The Phelps suspension: why the rush to judgment?

Cross-country ski champion Petter Northug was sentenced last Thursday in court in Norway to 50 days behind bars after being convicted of drunk driving. Which brings us to Michael Phelps, the 24/7 media spin cycle we live in and the rush to judgment that led to the significant suspension USA Swimming levied against Phelps for his recent DUI arrest in Baltimore. What was to be gained by USA Swimming rushing to this judgment? More — what was lost by waiting?

Clearly, USA Swimming did what it felt like it needed to do. In some quarters, it is getting kudos for taking decisive action. But was it appropriate — or, better, right?

At issue are several thoroughly basic principles.

One, the media is not running anything. We can’t even run ourselves. Who cares if we are shouting? Or tweeting? Seriously. This is what is called a diversity of opinion. The counterpoint to that is called calm leadership.

Two, bad facts make for bad law. This is elemental. Phelps’ case is not one on which to make, or rest, broad-based policy.

Three, as everyone who has read Orwell knows, all the animals on the farm are not equal. Or are they? Which is it going to be?

To recap:

Phelps, 29, is charged with DUI, excessive speed and crossing double lane lines. Police stopped him outside the Fort McHenry tunnel at 1:40 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 30, saying he was going 84 in a 45 zone; he had spent the hours before at the Horseshoe Casino. Police say his blood alcohol level was 0.14; the state’s legal limit is 0.08. Phelps is due to appear in court on Nov. 19.

The arrest is Phelps’ second for drunk driving. He pleaded guilty to driving while impaired in 2004.

USA Swimming did not suspend him after the 2004 case.

Five years ago, British tabloids published a photo of Phelps with his face in a bong.

USA Swimming suspended him in 2009 for three months.

For those unfamiliar with cross-country skiing, Northug won four medals, two gold, at the Vancouver 2010 Games. When you include medals won at world championships, he is right up there with the legendary Bjorn Daehlie.

Northug, 28, crashed his Audi while driving the first week of May. His blood alcohol level was more than eight times the Norwegian legal limit, according to Reuters. Norway’s limit is 0.02. A friend who was in the car was slightly hurt. Northug was not injured.

Northug was also fined $30,000 and banned from driving for life; Associated Press said that “normally means a minimum of five years.”

The accident and aftermath have been front-page news for months in winter sports-crazed Norway. Northug said, according to reports, that the episode would “follow me throughout my whole life.”

Here is the kicker:

The Norwegian Ski Assn., according to AP, said it would not punish Northug because his accident “had nothing to do with competition or training.”

The association president, Erik Roeste, told the Norwegian news agency NTB, “It’s not in sports regulations to punish him from our side in any way.”

So how did USA Swimming come to sanction Phelps?

Through Section 304.3.19 of its rule book.

It allows sanctions for “any other material and intentional act, conduct or omission not provided for above, which is detrimental to the image or reputation of USA Swimming, a LSC (local swimming committee) or the sport of swimming.”

Six days after Phelps’ arrest, USA Swimming announced it had suspended him for six months and he had withdrawn, by mutual agreement with the federation, from the U.S. team for the 2015 world championships in Kazan Russia. He also agreed to forfeit a $1,750 USA Swimming stipend for six months.

Phelps’ arrest came amid the controversies that have enveloped the NFL and stirred headlines since the video surfaced — on Sept. 8 — of Ray Rice punching his then-fiancee in a casino elevator. You can be sure that played a part in the decision-making at USA Swimming.

The hammer came the day after Phelps announced he was headed to a six-week, in-patient treatment program.

Even if you decide that this arrest warrants sanction — that’s an entire column in and of itself — what was the goal here?

To penalize Phelps? Deter him or others? Rehabilitate him? Make sure he doesn’t drive drunk again? Send a message — to him, others on the national team or other swimmers in clubs across the United States?

Why was it so important to suspend Phelps when not even a week had passed?

Did acting so quickly make it more — or less — likely to achieve the objective? Which, again, was what?

Isn’t it more likely that we were all left with one obvious reality? That USA Swimming acted get itself out of the spotlight -- or, more precisely, to cover its backside amid media pressure?

So, now what?

Did anyone watch Ryan Lochte’s reality TV show? In the realm of possibility: were there off-camera escapades that might now bring embarrassment to USA Swimming? Do you think TMZ is asleep at that switch? Really?

Further, are we all willing to believe there isn’t even one coach affiliated with USA Swimming, or one athlete anywhere in the United States with a DUI that has yet to come to light? Truly? How soon before one such case emerges? Would any such case bring embarrassment to the federation? How much embarrassment?

You see how problematic this is?

What about this: reasonable people can agree to disagree about whether USA Swimming executive director Chuck Wielgus should or should not have drawn so much criticism earlier this year when he was nominated for the International Swimming Hall of Fame amid concern the federation should have done more to prevent sexual abuse by coaches.

In June, Wielgus formally apologized — four years after saying on national TV that he had nothing to apologize for.

Phelps apologized, too, and in short order after arrest.

These two scenarios admittedly are in many ways apples and oranges. However, the question is nonetheless worth posing, especially if you're asking forthright questions: big-picture, which of the two holds the greater potential to embarrass USA Swimming -- Phelps' situation, or Wielgus'?

The federation, it must be acknowledged, has taken undeniably constructive steps in reordering its safe sport policies. At the same time, right or not, fair or not, Wielgus found himself this summer in an uncomfortable spot.

So why is Phelps getting six months plus the Worlds?

The problem is there is no spelled-out policy here. A catch-all is not good enough.

Another problem: there is inconsistency in the broader U.S. Olympic sphere.

Compare:

Rule 4 of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn.’s code says: “USSA members shall maintain high standards of moral and ethical conduct, which includes self-control and responsible behavior, consideration for the physical and emotional well-being of others, and courtesy and good manners.”

In 2010, when then-USSA chief Bill Marolt was arrested for DUI — he took responsibility and apologized, just like Phelps — was he suspended? Hardly.

More current: Hope Solo, U.S. Soccer’s goaltender, is facing two counts of misdemeanor domestic violence linked to a June incident at Solo’s sister’s home in Kirkland, Washington.

In a September 23 Facebook post, Solo declared: “… I continue to maintain my innocence against these charges. And, once all the facts come to light and the legal process is concluded, I am confident that I will be fully exonerated.”

Not only has U.S. Soccer not suspended Solo, she has continued to play and, indeed, has once been honored with the captain’s armband.

USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun last month told USA Today, “Abuse in all forms is unacceptable. The allegations involving Ms. Solo are disturbing and are inconsistent with our expectations of Olympians. We have had discussions with U.S. Soccer and fully expect them to take action if it is determined that the allegations are true.”

Three things:

The reason U.S. Soccer hasn’t moved is because you can bet there would be a counter-move rooted in the 1978 Ted Stevens Amateur Sports Act.

Solo’s case is yet to be decided in the courts. Yet USA Swimming took action even though Phelps’ matter is only at the arrest stage. He, just like Solo, is due the presumption of innocence.

Finally, this suspension was pushed through when Phelps was on his way to treatment. The skeptic might say Phelps is going to treatment in a bid to prove to the courts that he’s being proactive. Or maybe he is, genuinely, recognizing that, at 29, he needs help, and now is the time to get it.

The difference between the Solo and Phelps cases is that Phelps accepted the suspension. Query: on his way to six weeks away, did he really have any choice? Was he really going to fight that fight? Right then and there?

Now that it’s all said and done, maybe everyone ought to take a deep breath.

Near-term:

At the least, USA Swimming has gone one step too far with Phelps.

On the one hand, six months is arguably thoroughly arbitrary. For legal purposes, the first DUI is absolutely, totally irrelevant. (To show you further how arbitrary: what if Phelps were photographed now with his face in a bong pipe in Colorado, where -- along with Washington state -- pot is legal? Colorado, of all places, home of USA Swimming and the USOC. Things evolve.)

