Tear it up, throw it away, start all over again

Jacques Rogge served as president of the International Olympic Committee for 12 years, from 2001 until 2013. A key insider during the Rogge years — if not the supremely key insider — was the then-cycling federation president, Hein Verbruggen of Holland.

Verbruggen himself became an IOC member in 1996. In 2001, he led the IOC “evaluation” team for the 2008 Games; the members would select Beijing. Thereafter, Rogge appointed Verbruggen to head what the IOC calls its “coordination” commission — the link between local organizers and the IOC.

All this is to say that Verbruggen was, and is, an expert in the IOC, its culture, its ways and, in particular, Olympic bidding and organizing. He resigned his IOC membership at the end of the Beijing Games but remains an honorary member and a keenly influential voice in the movement. Now, in a new post to his blog, Verbruggen has given voice to the position increasingly resonating within even the most important Olympic circles:

The Olympic bid process is in crisis. That process is fundamentally, thoroughly broken. The IOC must start anew.

In his words: “… The current bidding system for cities vying to host the Olympic Games is totally outdated and must simply be torn up and discarded.”

In a telephone interview Tuesday, he said, referring to the current bid system, “That is 20, 30 years ago. That is over.” Referring to the current voting IOC members, he said, “If they don’t understand that, they have a problem.” He paused, then added, “They do have a problem.”

Though Verbruggen’s emphasis in the blog is on the future, and in particular the process yet to come for the 2026 Winter Games, he also makes in his column this central point, which is relevant to the ongoing process for the 2024 race, featuring Los Angeles and Paris. In the blog itself, these next sentences are all one paragraph. They are broken up here for ease of reading and emphasis:

“A fundamental condition of hosting,” he writes, “must be that a country can organize the Games without making taxpayers fund the investment for additional infrastructure.

“The only infrastructure investments that would be allowed would be those which would be made anyway, irrespective of hosting the Olympics.

“The only costs taken on by a host country’s government, therefore, would be those relating to security (which could be kept to a minimum by using the army, as happened at London 2012).”

Of the two 2024 bids, these words apply directly and forcefully to the privately funded Los Angeles candidacy. The LA bid calls for the construction of no new permanent venues.

The government-underwritten (that is, taxpayer-paid) Paris bid, by contrast, calls for Games-related construction of a new athletes’ village, aquatics complex and media housing, which are projected to cost at least $2 billion. History all but guarantees that would be low.

Government-funded (that is, taxpayer-paid) Games in recent years produced these sorts of outlandish figures: Sochi 2014, a reported $51 billion bill; Beijing 2008, $40 billion; Rio 2016, $20 billion (still awaiting final figures); London 2012 ($15 billion); and more.

Verbruggen is not — this must be acknowledged — a man who shies from battles. His tenure at UCI, the cycling federation, was marked by controversies over, among matters, Lance Armstrong. He and the longtime IOC member Dick Pound, who was also the first president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, have clashed, and repeatedly, over the years.

Thus the obvious question, and answer:

Will everyone agree with Verbruggen’s position about Olympic bidding? Hardly.

But:

Verbruggen’s position matters, and considerably, not just because he is willing to speak out — but because he understands what it means, as an influential and senior European voice in the movement, to post such comments.

Some if not most of the points that Verbruggen makes, it might be noted, echo observations advanced in this very space over the past few months if not years.

Of course they will be read and understood differently in many Olympic precincts because it is Verbruggen — different, of course, if one might be inclined to dismiss the work of a journalist on principle, and particularly an American, and all the more so one based in California. All good.

Here is the thing: Verbruggen is, as ever, willing to say the things that almost no one else on the inside is willing to say. And for publication.

The blog is actually the second of a two-part series. The first asserts, bluntly and accurately: “the IOC does not have a marketing strategy for its unique product, the Olympics.”

In that first column, Verbruggen also writes, among several memorable passages:

"IOC President Thomas Bach now says we need to change the bidding system because the current system has 'too many losers' (a sentiment that could equally be applied to all gold medalists at the Games). His remark is a bit of an oxymoron given that there are now only two candidate cities. It would be understandable (if the media speculation is correct) if the IOC allocated the 2024 and 2028 Games respectively to Paris and LA. But that would just be an ad hoc solution, born of necessity, and would offer no sustainable way out of the current crisis."

In that Tuesday phone interview, Verbruggen said, “I know very well how many times I told my [IOC] colleagues and also Jacques Rogge — the way that we force countries to organize the Olympic Games, with all the demands that we have, and the host-city contract with all the constraints! There are not more than 15 or 20 countries [in the world] that can do it. They didn’t want to believe me. They said, ‘Oh, we will always have countries.’ But now — the countries we want?”

A moment later, he said, “If you do not see these things happening, if you are not seeing a clear vision and you do not have a long-term strategy — now we are paying the price.”

