reporting cases to SafeSport.
“Congress should make SafeSport fully independent so it can earn athletes’ trust and be held more accountable to the movement and the public,” the Commission on the State of U.S. Olympics & Paralympics said in its 275-page report based on a two-year study.
Another potentially transformative suggestion by the panel was for the federal government to take on a larger role supporting youth and grassroots-level sports, which would allow the USOPC to focus more on elite athletes. Created by Congress in 2020, the Commission found that “we need a better long-term vision for how we organize Olympic- and Paralympic-movement sports in America.”
“It is time for Congress to accept that, while we will never have a ‘ministry of sport’ model in this country, the federal government has more of a role to play in ensuring safety, equity, accessibility, and accountability in sports than it has so far acknowledged and accepted,” the report said.
The USOPC caught criticism for an “alarming” disparity between incomes for executives and support for athletes. Athlete representation could be improved by making the Team USA Athletes Commission fully independent from the USOPC, the report said. In a letter obtained by the Associated Press, USOPC CEO Sarah Hirschland said the panel failed to acknowledge “the profound evolution that has taken place throughout the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Movement since the Commission’s inception (in 2020).”
The panel also recommended updates that hinted at an overhaul of the “Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act” from 1978.
“The terms ‘amateur’ and ‘amateurism’ should finally be retired from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic movement, and athletes’ rights – when participating in movement sports – should be enshrined in law,” the report said. “Words matter, but actions matter more. That is why Congress should use this opportunity to recognize under law that American athletes … have certain fundamental rights, including a safe and abuse-free environment, name-image-likeness (NIL) rights, freedom from retaliation, an affordable fee structure for national-team-selection competition events, and a timely dispute-resolution process as it relates to competition and team selection.”
The Commission consisted of four individuals, including three-time U.S. Olympic champion swimmer Nancy Hogshead-Makar.
Check out all 12 recommendations below:
1. “Congress should allow USOPC to focus on high-performance athletes and create a new federal office to coordinate and develop youth and grassroots sports.”
2. “Congress should make SafeSport fully independent so it can earn athletes’ trust and be held more accountable to the movement and the public.”
3. “Congress should reform certain SafeSport practices and reimagine the way SafeSport operates at the youth and grassroots level.”
4. “The terms ‘amateur’ and ‘amateurism’ should finally be retired from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic movement, and athletes’ rights – when participating in movement sports – should be enshrined in law.”
5. “USOPC governance processes must be improved.”
6. “Congress should strengthen athletes’ representation by making the Team USA Athletes’ Commission fully independent.”
7. “Congress should enhance public oversight of the movement to ensure transparency, accountability, and due process at all levels.”
8. “Access and equality for Paralympians and those participating in para sports at all levels must be improved.”
9. “Congress, state governments, USOPC, the NCAA, and other stakeholders should take concrete steps to improve equitable access to movement sports.”
10. “USOPC should adopt a new model for organizing U.S. bids to host the Olympic and Paralympic games.”
11. “Congress, USOPC, governing bodies, and other stakeholders should partner to improve coaching at all levels.”
12. “Congress and state legislatures should think creatively about new and supplementary funding sources to support youth and grassroots sports and the safety and wellbeing of our high-performance athletes.”
Last month, the Intercollegiate Coaching Association Coalition (ICAC) asked the Commission to consider protections for Olympic sports at the college level given the uncertainty surrounding the NCAA at the moment. The debate about whether college athletes are employees should be decided by the courts within the next couple years.
“An exemption from the restriction of federal antitrust laws or any other preemptive remedy should be considered if Congress requires certain protections for Olympic sports as part of the equation,” the ICAC wrote. “Simply put, if the NCAA and its member schools are provided an antitrust exemption without considering the effect on Olympic sports, the result will likely be catastrophic to those Olympic sports as providing no exemption at all.”
Show me the money!
Good idea in theory. But government involvement messes everything up. So I say no
This is one of the greatest lies ever told, how do you think the USA even became the massive technological and research leader it did in the 20th century. e.g the aerospace industry? You have massive government stimulus to thanks for that. Semiconductors, medicines, the list of innovations you use daily that you own to massive tax dollar funded r&d is endless. You should actually be livid that humanities collective knowledge is locked away in a bank vault and demands you pay rent for it to people who had no business in actually creating much of anything tangible. The government never stopped being massively involved in everything, they just decided to get more oligarchic with who gets a cut. … Read more »
Let’s be real. How many members of the Federal Government could pass a USA Swimming background check, let alone Safe Sport.
The last thing we need is Washington running Safe Sport. USA Swimming is doing a good enough job screwing things up, they don’t need any help.
Amend the Act to require any university that accepts federal funds to put half their athletic budget to Olympic sports. Problem solved.
Love the idea but, sadly, not gonna happen. Olympic sports would be completely transformed if they just got half of the football budgets. And by the way, we shouldn’t kid ourselves; football only pays for itself at the schools in major conferences with big TV contracts, and Notre Dame. Lots of schools are going into debt to support football.
Seems like a noble mandate, let’s impose it and be angry when it ends up killing all sports at several universities because the math doesn’t work…
There’s countless examples of governments torpedoing things with such examples of right idea wrong execution.