On the other, you can make a pretty strong argument for six months. Let’s be plain: there’s no excusing drunk driving and Phelps is profoundly lucky no one got hurt, or worse. Phelps’ blood-alcohol level was, again, 0.14, and that was not in the field — that was after he had been taken to the police station. He likely had to have been doing some serious drinking. A 200-pound male, about what Phelps weighs, would had to have had 12 drinks to blow a 0.152 after four hours of drinking, according to this chart.

Assuming there’s no wiggle room with the six months, the crux of what really ought to be at issue is the Worlds. Why beat Phelps up over the Worlds? It’s not at all clear that, after six weeks away from the pool, he would even be ready. But it’s just as easy to make the argument that he would be an asset post-treatment to the American team as not — after all, he was a veteran leader in London two years ago, and has increasingly related to younger swimmers.

Here’s one proposal:

After Phelps is done with his six-week, in-patient treatment program, and his court date is through, assuming a conviction but no custody time, he might consider moving to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. He could eat, sleep, train and focus on nothing but himself and swimming — under the watch of USA Swimming and the USOC and, perhaps most important, the longtime "mom" at the training center, an old friend, Sherry Von Riesen.

If he proved himself a model citizen, then the ban on the Worlds could be rescinded.

Phelps has had only one coach, Bob Bowman. Bowman is in Baltimore. There would have to be some workarounds. Bowman could perhaps come to Colorado every couple weeks. There could be Skype sessions.

All this — Phelps as resident at the USOC training center, with no driving privileges for some period of time — could even be part of a court-ordered probationary term. Creative minds, you know, and all that.

Of course, this all assumes Phelps wants to keep swimming competitively. That is a big if. Post-treatment, who knows?

Long-term:

USA Swimming should strongly consider re-framing its policy for what is “detrimental to the image or reputation” of the federation. That is way, way, way too vague, and likely susceptible to serious legal challenge.

The other NGBs should take a look at what's going down here, too.

Arbitrary policy-making done in a rush is not constructive strategy. It may get you out of a jam. Or make it feel like you’re out. But not really. Life is way too complex. There’s always another turn, and it’s always unexpected.

What's next for Michael Phelps

Michael Phelps is not a bad guy. Let’s start there. In fact, he’s a really, really good guy. He cares — deeply — about his family, his coaches, the people who have been with him for years, his hometown, his country and his sport. He is, genuinely, great with kids. He is, truly, a normal guy who found a genius for swimming and competing.

By driving drunk, according to the allegations levied against him by the authorities in Maryland, Michael made a really bad mistake. Perhaps the hardest piece: Michael has said many, many times, often to audiences of kids, that it’s OK to make a mistake — the trick is not to make the same mistake twice. Now, in the wake of his DUI problem 10 years ago, he has made the very same mistake, all over again.

The separate DUI incidents — of course, Michael is entitled to the presumption of innocence in regard to his arrest this week — are compounded by the 2009 episode in which he was photographed with his face in a bong.

Phelps was stopped at 1:40 a.m. Tuesday after leaving the brand-new Horseshoe Casino in downtown Baltimore, allegedly going 84 in a 45 zone. His blood-alcohol level was a reported 0.14, above the legal limit of 0.08.

The incident leads to all manner of questions, concerns and what-to-do’s — for Michael, USA Swimming, the U.S. Olympic Committee, Michael’s sponsors and everyone anywhere with an interest in the greatest Olympic athlete of all time.

That is, indisputably, what Michael is.

And that, actually, is at the core of all of this.

Michael is 29 now. Old enough, assuredly smart enough to know better, to have the judgment to call Uber. A taxi. A friend. Something or someone.

Michael’s first DUI came when he was 19, in November 2004, after the Athens Games. At that time in his life, as he has said, post-Games he had no structure, no routine. He was on a road trip to Maryland’s Eastern Shore with a friend. He had three beers. His blood-alcohol reading was precisely 0.08.

He pleaded guilty a month later in Salisbury, Maryland, to driving while impaired; was ordered to pay $305 in fines and court costs; to attend a meeting of Mothers Against Drunk Driving; and to speak at a number of schools about drinking, driving and decision-making.

USA Swimming did not suspend him.

The experience would lead Michael to Greg Harden, the longtime associate athletic director and director of athletic counseling at the University of Michigan. Harden gave Michael the advice that Michael would internalize, would make his own, would repeat as if it were a mantra:

It’s OK to make a mistake. Whenever you make a mistake, learn from it. If you learn from a mistake, you’ll be fine. Just don’t make the same mistake twice.

Among the challenges Michael is facing is that he has now violated his own code.

Michael and I worked together on his 2008 best-selling book and for sure we have long had a constructive relationship. We have not spoken this week. But I know him well enough to feel confident that no one feels worse about what happened than Michael.

I know, too, that he will deal with whatever is to come forthrightly. That is his way.

The issue is, what is appropriate?

Michael is a Baltimore guy through and through. He spent a few years in Ann Arbor, prepping for the 2008 Beijing Olympics while his longtime coach and mentor, Bob Bowman, was the head coach at the university. But now they are both back in Baltimore.

Michael is not — will never be — Hollywood. He is, for emphasis, a normal guy. He is happy to be in Baltimore, cheering on his Ravens like most everybody else there.

The deal is this, though: it may not be the best time to be a high-profile athlete facing the bar of justice in Baltimore, what with Ray Rice in the news. Under the law, Michael’s first DUI is irrelevant. At the same time, Michael has to accept that he might draw a judge who wants to make an example of him.

Beyond the legal ramifications, there is the matter of USA Swimming, indeed the Olympic establishment.

USA Swimming suspended him for three months for the 2009 episode. Now?

USA Today’s Christine Brennan suggested in a column Wednesday that Michael ought to be suspended for at least a year. She called his behavior “unconscionable.”

With due respect to my good friend Christine — she and I are from the same class at the Northwestern journalism school— her suggestion is over the top.

To compare:

The NFL suspended Donté Stallworth for a year after he pleaded guilty to DUI manslaughter charges in Florida. On March 14, 2009, in Miami, Stallworth killed a man while driving drunk.

To be clear, driving while impaired — again, Phelps is innocent until proven guilty — is bad no matter the circumstance.

In Stallworth’s case, for context, Stallworth’s blood-alcohol level was 0.126 and, of course, Mario Reyes, a construction worker who was simply trying to catch a bus home, is forever gone.

A prosecution video in the Stallworth case shows Stallworth braking immediately after Reyes ran into the street, outside the crosswalk — meaning, Stallworth has said, that even if sober he likely would have hit Reyes. But as Stallworth said in an interview this past summer, “.. I was wrong. I was driving under the influence and should not have been.”

Now, the argument is that Phelps should be gone for a year when no one -- luckily, true -- got hurt?

Things have to remain in proportion.

USA Swimming has said it’s assessing the situation.

It seems probable that Michael is going to be fined — other athletes are going to want to see that no one is above the rules, especially Michael — and suspended for some period of time. The issue is when and for how long. The 2015 world championships are next summer in Russia.

This leads to the crux of the matter, for all involved.

Michael has a boredom problem. The boredom problem creates a structure problem. The overarching problem is that there's a future problem.

It’s little wonder he is out presumably playing poker — which he enjoys — and, as he purportedly said to the police, having three or four drinks when he should have been in bed getting ready to swim.

Again, here is the deal:

Michael is the greatest of all time. He has 22 Olympic medals.

In Beijing, he went eight-for-eight. It was — incredible.

To do what he did in Beijing took years of monumental discipline, effort, focus and training. (Not to mention an awe-inspiring back-end split from Jason Lezak in the 400-meter freestyle relay.) Who wants to do that all over again? For sure not Michael.

This is the dilemma.

Michael knows that if he puts in the work that he can again be the world’s best swimmer — in certain races. But never again will he do what he did in Beijing. This is a terrible burden. For real. What must it be like to be great but never again as across-the-board great as you once were?

Michael talks about setting new goals. But swimming is the most relentlessly revealing of the Olympic sports. At the elite level, the sport is merciless in making clear whether an athlete has put in the work. You win -- or lose -- by hundredths of a second.

This is, in one fashion or another, what Michael has been wrestling with since the day the Beijing Games ended.