In the mid-1990s, Verbruggen writes in the first of the two pieces, he served on the “evaluation” commission for the 2004 Games, ultimately won by Athens. In all, that panel visited 11 cities. After that, he chaired the 2008 commission.

“If the IOC had had even a basic long-term marketing plan,” he writes, “we would have realized 10-15 year ago how precarious the situation was becoming and we could have prepared against this eventuality. But, as I said, the IOC has a monopoly and is under no pressure to take these sorts of precautions. Having just signed a nice fat TV contract with NBC,” the most recent extending the network's rights from 2021 through 2032 for $7.65 billion, "it was too tempting for the IOC to just sit back and rest on its laurels. ‘What crisis?’ we would say, not realizing that, while we did indeed have a lucrative TV contract, we also had … no bidding cities.”

Five western European cities dropped out for 2022, leaving only Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan, Beijing winning. Five cities started for 2024; Hamburg, Rome and Budapest have dropped out, leaving only two, LA and Paris.

“Another factor in this crisis,” he says in the first blog, is the “extremely negative ‘reputation’ of the Olympic Games themselves, especially around its astronomic costs and poor legacy. Proactive PR is an essential part of any marketing strategy. For decades now, the Olympic Games have been tainted by extremely negative media reports about the massive investments required to host the event, all paid for with taxpayers’ dollars, not to mention reports of huge losses resulting from hosting the Olympics. (The latter are usually not true but are written to get attention.)”

An interjection: a Games operating budget typically is at or near black. But as Verbruggen points out, it’s the taxpayer-funded infrastructure investment associated with a Games that is the PR killer.

To resume where he left off:

“The IOC has stumbled from denial to denial — in other words, it has been reactive, not proactive — and now the damage is done. If we had had a proper long-term plan, we would also have had a strategy to combat this negative phenomenon. And if we had had a long-term plan, would we have voted so cheerfully to host the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, where almost everything had to be built from scratch? Or would we instead have told the Russians: ‘Start building and we’ll come back in four years’ time and see how you are getting on?’ “

Verbruggen's proposal going forward:

Start with the basics. No more open bid system, in which any country that wants to can launch an Olympic bid. Instead, he writes, “the IOC should take the initiative itself” and reach out to “suitable” host cities or countries. That outreach would produce a shortlist.

Then the final selection should be made rationally, instead of — and this would a radical but welcome change — “the existing voting system by the 115 [IOC] members whose choices are often ‘colored’ by other (often political) motives.”

The system as it is now involves a secret ballot vote. It is well-known in IOC circles that, come voting time, promises are worthless and lies-to-your-face common because — with a secret ballot — accountability is zero.

To draw up that shortlist, Verbruggen writes, the IOC should approach two or three countries. Logically, it should go to preferred Country No. 1 and undertake negotiations. If no agreement, on to No. 2.

“To ensure success,” he says, “the IOC must also be prepared to make the host city contract much, much less onerous. I must say that I have never seen any other contract that is so skewed toward one party (the IOC), something that also makes it a product of a bygone age.”

He also says the new system “must allow scope” for a nation’s corporate entities to be “far more involved” in the delivery of a Games, “both commercially as well in the organization” of an Olympics.

The IOC, he writes, must “also assume greater responsibility for the organization of the Games,” adding, “Some tasks that are today blithely passed over to [local organizers] would be better organized by the IOC itself. That is logical: the IOC is deeply involved in every Games and so can make the best use of its accumulated know-how.”

As an example, he turns to 2026 and Switzerland, asking this reasonable question: how has it not played host to the Winter Games since 1948?

St. Moritz staged the Winter Games in 1928 and 1948. Twice in the past four years, voters in the canton that represents Davos/St. Moritz have voted no when asked if they wanted the Games, for 2022 and 2026.

Or, as Verbruggen notes obliquely, “Proposals for a Swiss Winter Games have been made time and again, but most of the time they have prompted a negative reaction from the Swiss population, mainly because of the perceived high costs.”

The Swiss town of Sion bid for the 2006 Winter Games, losing to Torino, Italy. Now it wants to bid for 2026.

“I would encourage the IOC to seize the initiative,” Verbruggen writes, to negotiate directly with Swiss officials, because a “spectacular and successful Winter Games in Switzerland in 2026 would be both a huge boost for winter sports as well as for the IOC.”

Hard to argue with that.

“Lastly,” Verbruggen writes, “I understand that my proposed new system would mean taking away from IOC members the privilege of choosing where to host the Games. But they surely understand that if nothing is done to resolve the current crisis then a time will soon come when they simply do not have any bids to choose from.”

Note the wording: “current crisis.”

No argument there, either.

Why do the Olympics generate such bad press?

