WASHINGTON, 21 June 2003 — The US Olympic Committee (USOC), underfire from Congress, athletes and the public, needs to shrink its board from 124 to nine and put a permanent chief in charge before the 2004 Games, an expert panel said on Thursday.
“We unanimously believe the situation has deteriorated to such a degree, and the time to the 2004 Athens Olympic Games is so short, drastic measures to reform the USOC must be undertaken immediately,” a five-member independent commission said in its report.
The experts said the 124-member board was too big, expensive and ineffective, and recommended a nine-member board composed of five independent members, two athletes and two members chosen by a council of the governing boards of the various US sports.
The commission added the congressionally-created but privately-funded organization had become a “political battleground” among warring internal factions, where “constant meddling of volunteers at all levels” frustrated the paid staff and made it hard to retain the best people.
But the experts also recognized the USOC needed volunteers and other supporters to survive, and suggested an assembly to represent the volunteers and other key components of the organization.
Donald Fehr, a member of the expert panel who is executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, said the USOC “began to come unraveled” earlier this year with extraordinary turnover in senior positions.
By March, there had been eight resignations, including USOC chief executive officer Lloyd Ward, who was caught trying to help his brother’s company win a contract for this year’s Pan Am Games. No contract was signed but Ward quit his $550,000 post after 16 months in the job.
Now headed by an acting president, the USOC needs a permanent chief executive who will stay through the Athens Summer Games, the report said.
Referring to “meddling” by volunteers, commission member Harvey Schiller, a former USOC executive director, said: “It ought not to be whoever answers the phone is in charge. It ought to be something that looks like a corporation and acts effectively.”