You saw it in 2011, at the world championships in Shanghai, where Ryan Lochte had put in the work, and Michael had not. In 2012, Michael tried the 400-meter individual medley, which he used to rule, and didn’t even medal — because he hadn’t trained sufficiently.

After the 400 IM, it became plain in London that Michael had done enough — just enough — to still star. But because he hadn’t really done everything he could have, he got out-touched by five-hundredths of a second in the 200 butterfly by Chad le Clos of South Africa — an ending that depended on feel in the water, feel that Phelps would have had, did have, in the 100 fly in Beijing, which he won by one-hundredth of a second over Serbia’s Milorad Cavic.

After London, Michael said, enough.

Then he watched the Americans come up short in the 400 free relay at the 2013 worlds in Barcelona and something stirred.

So he kinda-sorta came back.

Then, this year, he came back for real — and did very well at the Pan-Pacific championships in August in Australia, winning three gold medals and two silvers.

The good thing about the comeback is it gives Michael structure. He needs that sort of structure.

But obviously he's not yet all-in. On the road at 1:40 a.m.?

At the same time, and this must be said, this comeback is only prolonging the inevitable.

If Michael keeps swimming through 2016, it seems hugely unlikely that he would not make the U.S. team for Rio. Everyone says, like this is a bad thing, he’d be 31 by the start of those Games, in August, 2016. So what? He’s Michael. He's the best-ever. If he wants it, he will do it -- emphasis on the if.

Who, though, is Michael? Really, who is he? Not Michael the swimmer. Michael Phelps. At 29, who is he? And what is he all about?

Michael should take a good look at the guy looking back at him in the mirror and say, OK, what's the next chapter?

If he can do that, this DUI episode could — in a weird way — turn out to be a huge positive. Again, Michael should count his blessings that no one got hurt. He should not just count this as, but legitimately come to see this as, a second chance -- at everything.

He has it all, you say?

Not really. Michael doesn't know what he wants to do with himself.

When Michael was 16, he had the audacity to tell Peter Carlisle, who would go on to be his agent — still is his agent — that his goal was to grow the sport of swimming. He could see that already.

He hasn’t been able with the same clarity to articulate anything else. That’s where the drift has come. Now is the time to figure it out — especially if there is to be a suspension.

It seems reasonable to assume that, however this shakes out, Michael is going to find himself doing community service. And part of that service will involve speaking to kids. And those kids are going to ask, Michael, you always said it was OK to make a mistake but not to make it twice — what do you say now?

And if the other part of the code is learning from every mistake -- what are the lessons from this one?

Now is the time to figure all this out. Because that is a huge part of this next chapter. Of being accountable to himself and to everyone around him -- because he is normal, and yet in some respects his life is not normal and likely never will be. Of figuring out who Michael Phelps is, and what his next direction holds.

2022: sport, politics, irony

Here is the definition of irony. The International Olympic Committee has spent a great deal of this past year building bridges between the worlds of sport and politics. Then the government of Norway decides not to bid for the 2022 Winter Games. So what does the IOC do?

It issues a statement in which it opts not for its usual measured tones in assessing the Norwegian government and political establishment. The release calls the Norwegian decision a “missed opportunity.” It says the Norwegians didn’t come to a meeting — that the Norwegians themselves asked for, the IOC notes — and thus the move to bow out of 2022 was taken on the “basis of half-truths and factual inaccuracies.”

Not even two weeks ago, at the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, IOC president Thomas Bach let the world in on the secret that everyone knows but that, until now, no IOC president had dared utter out loud: sports and politics do mix.

For sure they do.

As Bach said that day in Korea, “In the past, some have said that sport has nothing to do with politics, or they have said that sport has nothing to do with money or business. And this is just an attitude which is wrong and which we cannot afford anymore.

“We are living in the middle of society and that means that we have to partner up with the politicians who run this world.”

On Thursday, in an interview with Associated Press, Bach said the Norwegian bow-out was “a political decision.”

Back to that IOC statement Wednesday, which is attributed to the Games' executive director, Christophe Dubi. It ends with the observation that the IOC will "work closely with the Olympic Movement in Norway to make the Lillehammer Youth Olympic Games in 2016 a success for the young athletes." Curiously, there is no mention of the politicians with whom the Olympic movement is going to have to work to make those Games successful.

Meanwhile, Bach also said Thursday that, going forward, the IOC has “to communicate, to communicate, to communicate,” and in particular about the distinction between the two different budgets involved in any Games — the operating budget and then, separately, the capital or infrastructure projects associated with an Olympics that typically swell “costs” way beyond the line-item budgets of the Games themselves.

For instance, the Sochi Games’ operating budget was $2.2 billion.

But the number that is in many minds is $51 billion.

Why is that?

Whose job is it to explain the simple difference between what it costs to run a Games and the add-on projects? In Sochi, they essentially built two cities from scratch. That takes, well, a lot of scratch — way more than $2.2 billion. That’s the IOC’s job to explain.

If the IOC says, well, that's for Sochi 2014 organizers -- not unreasonable -- the fact is that already Sochi has come and gone and now the entity that is left, the only source for anyone to ask questions of, is the IOC. This is just the way it is.

Ask anyone how much the Sochi Games cost.

See if you get $51 billion.

It is not, and let's be clear about this, the fault of the media if the media gets $51 billion. If there is a different story to be told -- we are all here to be told otherwise. That is freshman-year journalism.

It has been pointed out in this space before that the IOC is not very good at communicating.

This is something of a mystery.

It is not — repeat, not — the opinion here that the IOC members are a bunch of bribe-taking fat cats who only want to swill champagne and eat shrimp in black limousines. That is just a stupid caricature.

The members are, for the most part, hugely passionate women and men trying to make the world even just a little better through sport.

There is — and long has been — a huge disconnect in communicating this story.

Whatever it is, the IOC for the most part often does not know how to do it. Why this is — dunno.

It must be acknowledged, however, that -- right or wrong -- the widely held perception of the IOC, and the members,  is a major, major factor in the rejection of the 2022 Games across Europe these past several months.

That, and the $51 billion.

The most salient fact to have come out in all the months of the 2022 campaign is that the IOC has $880 million to give to the winner. $880 million! That’s nearly, or maybe even more than, half the money it’s going to take for the operating budget.

Two days ago, the IOC buried this fact under a list of 14 names in another release when it should have been shouting it from the mountaintops.

Since then, the IOC has actually recognized that $880 million is a lot of money and has been putting it up high in its releases as Bach and other officials have been talking about it, and a lot.

As for the Norwegians not showing up at the meeting — hello? So perhaps they dissed you. It happens. Call them anyway. Say, we just want to make it clear you know we have $880 million. We are trying to build bridges between sport and politics. We are for sure talking to our friends in Beijing and Almaty about this, too.

Bach now says the IOC is sticking to its process, that it has two cities and that’s that.

That could assuredly be a reasonable position to articulate.

In the meantime, however, it might be interesting to hear why the IOC was so willing a few weeks ago to adapt its Host City contract, ostensibly in a bid to benefit all cities. Clearly, China and Kazakhstan aren’t really worried about the cost of the Games. Never have been.

So where are we now?

On the one hand, it’s entirely possible — indeed, probable — Almaty might win. Because of certain backstage influences that are well-known within IOC circles, Almaty has a huge upside.

On the other hand, what if Almaty can’t quite get it together to even make it to the vote next July?

It’s not the bid team.

It’s the government.

For one thing, over there, they are still mulling over the IOC's technical report from earlier this year that reviewed the-then three candidate cities.

Oslo ranked first in eight of the 14 categories and tied with Beijing in three more. Almaty was not first even once; it did, however, sit last in 11 of 14.

In Kazakhstan, they are still working it all out.

This latter scenario -- Almaty out altogether -- is not entirely unthinkable.

Then you’d have Beijing, and Beijing only.

If you are the IOC and you have even an inkling that you might be down to a one-horse race, wouldn’t you err on the side of caution and look for a way to mitigate that risk?