The Olympics can and should be a wonderful thing. Further, the International Olympic Committee naturally wants to be viewed in a positive light for the Games and for the many good things it does each and every day around our world. But increasingly the Olympic movement generates — day after day, week after week, year after year — negative headlines. Why?

Corruption allegations tied to recent editions of the Games (Rio, Sochi). Government-underwritten cost overruns tied to recent editions of the Games (Rio, Sochi, London, Beijing, Athens). Stadiums and sports venues abandoned to rot in the sun (Rio, Athens). And more, way more. What kind of business model is that?

“Celebrate Olympic Games,” the IOC says. Right now, taxpayers — and particularly in western Europe, the Olympic movement’s longtime base — seem more apt than not to say, are you kidding?

This is of the IOC's doing.

The time has come to break this cycle. Like, now.

Any individual or entity in the public space can expect some measure of negative press. But the drumbeat now is relentlessly, almost uniformly, negative; social media amplifies the negativity; the negativity brings with it an associated risk; that risk cuts to the core, indeed the soul, of the Olympic enterprise.

The movement has arrived at one of those moments where it must confront reality. Wishes and sentiment can be lovely. But not now. It's reality time.

IOC leadership and the members, both, must recognize and acknowledge, both, that they have to wean themselves off government money.

At least for this current bidding cycle, meaning for the 2024 Games.

Because it’s government money that has them in this predicament.

Going to Los Angeles for 2024, a privately funded bid and (if it wins) organizing committee, will buy the IOC needed time and stability. The other 2024 option is Paris, a continuation of the very thing that has gotten the IOC in this jam, a government-underwritten bid and (if it wins) organizing committee.

Stability will buy time. With that, the IOC can (and should) engage some of the world's most creative minds to apply needed innovation to the next Winter and Summer Games bid rounds.

Stability in particular means the construction of no permanent venues. It means a focus on what the Olympics should be about -- sports, not soil remediation or sewer pipes or light-rail lines.

Stability will also, and this is just common sense, ease one twist on the bad press: seven years of pre-Games sky-is-falling headlines.

Consider what's happening in Japan with Tokyo 2020: a steady spotlight on finances, construction and bricks-and-mortar legacy issues. Back to the run-up before Rio: recall Zika, pollution, security, construction and more.

None of that is remotely "celebration."

Here’s a really easy segue:

The central concept animating far too much of the process now is trusting politicians. That's funny. Because who trusts politicians? The IOC, apparently. Anyone else?!

A short recap (could be a lot, long longer) about trusting politicians with a short (also could be a lot longer) note about what the next few weeks might have in store:

— Days after the Rio Games ended, Rio Mayor Eduaro Paes was awarded the IOC’s highest honor, the “Olympic Order.” Now he is being investigated for allegedly accepting $5 million in bribes tied to Games-related construction projects. His spokeswoman called the accusations “absurd and untruthful.”

— The former governor of the state of Rio, Sergio Cabral, who helped win the Games in 2009, was arrested last November with authorities saying he led an organized crime ring that diverted roughly $64 million in bribes for the renovation of Maracanā Stadium and two other projects.

The stadium staged the 2014 soccer World Cup final as well as the 2016 Olympic opening and closing ceremony. Photos of its decay post-closing ceremony have flashed around the world.

— Federal prosecutors filed corruption charges last September and again in December against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former Brazilian president who played a key role in Rio’s winning 2009 bid. The charges were not Olympic related. Authorities allege that Mr. da Silva oversaw a far-reaching system of kickbacks and more.

— Mr. da Silva’s successor, Dilma Rousseff, was in limbo during the Games, her powers and duties suspended May 12 for six months. On August 31, 10 days after that closing ceremony, she was removed from office.

- Reports last week tied Ms. Rousseff’s successor, the current Brazilian president, Michael Temer, to a deal involving a $40 million bribe. Mr. Temer, in an emailed statement to the Wall Street Journal, called the allegation an “absolute lie.”

— Switching to South Korea, site of the next Games, the Winter Olympics next February:

The National Assembly voted in December to impeach the president, Park Geun Hye. Last month, a ruling by the country’s Constitutional Court formally ousted her, determining that she not only had conspired with a confidante to extort money but had tried to conceal her misconduct.

-- Switching to Japan:

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike's two immediate predecessors — Naoki Inose and Yoichi Masuzoe — resigned over funds-related scandals, both since Tokyo won in 2013. The Tokyo bid book said costs would, all-in, total $7.8 billion. Working figures now are in the $15 billion range -- this months after a government panel warned it could be $30 billion.

— Switching to France, with an eye toward the coming weeks:

The country’s two-stage presidential election is coming up. Most believe Marine le Pen will win the first round. After that, who knows?

Whether she prevails in Round Two or no, this thought:

Last month, Le Monde reported that a company with ties to the IOC member Frankie Fredericks of Namibia received a roughly $300,000 payment from a business owned by Papa Massata Diack, the former marketing director for the IAAF, track and field’s worldwide governing body, on the day the IOC selected Rio for 2016.

