Brandon Macneill, the University of Denver’s deputy athletic director, proposed some ideas for the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) to better support the Olympic pipeline, like setting up grants for student athletes.
Macneill’s comments come in response to University of North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham’s prediction that NIL money will concentrate in revenue-based sports, specifically men’s sports. Macneill appeared in a video interview with the CSCAA.
In December, Cunningham said that because of the changes of funding that will result from the release of NIL money and a shift toward the pro model in collegiate sports, parents could end up funding other, broad-based sports, many of which are Olympic sports.
“These comments are real,” Macneill said in response. “We rely heavily on our parents in all of our programs and fundraising efforts. Parents are involved from an early age as we all know and it doesn’t stop when they get to college.”
Macneill said that his school prides itself on broad-based success, especially with skiing, its alpine sport that’s relatively expensive to maintain. But he said that he’s worried what schools might do on a macro level if they see Power-5 conference schools shift toward a more pro-sport model.
The broad-based programs can get expensive, and need their own sources of fundraising too, Macneill said. He added that for the sport of skiing, the school has to raise $5-$10 million annually just to keep the sport sustainable.
“Not everyone is adding skiing, because it’s so expensive,” Macneill said. “It’s imperative that we’re self-sustainable on some level, and my fear is that if you have to rely basically on parents paying for you to be on the team, it’s basically a glorified club program.”
Macneill didn’t say that a shift to a pro-sports model in college is bad, just that it might require new forms of raising money. Macneill suggested, for example, the USOPC get together and figure out a way to support collegiate sports, which are often a direct pipeline to Team USA. He added that perhaps the committee can fund grants for Americans to compete in college and then represent America in the Olympics, since many collegiate athletes train in the U.S. but go on to represent other countries in international events.
“I think what we really need to look at is how the USOPC is allocating some of their funding,” MacNeill said. “We’re the pipeline.”
Same school that sent half the swim team packing?
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