If, indeed, you are building bridges between sport and politics, aren’t you on the phone right now to the authorities in Almaty to find out what’s what?

One more time:

It’s October 2014. The all-members vote for Agenda 2020, Bach’s review and potentially far-reaching reform process, is in Monaco in December. The very best thing to do would be to call for a six-month delay of this 2022 process, incorporating whatever changes come out of Monaco, if any.

If no other city wants in post-Monaco, so be it.

But at least let the world have at that $880 million.

And, IOC, give yourself a chance “to communicate, to communicate, to communicate.”

2022: a renewed call for a time-out

Sometimes you’re right. Sometimes you’re damn right.

Or, you know, timing is everything.

On Tuesday, in this space, it was observed that Oslo 2022 Winter Games bid found itself in a hugely precarious place, and that the International Olympic Committee ought to take a six-month pause in the 2022 bid process. On Wednesday, the Norwegian government rejected the bid amid financing concerns, meaning the candidature almost certainly is dead.

An Oslo withdrawal would leave just two cities in the 2022 race: Beijing and Almaty.

The root cause of Norwegian concerns is the $51 billion associated with the Sochi 2014 Games. Whether that sum is real or not, it’s what everyone believes those Games cost, and so it is, practically speaking, real.

In a statement that was unusually strong for the IOC, which usually deals in diplomatic nuance and politesse, the Games' new executive director, Christophe Dubi, late Wednesday described Norway's decision to withdraw as a "missed opportunity." He said senior politicians there were not properly briefed on the bid process and so made their call based on "half-truths and factual inaccuracies."

Fascinatingly, the question has to be asked: was that Dubi statement his own, or was that his name on a statement issued by someone in the IOC executive bureau even higher up?

That $51 billion is the figure that, in practice, also scared off 2022 bids from Munich, Stockholm, Krakow and Lviv.

Now what?

There are two ways to look at the situation.

One, the sky is falling.

Or — this is a big opportunity for the Olympic movement. Perhaps, in a weird way, an Oslo exit will have done the IOC a huge favor — by forcing Olympic leadership to focus, immediately and with clarity, on the issues at hand.

To be clear, this was never about the Winter Games.

This was always, always, always about the IOC.

This is, and let’s be plain about this, too, unprecedented.

To go from seven cities to two? Unheard-of.

And — it’s no fun to say but it’s true as well — neither of the two left standing appears to be ready for prime time, or anyone’s favorite.

This 2022 race has now devolved into the candidate city version of the men’s 1000-meter short-track speedskating event at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. That’s the one where almost everyone crashed in a last-corner pile-up and the last guy standing, Steven Bradbury of Australia, who was a good 30 meters behind, minding his own business, coasted through the carnage to an unexpected and surprising gold medal.

Because Beijing and Almaty have made it this far  -- they're the choices?

Beyond which: how are these two candidates likely to measure up to the renewed emphasis on the anti-discrimination provision in the Olympic Charter?

No one anywhere in the world can argue that this is a logical way of going about awarding what is supposed to be one of the world’s grand prizes.

Indeed, the IOC prides itself on best practices.

Moreover, IOC president Thomas Bach prides himself on doing the right thing, and doing the right thing the right way, and for the right reasons.

The IOC has come so far since 1978. And yet, here it is, evoking memories of the scenario when Los Angeles and Teheran were the only contenders for the 1984 Summer Games.

Not good.

So, as this space made clear Tuesday, let’s call a halt to the insanity.

This is — to be abundantly obvious — an extraordinary situation. Extraordinary situations call for extraordinary measures.

“This calls for something other than the standard response,” Terrence Burns, longtime bid strategist and bid branding expert. “When the world changes, you take a hard look at your standard operating procedure and adjust accordingly.”

Bach is moving the IOC toward an all-members vote in Monaco in early December on a potentially far-reaching reform plan he has dubbed “Agenda 2020.”

Does the president have the authority to declare now, in October, that the 2022 race needs to be put on pause while things get sorted out?

For sure, and here’s why.

To begin, the entire 2022 process should have been postponed from the start while Agenda 2020 was worked out. That’s why, for instance, the U.S. Olympic Commitee has taken a wait-and-see approach toward any 2024 bid — to see what’s going to be what as things go forward after Monaco.

Next, longtime Olympic observers will recall the late 1990s scandal connected to Salt Lake City’s winning bid for 2002. That prompted the IOC, among other things, to hold “extraordinary” sessions. It’s easy enough for the president now to hold “extraordinary” executive board meetings and do what needs to be done.

Why does it need to be done?

As the IOC said in Monday’s news release — and this is the thing it’s going to take time to communicate around the world — it has $880 million in money to give away, in partnership, with some city somewhere to make the 2022 Games a success.

That money will go toward the 2022 Games city’s operating budget.

Not for capital costs such as a new metro line, or a new airport, or all the things that get associated with an Olympics and that run up the “cost” of a Games.

No — just the operating budget of the Games.

Meanwhile, that $880 million is what you might delicately call OPM — “other people’s money.” It’s broadcast, marketing and other funds described in the Host City contract.

For emphasis — not one taxpayer dime.

But lots of sponsor dollars.

So they have a huge vested interest in making sure this gets done right.

Which means the IOC president should, too.

But not just to please sponsors.

That’s not this president’s way, nor should it be.

Frankly speaking, $880 million should cover somewhere near half, maybe more, of a prudent 2022 Games city’s running costs. Not only that, organizers pretty much ought to come away with a surplus.

With $880 million on offer, cities around the world ought to be lining up for 2022. Really.

As a for instance — and only a for instance — there is no way the state of Colorado is going to build a bobsled run. Too much money and too many environmental concerns — also, the United States simply does not need a third run (there’s one in Lake Placid, New York, and another in Park City, Utah).

But what if, given the Agenda 2020 emphasis on sustainability and legacy, the U.S. Olympic Committee was interested in putting forth a 2022 bid from Denver with the understanding that the sliding sports would be in Utah?

What if the USOC were to go quietly to the IOC and say, you know, we will make you a double deal: '22 in Denver/Salt Lake with the understanding that you would not penalize us for a '24 bid in, say, Los Angeles because we are saving your bacon right now from a very serious situation. But it's cool. This double-down is going to produce billions -- literally, billions -- of dollars in sponsorships for you and for us and for everyone in the movement to share. Which, like we said a moment ago, would be pretty cool. After we are done with this '22/'24 bonanza, we can go about promoting the values all over the world together -- see you in, say, Cape Town in '28!

Or what about ice sports in Montreal with ski and sliding sports in Lake Placid? Right now the rules say you can’t go across two nations. Again, extraordinary times call for re-thinking. What if?

Meanwhile — would the USOC in any way be interested in 2022 when all signs are it’s poised for a 2024 Summer bid it might well win?

Would other countries be interested, once the IOC makes clear that there’s $880 million up for grabs?

Too many questions. The answers take time.

That’s what the IOC — frankly, what everyone — needs right now.

It’s a long time right now until 2022. Time to take time. Time to get this right.

A 2022 let's wait proposal

Good grief. Who writes these International Olympic Committee news releases?

The news in Monday’s account was not who was on the 2022 Winter Games evaluation commission. That was interesting if, say, you are a student of soft power, and want to note that the president of the Russian Olympic Committee, Alexander Zhukov, as well as the senior vice president of Sochi 2014, Tatiana Dobrokhvalova, are both on the commission. Have at it, students of intrigue.

You’d think the IOC, which is trying like hell to keep Oslo in the 2022 race, would shape these kinds of releases in a way that would make more sense.

If you are giving $880 million away, wouldn’t you, you know, want to make that sum the feature note in your release — instead of hiding it under a list of 14 names and two anodyne quotes from the IOC president, Thomas Bach?

Really now.

For emphasis, that’s $880 million dollars. I will say it again, and slowly: $880 million. That’s nearly $1 billion. That’s what the IOC is going to contribute to the 2022 host city, which right now is lined up to be Oslo, Beijing or Almaty.

Where does that $880 million come from? Critics of the IOC, pay attention: From marketing monies, a contribution related to broadcasting revenues, services provided to Olympic Broadcasting Services as the host broadcaster and various other funds described in the Host City contract.