Fredericks had been chairing the IOC 2024 “evaluation commission.” He stepped down and has been replaced by Patrick Baumann of Switzerland. The commission is due to tour LA and Paris next month.

The former IAAF president Lamine Diack is currently under arrest in France as authorities investigate money laundering and bribery accusations tied to allegations he helped cover up positive Russian drug tests. Papa Massata Diack, his son, is wanted by Interpol on bribery and Interpol accusations.

It is believed the French authorities by now know more about considerably more IOC and IAAF members. Whether what they know becomes public — particularly after the rounds of the French elections — remains a matter of keen speculation. One school of thought: left-leaning French judges would have more reason to leak to Le Monde or elsewhere after the Socialists, if predicted, get humbled in the French presidential elections? Stay tuned.

Now, after that recap, to close the circle:

The Olympic world has, for years, tied itself to public-sector spending. In years past, there may have been a sound argument to be advanced for such spending. A project the size and scope of an Olympic Games is about mitigating risk, and having what amounts to an unlimited government bank account may seem like a sure way to mitigate risk.

The past few years have proven that's not true.

Public-sector spending is still incredibly risky.

Why?

Because you are completely dependent on politics.

That is, you are putting your faith in the political dynamic.

And that dynamic is shifting. Every which way. Any which way.

A project that might be important to one political party — say, an athletes’ village, which Paris has to build, at a cost already projected over $1 billion — might, or might not, be so important to the next. That is a considerable, and unforeseeable, risk.

Further:

In our social media age, perception is as important as reality. The IOC president, Thomas Bach, said exactly this, at the SportAccord conference two weeks ago in Denmark, in a different context, the anti-doping sphere. Even so, his words resonate:

"In a world where the integrity and credibility of sport is scrutinized by a skeptical public like never before, perception sometimes and even more often becomes reality."

When projects go sour, when you’re talking about corruption, money has to come from somewhere. In a developing country such as Brazil, the optics are made all the worse. If the argument is, OK, but Japan is not a developing nation (neither is France), so why use Brazil? Answer: because the images from Brazil are the ones freshest in the public mind, and when the members vote for 2024 at the IOC assembly on September 13 (assuming there is a vote -- that is, no 2024/2028 deal), it will be those Rio images that will be the easiest, most convenient and, let's be honest, most provocative from which to draw.

Remember this airport banner last year in Rio?

Again, public money has to come from somewhere. Is it coming from the police, the firefighters, the schools, hospitals or some other institution that provides for the public welfare?

This, in a nutshell, is why the Olympic movement is so uniquely vulnerable — to proof or even allegation of public corruption.

Social media -- which zaps images, memes and provocations across the world in an instant -- ramps up the intensity attached to that vulnerability. The IOC is as establishment as it gets. It tends to be traditional, conservative and cautious. It apparently has developed no articulated strategies -- none -- to deal with the fast pace of aggressive, unapologetic social media and to confront this vulnerability. As a sign of how like a battleship (takes a long time to turn) the IOC moves: it took two years to hire a new director of strategic communications, a move announced within the past few days.

The IOC needs stability. It needs time.

Even 10 years ago, this vulnerability and these sorts of risks confronting the IOC weren't anywhere near the same.

That summer, 2007, the members elected Sochi for 2014.

Sochi led to a reported $51 billion bill.

That $51 billion bill got the IOC where it is now -- along with $40 billion for Beijing, $20 billion (who knows, really) for Rio, $15 billion for London, $11 to 15 billion for Athens and on and on.

Of course it's not risky, financially, for the IOC to go to totalitarian/authoritarian countries. That’s the situation it confronted two years ago in the race for the 2022 Winter Games, when it could attract only China and Kazakhstan, Beijing (no snow in the mountains) winning, 44-40.

Going to totalitarian/authoritarian countries entails an entirely different category of risk.

One is manifestly plain: the IOC can’t go, one Games after another, to totalitarian/authoritarian countries.

And taxpayers in western democracies have had enough of corruption and cost overruns.

The solution is obvious.

What would Jackie Robinson want us to do?

A very few moments in sports have sparked change well beyond. For starters: Jesse Owens in Berlin, Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier and Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the medals stand in Mexico City.

Saturday marked the 70th anniversary of Robinson’s Major League Baseball debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Now it’s time to pay it forward, and do the right thing by Robinson and get more young men, and particularly young men of color, back into the game.

A little personal history.

I grew up in Ohio, northwest of Dayton. This was Cincinnati Reds territory. My childhood hero was Pete Rose. Perhaps there's a direct line to becoming a skeptical sportswriter when, as a kid, Pete Rose is your idol — but I digress.