Not one taxpayer dime.

Everyone understand? It’s easy.

Considering the IOC gave Sochi 2014 organizers $580 million excluding host broadcaster operations, and Bach has since said that the total IOC outlay for Sochi was closer to $750 million, $880 million is, well, even more.

The total Sochi operations budget — not the $51 billion figure everyone talks about but the amount of money it actually cost to run the Games themselves — was roughly $2.2 billion.

For comparison, the Vancouver 2010 operating budget: $1.9 billion.

The 2002 Salt Lake City Games final operating budget: $1.3 billion.

Easy math:

For 2022, the IOC is giving the organizing committee roughly half, just a little bit less, of all the money it’s going to take to actually run the Games.

Given the IOC's renewed focus on sustainability and legacy, a Winter Games can -- repeat, can -- be run more like Salt Lake than Sochi, and that is not -- repeat, not -- a criticism of Sochi organizers. In that case, $880 million can go even farther.

Why was this so hard for the IOC to say, indeed highlight, in a news release?

Which leads to this:

The IOC president, in his first year in his office, has shown strong, indeed dramatic leadership.

Now is the time for such leadership as it relates to this 2022 contest.

This race is not a race. It is on the thin edge of threatening to become a farce.

“Bid cities are short-time members of the Olympic family but they shouldn’t be treated that way,” said Terrence Burns, longtime bid strategist and bid branding expert.

“It often takes months for them to ‘get it.’  Now, more than ever and more than perhaps any other entity in the movement, their stories and positioning should be on message and in lockstep with the IOC.”

It’s not that the IOC is left with three cities. There have been three cities before — see the contests for 2018 (Munich, Annecy, Pyeongchang), 2014 (Sochi, Pyeongchang, Salzburg), 2010 (Vancouver, Pyeongchang, Salzburg).

This 2022 race is quantitatively and qualitatively different.

Just last year, the IOC had six seemingly viable applicant cities.

Now, though, Stockholm is gone. So is Krakow. So is Lviv.

All three were scared off, to varying degrees, by the $51 billion figure.

Of the three that are remaining, it may well be that the IOC soon enough finds itself down to two.

Oslo’s bid is that precarious.

Polls have kept saying that the Norwegian public, and by a large margin, doesn’t want to have anything to do with a 2022 Games.

Now there's a new poll with a glimmer of hope: conducted by the newspaper Dagbladet, it suggests that 53 percent of those surveyed would support Norway hosting the 2022 Games if costs were kept down, with 40 percent saying no.

Typically, the IOC is looking for yes votes in the range of 70 percent.

Beyond the polls, there remains the obstacle that political opposition to the Games in Norway remains significant.

Also, the only real way to keep costs down in “Oslo” is to move big chunks of a 2022 Games to “Lillehammer,” two to three hours away.

Once more, the driving force for all of this is the $51 billion figure.

A dose of reality:

The Winter Games brand is at risk, if not the entire Olympic brand.

A little more reality here:

There are plenty of cities around the world that can play host to a Winter Games.

Especially if the IOC is throwing in $880 million.

The IOC, to reiterate, likes to talk the talk about sustainability and legacy.

So let's walk the walk:

If the IOC simply emphasized that it is, indeed, investing in this sort of partnership approach — proclaiming, cities, we are going in 50-50 with you on the running of the Games, and that is essentially what they would be doing, explicitly excluding any infrastructure project that isn’t funded by the organizing committee — that makes for a workable 21st-century approach to the Games, correct?

Again, not so hard to explain, either, right?

To do that, however, takes time to convince the (many and understandable) critics out there. The situation the IOC is in is of its own making.

Again -- it's the $51 billion.

So why not put the 2022 race on hold for, say, six months?

It’s the IOC’s ballgame. They can do with it what they want. Besides, it actually would be quite easy under these circumstances: all Bach would have to say is that, given the review and potential reform elements of his “Agenda 2020” plan, which is working toward an all-members vote in December in Monaco, it would make eminent sense to start all over again with new ground rules post-Monaco for 2022.

It’s eight years — more like seven if you’re being picky come December 2014 — until February 2022, meaning that edition of the Winter Games. There’s tons of time. It’s not like the IOC would be facing disaster if it put this race on pause to consider if this, the way things are now, is its best option.

What if the Oslo campaign goes belly-up in just a few weeks? What then — Beijing or Almaty?

Among the concerns: after Beijing 2008, Singapore 2010, Nanjing 2014, Pyeongchang 2018, Tokyo 2020 … and then it’s back yet once more to those time zones?

If you read the rules closely, the IOC hasn’t even asked any of the 2022 cities for the non-refundable $500,000 candidature fee. That’s not due until Jan. 31, 2015.

The bid books are due in January as well. Those books typically take about a year’s worth of work. Who believes — given that Bach has made it clear he isn’t fond of consultants — that Beijing, Almaty and Oslo are going to get them done in a professional manner, and on time?

Check out the application city files. It’s abundantly obvious that Krakow and Lviv used consultants. As for the three still in the race?

That's just not best practices. There's too much money and too much at stake for all this to be decided this way.

Right now the IOC is looking at what, if this were a movie, would be called a "situation."

That's not good. It's not good for the IOC brand, for the athletes of the world and for the Games. So shouldn’t the IOC do something about that?

Like pause. Reset. And get this right.

Sports and politics do mix

At long last, the secret that really is no secret is finally out: sports and politics do mix. The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, said so, in a speech over the weekend at the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea. If it is a mystery why it took so long for the IOC president, any IOC president, to articulate the obvious, this IOC president deserves full credit for not just recognizing reality but standing ready to build on it.

Sport needs to acknowledge its relationship to politics and business, Bach said. At the same time, he said, the world’s political and corporate elite must be mindful of the autonomy of sports organizations or run the risk of diminishing the positive influence that sport can carry.

“In the past,” Bach said, “some have said that sport has nothing to do with politics, or they have said that sport has nothing to do with money or business. And this is just an attitude which is wrong and which we can not afford anymore.

“We are living in the middle of society and that means we have to partner up with the politicians who run this world.”

This is as far from radical as saying that dollar bills are green.

And yet — there has been this fiction that the Olympic movement is, somehow, some way, supposed to be divorced from politics.

As if.

Now we can do away with this fiction, too — just like the one that the Olympics are for amateur athletes. If you think that LeBron James is an amateur, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.

Juan Antonio Samaranch saw to the end of the amateur era.

Now Thomas Bach is making it clear to everyone — at least anyone who wants to listen — that, indeed, sports and politics really do mix.

Of course they mix.

The world is full of politics.

We all live in the real world.

Perhaps this fiction goes all the way back to Avery Brundage — like he is supposed to be some great role model — declaring that sport and politics should be kept apart. (Query: would the record suggest that was the case during his years atop the IOC?)

In any event, everyone knows — has always known — that sport is and always has been intertwined with the world in which it moves.

The examples are far, far, far too numerous to list, everything from the political protests and more in Mexico City in 1968 to the terror attacks in Munich in 1972 to Cathy Freeman amid the ring of fire and water in Sydney in 2000 to the hushed silence of the 9/11 flag at the opening ceremony in Salt Lake City in 2002 to the beating of the drums at the opening ceremony in Beijing in 2008, and on and on and on.

Of course, every edition of the Games — which transpires after frantic bidding contests involving multiple countries — involves layers of relationship between entities. All of that is entirely, wholly political.

The issue amid all of this is, and always has been — always will be — how to draw appropriate boundaries.

This theme — establishing it, defining it — has been one of the primary hallmarks of Bach’s first year in office as he and the IOC head now toward the all-members session in December amid the review and potential reform of the “Agenda 2020” process.

Bach has met with 81 heads of state and government. He has developed what seems to be a special relationship with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki- Moon, in Incheon calling Ban a “great friend of the Olympic movement … with whom we really enjoy an outstanding partnership and relationship.”

The IOC and UN in April signed an agreement to explore ways to work together. Ban attended both the Sochi Games in February and last month’s Nanjing Youth Games.