In the 1970s, the Reds and the Dodgers (by then well-established in LA) were rivals. I was all Big Red Machine. Even so, I knew all about Jackie Robinson, who had retired years before. If you know anything about baseball, and in southwestern Ohio it was a mark of respect to know baseball history, you especially knew about Jackie Robinson.

You knew, for instance, how in 1947, at a game in Boston, the opposing team’s players were heckling the Dodgers and in particular Pee Wee Reese, the stellar Dodger shortstop, for playing ball with a black man. Reese said nothing. He walked over to Robinson and put his hand on Robinson’s shoulder. That shut everyone up.

Reese was from Louisville, Kentucky. That was the South. But Louisville was also Reds territory. The people I was going to high school with often had relatives — if not parents — who came from Kentucky or Tennessee. Dayton is roughly 50 miles north of the Ohio River. (For those not familiar with American geography, the Ohio River separates North from South in the United States.)

Jackie Robinson’s story — the Dodger story in those years — is superbly told in Roger Kahn’s 1972 “The Boys of Summer.”

That book was the most excellent inspiration for a teen-age boy in the cornfields of southwestern Ohio who could only hope, one day, to be a sportswriter.

The book was published in February 1972. I read it and re-read and re-read it all that spring and summer. Jackie Robinson died that October, three days after my birthday.

“A life is not important,” Robinson once said, “except in the impact it has on other lives.”

Martin Luther King Jr. once told the pitcher Don Newcombe, another Dodgers star and, like Robinson, a former Negro League standout, “You’ll never know what you and Jackie and Roy [Campanella, the Dodger catcher] did to make it possible to do my job.”

Fast forward:

Every April 15, every Major League team honors Robinson, with every player on every team wearing his jersey, No. 42. On Saturday, the Dodgers unveiled a statue at Chavez Ravine.

https://twitter.com/ArashMarkazi/status/853378085089038337

It’s not much of a reach to suggest that it is because of Robinson's influence that baseball ultimately went global, why baseball (and softball) are back in the Olympics for 2020, why the president of the World Baseball Softball Confederation, the Italian Riccardo Fraccari, was recently in the east African nation of Mozambique for talks aimed at setting up a national federation there.

You know the saying: act global, think local?

Much has been written about the declining percentage in recent years of black players in the majors.

That percentage grew steadily from Robinson’s 1947 debut until the 1970s. At that point it stayed steady — about 16 to 19 percent — for about 25 years, 1972 to 1996. Since then, it has dropped significantly. In the 2016 season, the figure was 6.7 percent.

It is worth pointing out that for the past dozen or so years, more than half of all players in the major leagues have been pitchers — and there are now 10 times as many Latino pitchers as there are African-Americans.

It’s also worth pointing out something else.

If you are a talented 13- or 14-year-old African-American athlete, and you — and, especially, your folks — are looking up and out, there’s an elemental question: which sport offers the most economic opportunity?

Sifting the numbers and weighing the options, ask, too: isn’t there something pretty obvious that ought to be done here?

— Football.

Football is what’s called a “headcount” sport. One scholarship equals one guy. Math: 129 Division I schools, 85 full scholarships per school. Here you can read this, and more: the average FBS scholarship during the 2015-16 academic year amounted to just over $36,000.

— Basketball

Men’s Division I is also a headcount sport. A men’s team gets 13 full scholarships. There are 351 Division I schools.  The value of an average basketball scholarship: again, just over $38,000.

— Baseball

There are 299 Division I baseball programs. Each team can offer a maximum of precisely 11.7 scholarships. Baseball, however, is not a headcount sport. It is instead what is called an “equivalency” sport. This means those 11.7 scholarships can be divided between a maximum of 27 players, with all players on scholarship receiving at least a 25 percent scholarship.

This quickly becomes a math problem. Emphasis on problem.

With the increasing focus on concussions and other potential health issues in football, baseball has a huge opportunity to sell itself to young men and their parents. But only if some forward-thinking grown-ups at the NCAA, MLB, the Olympic world and private sector come together to figure out how to do what might right now might seem impossible.

Of course that’s what was facing Jackie Robinson in 1947, too.

Who is America's most famous Olympic athlete?

After doing this now for nearly 20 years, when asking casual (American) fans of the Olympics to name the most famous Olympic athlete who first comes to mind, the answer is invariably one of two:

Michael Phelps. Or, more likely, Carl Lewis.

It’s in this context that one is urged to take in the first in a series of promotional videos — featuring both athletes and venues — from the LA24 bid committee.

Released this week, this first mini-movie features Lewis at the scene of arguably his greatest triumph, the LA Memorial Coliseum, where in 1984 he won four Olympic gold medals. He has, over his Olympic career, nine golds and one silver.

Sports Illustrated named Lewis the Olympian of the 20th century. That list includes Jesse Owens, Jim Thorpe, Mark Spitz, Nadia Comaneci, Paavo Nurmi, Emil Zatopek and many more. Track and field's international governing body, the IAAF, named him male athlete of the century. The International Olympic Committee named him "sportsman of the century."

It would make for a long and fascinating discussion about why, despite his many achievements, Lewis is — still — viewed with something like suspicion in some quarters of the media. It’s a mystery, really. Ben Johnson is the guy who ran with stanozolol in Seoul in 1988, a steroid that turned his eyes yellow. If you have questions about Lewis’ stimulant tests back in the day: Lewis didn’t violate any rules then, and the levels wouldn’t be considered anywhere near a positive now. And, fast forward, maybe there are questions and maybe there aren't about clenbuterol and Jamaicans in Beijing in 2008.

So?

Carl Lewis sang the national anthem. He ran for office. Neither proved glorious. So what? Wasn't it Teddy Roosevelt who said it was the guy who was out there trying who matters? Lewis sometimes speaks his mind. Like last year, at a pre-Rio Games media summit, when he talked about Team USA relay drops. So what? Wasn't it Jack Nicholson who once said we couldn't handle the truth?

People: Carl Lewis has 10 Olympic medals. Nine are gold. And that's just the starting place. Some appreciation and respect, please.

When — not if — you watch this video, consider:

Phelps has won every single one of his 28 Olympic medals overseas. You can argue back and forth about whether Phelps is the greatest Olympic athlete of all time (yes) but this is just fact: eight medals in Athens, eight in Beijing, six in London, six in Rio.

Lewis stands at a different place in the collective imagination. Why? This has zero to do with Phelps, who over the years has come to represent consistent, if not amazingly ferocious, excellence. With Lewis, it's even more layered, and this is where things get even more interesting, and this is another reason why the Olympics -- despite all their problems -- matter, and a lot.

Lewis won those first four medals, again all gold, in LA: the 100, the 200, the long jump and the 4x100 relay, matching the four golds that Owens won in the same four events in Berlin in 1936. The Coliseum is where Rafer Johnson lit the 1984 cauldron, another on a list of enduring memories. The Coliseum was center stage not just for the 1984 Games but the 1932 Olympics, too. Of course, it represents, as Lewis says in the video, history. It's more, really: you can hear and feel there the echoes of history because the building has been around so long. That’s the point: as everyone who knows the first thing about the Olympics and track and field knows, the Coliseum is nothing less than sacred ground.

Our world could use a lot more of what the Coliseum is and always was. It is good, especially in the Olympic context, to walk on sacred ground. Better still to run.

Haters: cheerfully taking your $69.99 now

For years and years, NBC has had the Olympics. Then the network doubled down, obtaining the rights to, among other events, the track and field world championships. Then it tripled down, getting the rights to track and field's global series, what's called the Diamond League.

For the past five years, under the direction of chief executive Max Siegel, USA Track & Field has been building out its own digital presence. It is now far and away, at least as U.S. sports federations go, the digital leader in the Olympic space at its destination, USATF.tv.

The natural — but nonetheless forward-thinking — next step: the direct-to-you livestream “track and field pass” announced Wednesday by NBC. For $69.99, or roughly $7.75 per month from now until December, you get unprecedented access to pretty much every professional track and field event that matters.

Haters are going to hate, sure, but now even the haters are very likely going to be throwing down their $69.99 because, in the American Olympic space, Max Siegel is doing stuff that no one else is. This is the future, people. You want it? Here it is:

The Boston Marathon (this weekend). The London Marathon. The Berlin and Amsterdam Marathons.

The IAAF World Relays from the Bahamas (next weekend).

The highest profile USATF events, including USA vs. the world at the Penn Relays. The Drake Relays. The Pre Classic. The USA Outdoor Championships. All 14 Diamond League stops. All 10 days of the IAAF world championships from London.

Even the USATF Hall of Fame Black Tie & Sneaker Gala in November and the December Jesse Owens Awards.

For that $69.99, you can watch it live and on demand — on your phone, your tablet, your computer. Deep breath: on your Apple iOS, Apple TV, Android, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast and, of course, at NBCSportsGold.com.

In December, USATF and NBC announced an eight-year partnership. Again, the progression: forward if obvious and natural.

"Never before has so much track and field content been available in such a condensed package," said Adam Schmenk, USATF’s managing director of events and entertainment properties/broadcasting, the executive behind USATF.tv's growth. "Thanks to NBC Gold and USATF.tv, track fans have in store viewing like nothing else."

What makes all of this doubly interesting is Thursday’s announcement after two days of meetings (in London, if you're keeping score) from the IAAF, track’s international  governing body. Here is chief executive officer Olivier Gers, saying that the sport’s “product offering is strong” but “may need some repackaging,” the IAAF now “trialling lots of new initiatives” and “looking at different sport presentations and will be having discussions on how we evolve the sport over the next few years.”