In July, with Ban on hand, Bach officially opened the “Sport for Hope” community center in Haiti.

In Sochi, meanwhile, Bach — apparently motivated by President Obama and other politicians who took positions against the Russian law banning gay “propaganda” against minors — said the Olympics should not be “used as a stage for political dissent or for trying to score points in internal or external political contests.”

Bach also said, “Have the courage to address your disagreements in a peaceful, direct political dialogue and not on the backs of the athletes.”

Last November, at the UN, he delivered a speech in which he said the IOC is, itself, not a government. It is, above all, a sports organization — one that seeks to “use the power of our values and symbols to promote the positive, peaceful development of global society.”

He also said that it “must always be clear in the relationship between sport and politics that the role of sport is always to build bridges,” adding, “It is never to build walls.”

Woven throughout that speed were references — as in Saturday’s address in Incheon — to autonomy. That is, the IOC wants sports bodies to be free of governmental interference.

Bach said last November that sport is the “only area of human existence” that has achieved what in political philosophy is known as “universal law” and in moral philosophy as a “global ethic.”

To repeat the example: if you go anywhere in the world and throw down a soccer ball, everyone knows the rules.

Saturday in Incheon, he said, allowing countries to set their own rules for a soccer game would mean that “international sport is over.”

“So we need this worldwide application of our rules to ensure also in the future that sport remains this international phenomenon — which only sport can offer.”

Enough with trial by court of public opinion

Enough already with trial by court of public opinion. All around. We have courts — real courts, of law — to dispense justice. That’s what they’re for. You can like Hope Solo, or not. But her case is not like that involving Ray Rice. The notion that the two matters are the same, or ought to be treated the same, or that the U.S. Olympic Committee ought to do something in the Solo case, and do it now, because of some notion of equality or of leveling the playing field in sports thoroughly and completely misses the point.

It also fundamentally ignores reality.

The USOC -- which convenes this week in Chicago for its annual assembly -- can’t just whomp around like an 800-pound gorilla. There are laws that define what it can, and can’t, do.

Which is exactly the point that seems to be lost in all the shouting over the past couple days and weeks amid the Rice matter and, more recently, as it has dawned anew on columnists — including some of the leading voices in the United States — as well as on the Twitter mob that Solo is herself facing domestic violence charges.

It’s simple.

The United States is a nation rooted, fundamentally, in the law. We can agree, or disagree, about whether the law is applied appropriately in a particular case or not — but, big picture, that is the essence of the thing.

To continue, the law is not a one-size-fits-all. In each case, the idea is that the law is applied to specific facts. And, in each case, the accused — this is crucial — is afforded due process.

Rice, in a February altercation, assaulted his wife-to-be, Janay, at the Revel Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The next month, a grand jury indicted him on felony charges of aggravated assault. At the risk of being obvious, a felony is punishable by a year or more in custody — which means state prison. We now know, thanks to TMZ, that Rice punched his fiancee in a casino elevator, knocking her unconscious.

In May, prosecutors agreed to allow Rice to enter into a pretrial diversion program, which will allow him to avoid prosecution, assuming he successfully completes the program. Typically, it takes about a year.

Solo, meanwhile, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of misdemeanor domestic violence stemming from a June incident at Solo’s sister’s home in Kirkland, Washington.

Just to pause for a second.

A misdemeanor involves a crime punishable by a year or less behind bars — that is, in county jail.

So, just to start, there’s a huge difference.

Next:

According to documents obtained by the Seattle Times, Solo charged her 17-year-old nephew, punched him in the face and tackled him. When the boy’s mother tried to intervene, Solo attacked her, too.

Police said in an affidavit that when they arrived on the scene, the boy’s T-shirt was torn and he had scratch marks on his arms and a bleeding cut on his ear.

The Seattle Times account says this, too:

"When the teen’s mother tried to intervene, Solo attacked her as well, the document says. The teen tried to pull Solo off his mother and then broke a wooden broom over her head, the document says."

The "her" in that sentence is Hope Solo. So she got a broom broken over her head, at least according to that account. Solo's attorney says she is the victim in the case, according to the newspaper.

Now there may be all kinds of reasons for U.S. Soccer to assess Hope Solo’s conduct, in this instance and over the years. But to say that the federation ought to be spurred to action now because Ray Rice beat up his fiancee in an elevator?

Ladies and gentlemen, Hope Solo has pleaded not guilty. She is due the presumption of innocence.

Indeed, on Tuesday evening, on her Facebook page, Solo had this to say: "... while I understand that the public desires more information regarding the allegations against me, I continue to maintain my innocence against these charges. And, once all the facts come to light and the legal process is concluded, I am confident that I will be fully exonerated."

What if, at trial, it turns out there are extenuating circumstances? Unreliable witnesses? Flimsy evidence? What about the broom? When in all of it did that take place, and what might -- or might not -- a jury think about that?

The Seattle Times report says the boy alleges Solo had been drinking. It also says the 17-year-old "got an old gun that did not work" and pointed it at Solo to try to get her to stop. Police, according to the newspaper account, determined it was a broken BB gun.

What if a jury of her peers finds Solo not guilty of the charges against her? What then? If U.S. Soccer moves decisively now, and she is found not guilty -- should she be punished all these months for what would turn out to be no sound legal reason?

“Abuse in all forms is unacceptable,” the chief executive officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee, Scott Blackmun, wrote USA Today in an email earlier this week.

“The allegations involving Ms. Solo are disturbing and are inconsistent with our expectations of Olympians. We have had discussions with U.S. Soccer and fully expect them to take action if it is determined that the allegations are true.”

For sure.

But until then, the USOC is not the NFL, and U.S. Soccer is not the Baltimore Ravens. That’s not how the real world works.

The USOC is not in the position of dictating to a national governing body how to run its affairs. Indeed, the Ted Stevens Amateur Sports Act prevents that very thing.

Here’s the deal:

Outrage is one thing. Justice is another. Hope Solo is due her day in court. It’s coming in November. Until then, a little calm, please, and a lot more reasonableness all around. It’s good for everyone.

On the NFL, Ray Rice and leadership

When he was running the Salt Lake City Olympic Games, so this was obviously more than a dozen years ago, Mitt Romney had a saying that bore on the astute reflections of the ladies and gentlemen of the press. It traced to his Mormon forebears, who had come across the prairies in covered wagons. “The dogs may bark,” Romney would say when the newspapers would be filled with one story after another as the Games struggled to recover from the scandal linked to Salt Lake’s winning bid for the 2002 Games, “but the caravan moves on.”

The leadership of any high-profile sports enterprise can be said, in one way or another, to be an exercise in ongoing crisis management.

Now it is NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s turn in the white-hot spotlight.

He and the league are suddenly wrestling with a rapid-fire succession of cases linked to domestic violence and allegations of child abuse. In concert, they underscore the NFL’s unique place in American culture even as they also frame significant questions going forward about issues such as due process that remain at the core of the American experience — issues that absolutely need to be addressed, quietly, with reason and certitude, amid all the shouting.

On Sept. 8, the Baltimore Ravens released running back Ray Rice and the league suspended him indefinitely after the website TMZ posted a video showing him punching his future wife, Janay, in an elevator.

On Wednesday, the Minnesota Vikings placed Adrian Peterson, another of the league’s standout running backs, who is facing child abuse charges in Texas, on the exempt-commissioner’s list. Peterson is alleged to have whipped his 4-year-old son with a “switch,” or a tree branch. That same day, the Carolina Panthers took the same action with defensive lineman Greg Hardy; he was found guilty of domestic violence in a case involving his girlfriend in July. Hardy is appealing.

Also Wednesday, Arizona Cardinals backup running back Jonathan Dwyer was arrested on charges of aggravated assault against his wife and 17-month-old son and four other counts, all from incidents that took place in July. Police allege he head-butted her after she refused sex. The Cardinals immediately deactivated Dwyer, putting him on the reserve/non-football illness list; he is now ineligible to play for the team this season.