Hello? This is one sure way forward. Everyone is on their phones, and pretty much 24/7.

You like track and field. You want to see track and field. You have been complaining seemingly forever that the NFL, NBA and MLB are there for the watching but track and field isn’t. Aren’t you now likely to pay to watch track and field?

Just like if you are a baseball fan and you want to watch baseball?

Soccer and soccer?

Whatever?

More: isn’t this a way as well to test what might work, and not, in terms of reaching new track and field fans? The 2021 world championships are in Eugene. That’s the next tipping point for the sport in the United States with the possibility — stress, possibility — of a Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 2024 or, perhaps, 2028.

"NBC Sports is committed to serving passionate sports fans and we know track and field fans fit that description," said Portia Archer, the NBC Sports Group vice president in charge of the direct-to-consumer product line. Noting that the "track and field pass" is an extension of the Olympic Channel in the United States, she also called it "perfect for fans who follow track and field and for those beginning to discover it, whether at home or on the go ... no matter what platform they may be using."

Indeed, this initiative comes amid much discussion — see the Bloomberg Businessweek cover story last week on the impact of cord-cutters on ESPN — of how the TV and sports landscape is going to be shaped in the years ahead.

Who else in the U.S. Olympic scene is doing this kind of initiative? (In fairness: NBC also offers a "rugby pass," and a "cycling pass," which includes the Tour de France. Significant American influence in either? It's not 2005 anymore, and we all now know Lance Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs. Back to reality.)

You want to know why it's Siegel?

Because when he took over a in 2012, this is precisely what Siegel said he was going to do — find new, inventive and creative ways to package and market a sport that needed exactly this kind of jolt.

Siegel can't fix the Diamond League itself. But he can fix the way you watch the Diamond League. Now -- for real -- you can watch it without having to find something called beIN sports. Or knowing somebody's cousin from Slovenia who had hooked up Eurosport on some weird remote cable or computer thingy that required expertise in VPNs, time-shifting and other matters best left to those who operate best in their pajamas under the influence of Doritos and Red Bull.

Siegel said,  “We recognized several years ago the fans wanted more track and field content and the way they consume it was changing. 

"That’s why we invested in our digital platform to bring more of the sport to our fans in the most accessible way.

“There is no one better at producing and distributing Olympic content than our partner NBC. So,” he said, “expanding our collaborative relationship into the digital space was an easy decision for us.”

What the USOC ought to tell United Airlines

United Airlines is a key sponsor of the U.S. Olympic Committee. The Olympic values: respect, excellence and friendship. In light of the video evidence showing security officials at Chicago’s O’Hare airport literally yanking a passenger off a United flight Sunday because the airline needed seats for its staff, if you were the USOC, aren't your next moves super-obvious?

1. Tell United Airlines that what everyone can see on that video is so not in keeping with the Olympic spirit. 2. Then either get out of your deal with United or commence a conversation in which the airline understands with clarity that it will henceforth deliver major service upgrades. Again, for emphasis: those upgrades will be for everyone involved in the Olympic mission, and in particular the female athletes of Team USA, if recent chatter involving the women’s national hockey team can be of particular guidance.

https://twitter.com/JayseDavid/status/851223662976004096

This video speaks to an institutional culture at the airline gone so very wrong. United chief executive Oscar Munoz's several missteps -- the apologies now seem forced and ring hollow -- only underscore that wayward culture.

In almost every situation, it's inevitably a risk to rush to judgment.

Even so: what benefit does the USOC get from continued affiliation with that culture? And what risk does the USOC run by having its own brand, which it has cautiously and carefully rebuilt after governance meltdowns 15 years ago, associated with a sponsor that not only could but would violate someone's dignity in such a profound manner? For the sin of paying good money and just sitting there, trying to get from Chicago to Louisville?

Of course the USOC needs an airline partner. An airline provides what in Olympic or sponsor speak is called VIK, or value-in-kind. Instead of cash, an airline offers travel -- that is, seats. The USOC needs those seats to get athletes as well as officials and administrators to, well, wherever.

What the USOC has right now is called leverage. It ought to use it, big time. Hello, American or Delta -- let's talk.

In the meantime, United deserves all the "re-accommodating" it can get. Big time.

https://twitter.com/joethomas73/status/851478374438645760

https://twitter.com/ebonstorm/status/851476768003313665

https://twitter.com/saadmohseni/status/851827321942274051

And, finally, this -- some world-class trolling:

https://youtu.be/aEevyPse3f8

NHL: Agenda 2020, drop dead

Agenda 2020, International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach's would-be reform proposal, holds 40 points. The IOC members passed all 40, unanimously, in December 2014. Some two and a half years later, with the exception of the launch of the Olympic Channel, Agenda 2020 has proven a lot of aspirational talk and not much else. The NHL's decision to walk away from the 2018 Winter Games offers potent new evidence of the obvious irrelevance with which it views Agenda 2020 and, by extension, the larger Olympic enterprise. There can be no other conclusion. If Agenda 2020 held the power to effect meaningful change, what would the NHL choose when weighing this essential question: is hockey a brand or a sport?