The Rice case has been, by far, the most prominent matter, because the elevator video is so provocative. It has served as a lighting rod for Goodell’s leadership under pressure — offering lessons, good and not so, for the league and for others, both in the United States and worldwide, confronting a major issue, and in real time.

The prime takeaway from the Salt Lake scandal, which erupted in late 1998, is that leaders and institutions need to be as transparent and accountable as possible.

In this regard, Goodell has assuredly made some missteps.

At the same time, he also has — despite the many critics, their voices amplified by social media — done some things right.

Starting from the obvious: domestic violence and child abuse are never acceptable.

Now, some of the the not-so-good:

— In July, Rice was given a two-game suspension under the NFL’s personal conduct policy following a Feb. 15 altercation with his then-fiancee in an Atlantic City, N.J., casino elevator. That was too lenient — particularly for a league seeking to attract female fans.

— Critically, Goodell did not go after the in-elevator tape diligently enough. As commissioner, for instance, could he have used more leverage with Rice’s defense attorney? Goodell and the Ravens say they never saw the video before Sept. 8.

— Shortly after the TMZ video emerged, Goodell sat down for a one-on-one interview with CBS News. He hasn’t been heard from since. He needs to make himself available for a news conference. I was there at the hotel in suburban Chicago the day Goodell was elected commissioner. He’s good at news conferences. Have the NFL PR office give everyone with a press pass in New York 60 — heck, make it 90 — minutes notice. That’s more than enough.

In that CBS interview, Goodell said the league is “particularly reliant” on law enforcement for evidence. Unsaid is that TMZ, which is at its core a celebrity-news website, gets its stuff wherever it gets it — and maybe it pays for it and maybe it doesn’t. This leads, however, to a fascinating — albeit fundamental — question:

Do we really want employers to buy evidence regarding activities their employees are involved in outside the workplace?

Or what about this:

Consider Dwyer’s sudden ineligibility. If you go about suspending everyone who is accused of a crime, what about due process? And this, too: millions of dollars are bet, some of it legally, on the NFL. If players are suddenly being forced out because of accusations of domestic violence — what happens if such accusations are made on false, flimsy or thin evidence? Or, worse — if an accuser is being paid off by a gambler?

These are the sorts of difficult, nuanced questions that demand experience — and relationships forged over time — to sift through.

Goodell, despite cries that he should step down or be fired, seems increasingly unlikely to go anywhere.

Though Anheuser-Busch, a major NFL sponsor, earlier this week said it was “increasingly concerned” over reports of NFL player domestic violence, the chief executive of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, late Wednesday issued a statement calling some players’ behavior “repugnant” but describing Goodell as a “man of integrity.”

Such praise from the female CEO of the maker of Pepsi, Gatorade and Doritos — and the sponsor of last year’s Super Bowl halftime show — is notable.

Meanwhile, another major sponsor, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, issued a statement that said the NFL had reached out to the company several weeks ago and has “been working behind the scenes to develop and implement problems that will address the [domestic violence] problem at its root.”

These sponsors, and others, understand that in fact Goodell has shown leadership amid the storm.

— Goodell actually has levied punishment on Rice. After the video emerged, he suspended him indefinitely from the league — a suspension the NFL Players Association is now challenging, asserting Rice’s due process rights. Query: has anyone else punished Rice? The criminal justice system? In May, Rice was accepted into a pretrial diversion program, which meant he would avoid prosecution, assuming he successfully completes the program (it usually takes about a year).

— The big thing: after initially assessing the two-game penalty, Goodell began meeting with domestic violence experts and advocates. He then conceded he’d made a mistake and issued not just a personal but an organizational apology, acknowledging he “didn’t get it right.”

Under a new NFL policy announced in August, first-time domestic violence offenders would face six-game suspensions and repeat offenders would be suspended indefinitely.

Intriguingly, this sort of thoughtful honesty and analysis is precisely the sort of thing we say we want in our leaders. Yet when they actually do it, far too many critics are incredibly quick to use it as a weapon against them.

Just one question: why?

Olympic TV: the time is now

Based in Los Angeles, KIIS-FM — OMG, Ryan Seacrest, he hosts the talent show American Idol, too! — is a pop culture powerhouse that unabashedly plays a loop of hit songs its teenage listeners want to hear, over and again. This summer, as I know well, what with three teens in the house (disclaimer: the oldest turned 20 in April), one of those songs is Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda.” If you are not in the know, let us just say that “Anaconda” is salacious. My 15-year-old daughter, who is a straight-A student and gives her parents zero problems, knows all the words. These include rhymes and riffs that veer from Eiffel to Nyquil to others that are for sure not printable in a family newspaper. The video, with Minaj and a posse of backup dancers twerking and then twerking some more, makes the whole thing all too clear.

When I was 15, Karen Carpenter was making big hits.

Times change.

Which leads — yes, it does — to the prospect of an Olympic TV channel. To quote Karen Carpenter, we’ve only just begun. You don’t think so? Rewind to the Sochi 2014 opening ceremony. There was the Russian Police Choir covering Daft Punk’s dance floor anthem, “Get Lucky.”

The International Olympic Commitee — indeed, the entire Olympic movement — is trying to figure out how to reach the emerging demographic that is teenagers and 20-somethings.

There are two universal languages spoken around the world.

One is music.

The other is sports.

To be candid, the notion of an Olympic TV channel is an idea that should have come to fruition already.

Like many things in our world, however, this is one of those that is a matter of timing.

Five years ago, the idea of such a channel was floated by Comcast and the U.S. Olympic Committee but then abandoned weeks later when the IOC and NBC demurred.

That was then.

Now, Comcast has acquired NBC, and Comcast chief executive Brian Roberts — who, it should be said, was supportive of the 2009 concept — recently played a key role in the $7.65 billion deal that gives NBC the U.S. rights to the Olympics through 2032.

Now, Thomas Bach is the IOC president instead of Jacques Rogge, and Bach has signaled unequivocally that the idea of an Olympic channel is a priority. Indeed, of all the working groups in his “Agenda 2020” review and potential reform plan, the channel is the one working group that Bach himself is chairing.

The Agenda 2020 process is working toward an all-members session in Monaco in December. There, the channel — along with other items on the agenda — will come up for review.

It’s not a foregone conclusion that the members will approve the channel. Nothing in the IOC is ever such a thing.

But if ever the timing is right — it’s right, right now.

“You mention the example from five years ago and the example from the United States,” said Yiannis Exarchos, the chief executive officer of Olympic Broadcasting Services. “In the last five years, we have seen changes from a century.

“We have seen changes and movements that are really seismic,” he said, adding a moment later, “Everybody in the movement started realizing the importance of coming together under a powerful brand. It adds value to all the efforts, which has a proven record of providing a robust platform for the partners to grow.”

Timo Lumme, the managing director of IOC TV and marketing services, added, “An Olympic channel is not going to solve everything at a stroke. But what it does is put a marker down and put a destination down for what we stand for.

“It’s not just the notion of the Olympic Games — but the values and everything we stand for. And hopefully we can get in there and stretch the Olympic brand beyond the two weeks beyond the huge spike of the Games, and leverage that spike.”

This is it, exactly.

Since early indications are the channel is not about rights fees, there isn’t likely to be a problem with NBC, the BBC, CBC, CCTV or others.

Also, it is going to be— by design — a global entity. NBC, just to pick one, serves the terrestrial interests of U.S. viewers, and is in business to make money. The point of the channel is very different. It’s to enhance the Olympic brand — to make it a 365-day-a-year proposition.

If done right, the channel not only could but should boost the quality and level of corporate partnerships, potentially meaning revenue over the longer term.

But that is not the outset goal.

What is, is telling the Olympic story, Exarchos said: the thousands of hours of sporting excellence already on file in the archives along with promoting the values of friendship, excellence and respect; adopting healthier lifestyles; organizing community events in a sustainable way; social inclusiveness; and more.

“Obviously, we do not believe television should be didactic,” he said, adding, “It should be exciting, moving and engaging.”

He said planners see sports as the “core,” as the “human stories,” ones with “moral paradigms that carry emotions and so on,” adding, It’s a more fuller world we see [with] sports as the moving heart of it, the core of it.”

He also said that while there should be “reference to the big stars and the big stories in the Olympics,” as with “everything in broadcasting … you have to make things locally.” He said, “I strongly believe in the incorporation of locally produced programming so that it can become far more relevant.” While this is “complex,” he said, this factor “will be the key to its success.”

Assuming the members give the go-ahead in December, the channel is likely to get up and running as early as 2015.

Back to Nicki Minaj, and for this reason. At the end of “Anaconda,” she sings about other women she meets in clubs. She is dismissive — I am being gentle here — about these other women.

For those of you who might take offense to Minaj and her lyrics — I direct you to Led Zeppelin and “Whole Lotta Love,” which essentially covers some of the same ground, only 44 years prior. Now that song is considered “classic rock.”

But I digress.

What Minaj creates in her song is a world that teenagers want to be part of. She’s so cool that she shows up on TV with Ellen DeGeneres — host of this year’s Academy Awards, hello selfie shot, which was apparently good enough for the IOC at the Youth Games in Nanjing — and DeGeneres makes a parody video that reduces Minaj to hilarious laughter.

Teens aren’t old enough to go to clubs, at least — in many countries — not legally. But they yearn to be part of something bigger, something so intrinsically awesome that they say, I’m in.

This is what the Olympic Games are about.

This is where the Olympic channel comes in.

Because aside from the two weeks every two (or four) years, the movement is very good at ceding the spotlight to the likes of Nicki Minaj.

And while she has something to say, the movement does, too.

To be obvious, it needs somewhere to say it.

“We have an opportunity right now to build something,” Lumme said, Exarchos adding, referring to the prospect of an Olympic channel, “In today’s day, it would be hard to do it in any way other than this.”

Selfies and the Youth Olympic Games future

In American teen parlance, the word “tryhard” is a noun. It means when someone tries hard to appear a certain way but all that effort does is make that someone all the more contrived. Here is how to use “tryhard”: when the president of the International Olympic Committee posed with a group of young athletes for a staged selfie shot in the opening ceremony of the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China, over the weekend, the IOC was being such a tryhard.

The disconnect this moment illustrates is so profound that, in a way, it’s almost a good thing that it happened.

Because, if the Youth Games really are going to stick around, and that is a serious question for debate, this can be the moment everyone can look at and go, OK, let’s see if we can go forward from here and find something actually authentic that might actually speak to young people instead of trying to manufacture something.

To start from the very top:

There is no question the Olympic movement needs to reach out to young people, especially teens. Everyone in a position of authority within the movement agrees about that.

The issue is whether the Youth Olympic Games is the means and method by which to do so.

It is by no means a sure thing that the Youth Games is a viable concept.

I wrote as much in 2007 when, at its all-members assembly in Guatemala, the IOC authorized the idea in the first instance.

I was in Singapore, a mentor for the inaugural Young Reporters program, for the first edition of the Youth Games, and though the organization of those Games was by every important measure a success, the fundamental problems confronting the Youth Olympic Games then are still the same challenges now, and they are going to be the same going forward.

One, the sports calendar is already completely overloaded. This year, just as it was in 2010 and just as it will be in 2018, we have already had the Winter Olympics and Paralympics; the soccer World Cup; and the Commonwealth Games. Now YOG?

At some point, fatigue sets in. People are, like, what, another multi-sport event?

Beyond which, it’s August. Around the world, soccer — and, in the United States, football — season is starting up again. That’s what most people will tend to care about now for the next several months.

Two, is YOG a kumbaya session in which teens ages 14 to 18 are immersed in “the themes of culture, education and friendship,” or a mini-Olympics? The IOC is trying to have it both ways, stressing the former in its official release but, of course, awarding medals. This is a muddle, and muddles are never good.

Three, while the IOC under the new president, Thomas Bach, is stressing sustainability and legacy, the opening ceremony in Nanjing was thoroughly over-the-top, as absolutely — after the display in Beijing in 2008 — could have been expected from our Chinese friends. If you are Buenos Aires, site of the 2018 Youth Olympics, what are you thinking after watching that ceremony? How do we top that? Should we even try?

Four, and the biggest problem, YOG simply doesn’t do what it is supposed to do. The idea is to connect with teens. How, exactly? Big picture: the Olympic scene is a made-for-TV spectacle. YOG is the classic “if a tree falls in the forest, does anybody know about it” deal because hardly anyone sees it on TV, especially not teen-agers.

How would they? YOG’s broadcast reach is hugely limited, especially in major markets. Beyond which, why would teens watch? Who are the personalities? Their back stories?

The IOC wants to believe this is all going to be a social media-driven event.

Gently: we are years away from that.

Maybe we will get there someday. But not now. I remain a huge supporter of the Young Reporter program. As of Monday evening, its Facebook posts were generally reaching 200 to 500 people.

Which brings the circle back around to the on-stage selfie in the opening ceremony.

“Dear young athletes, these are your Games. This is your moment,” Bach said. “So, young athletes, please join me: let us all capture it — so get your smartphones out and let’s set a record for selfies.”

At that, he was joined by five young athletes for his own “YOG selfie,” the IOC reported.

The whole thing evoked the Ellen DeGeneres moment at the Oscars earlier this year.

If one of the young athletes had suggested the selfie, instead of the president, perhaps the moment might have seemed less manufactured.

But, ask yourself — is this something a 15-year-old would do?

Or something that more likely came out of a middle-management brainstorming session? Run by, you know, adults?

I live with three teenagers. Well, technically, two. The older daughter is 20. The boy is 17. The younger daughter is 15, headed toward her sophomore year in high school. Because she has an older sister who is going to be a junior in college, the younger one knows a lot of stuff.

Essentially, the 15-year-old is the IOC YOG target audience.

She lives on her phone, “talking” incessantly with her friends and her sister on Snapchat. They are on Facebook and on Instagram. Twitter, not so much.

Teenagers do not take selfies with, as they describe them, “old people.”

Who is an “old person”? Me, for one.

As the 15-year-old said, “How old is old? When they have visible wrinkles.”

Has the IOC yet figured out that, especially in this context, teenage girls are the knowers of all things? Or at least all relevant things?

Suddenly, she and all her friends are busy — like seemingly everyone in the United States on social media — taking the ALS ice-bucket challenge. She did so Sunday and immediately — to stress, immediately — put video of it up on Facebook, cautioning me that I was not allowed to “like” it until she got a certain number of likes from her friends first because that would not be cool. As for the Youth Games? A world away. Whatever.

Has the IOC, you know, convened focus groups of teen girls to figure out the Youth Games?

The 15-year-old asked, reasonably enough, “Why is there a Youth and a Junior Olympics?” A lot of her friends are geeked up about the possibility of taking part in the JO’s. YOG? What?

Also, the word “Youth.” That, she said, “sounds like it should be for 8-year-olds,” and she is right, because “youth” is not a word that, especially in American English, people use in everyday speech. It just isn’t. It’s stilted.

This is the overarching problem with the Youth Olympic Games. There are so many disconnects on so many levels.

Bach’s “Olympic Agenda 2020” review and potential reform process, headed toward an all-members session in Monaco in December, is supposed to be heavy on what to do about engaging tomorrow’s audience.

The IOC needs to give serious deliberation to the notion about whether hundreds of millions of dollars for a Youth Olympic Games, Summer and Winter, is legitimately the way to go. For a fraction of that money, Michael Phelps, who was a 2010 YOG ambassador, and Chad le Clos, who is a 2014 ambassador, can make a lot of appearances, and reach a lot of teens.

You can make the argument that the modern Olympic Games, launched in Athens in 1896, took a few cycles to gain sound footing.

You can counter, however, that back then the Games had the luxury of time. The world we live in now doesn’t have that luxury. Things are too expensive and move too fast.

Today’s teens have far too many choices. Why should they not only check out but stay tuned in to a Youth Olympic Games? The IOC has to give them not only reason but exciting reason. What is that going to be? Without that, can the IOC articulate good reason for the Youth Games to keep on keeping on?