Aspirational talk is swell. But the real world demands far more. And the NHL's move underscores the largely empty gesture that Agenda 2020 is well on its way to becoming.

Most of the focus on Agenda 2020 package has been on the points dealing with the bid-city process. That's understandable. That process needs a wholesale makeover. The 2022 Winter Games race ended with just two cities and now the same for 2024, Paris and Los Angeles.

It's simply not clear whether any of those Agenda 2020 bid-city proposals can ever be meaningful.

Or, for that matter, the rest of the Agenda 2020 package.

Last week, the NHL announced that decision not to take part in the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. Assuming no change, that ends a run of five consecutive Winter Games with NHL players.

Now, to Agenda 2020, and Recommendation 8. Here it is, word for word:

"Forge relationships with professional leagues

"Invest in and forge relationships with professional leagues and structures via the respective international federations with the aim of:

"• Ensuring participation by the best athletes

"• Recognizing the different nature and constraints of each of the professional leagues

"• Adopting the most appropriate collaboration model on an ad-hoc basis in cooperation with each relevant international federation."

How would the reasonable person say that's working out?

More of the same (Paris), or something new (LA)

The choice the International Olympic Committee is facing for the 2024 Summer Games, even as it considers a 2024/2028 deal between Los Angeles and Paris, could not be more clear.

More of the same. Or something new.

Or framing it another way: Paris is after a Games. Los Angeles is offering itself in service to the Olympic movement.

Both cities made 10-minute presentations Tuesday to a convention of international sports federation officials in Denmark.

In the LA spot, mayor Eric Garcetti said, “Many believe that the bids ... are quite similar when in fact the two bids that we have presented before us are quite different,” a distinction that even in 10 short minutes times two became crystal clear.

Paris bid co-chair Tony Estanguet, to the audience: “We are promising a Games of real passion and purpose …” Anne Hidalgo, the mayor: “So why Paris now?”  She answered a moment later: “We believe we have the right city with the right vision at exactly the right moment for sport.” Paris bid chief executive Etienne Thobois: “We will deliver the best Games ever for the athletes based on three key pillars,” among them a “brand-new [athletes’] village.”

LA strategy director Angela Ruggiero, the IOC athletes’ commission chair: “Our commitment to you isn’t just for the 16 days of the Games in 2024. It is for the seven years leading up to them, and beyond.” LA bid leader Casey Wasserman: “I think we can all agree that 2024 must be a transformative Games for the movement. This means that the next seven years must inform the next 100 years.”

To springboard off the two radically different presentations Tuesday in Denmark:

At issue is way more than 2024 (or 2028). It is nothing less than the ongoing relevance and vitality of the entire Olympic movement.

This is not hyperbole. It is not drama. It is not Chicken Little sky-is-falling talk.

This is real, and the leadership of the IOC as well as most of the members, who in theory ought to be up to speed on the potentially existential crisis the movement is even now confronting but in some instances might well be a little slow on the uptake, had better sharpen their focus, and quickly.

It’s this elemental:

IOC leaders and members act as stewards of the brand and the movement. An Olympic Games is a multibillion-dollar enterprise. In the bid context, the role demands world-class risk assessment. The old days of cronyism and I’ll-scratch-your-back, you-scratch-mine — that, with the FBI as well as the French and Swiss authorities watching with interest, has to be yesteryear. In a related spirit, there can be no place for sweet but misguided sentimentality. To exercise anything but cold, hard judgment, particularly now, when the brand and movement are considerably imperiled, is to be irresponsible, almost to the extreme.

Imperiled? Unequivocally. Evidence, just the latest:

The Tuesday presentations from both LA and Paris followed Monday’s announcement from the National Hockey League that it was out of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games.

Bottom line: the league is willing to forgo the best two-week commercial the sport of hockey could ask for, and this with Beijing 2022 and China and the possibility of a market of some 2 billion consumers just waiting to be mined four years down the line.

Irrefutable conclusion: the league doesn’t think the Olympics are worth it. In its considered judgment, after being part of the thing since 1998, the Olympics are no longer relevant, or at least relevant enough.

That is a brutal blow to the IOC. No way to sugarcoat it. It is, to use a phrase, a nightmare on ice.

A comparison:

Would Manchester United stop its season for the FIFA World Cup?

Yes, yes, FIFA is in business to make money, the IOC is theoretically in it to help spread the values of friendship, excellence and respect, among others. But still — Man U and the other English Premier League teams are going to make it work out to go to Qatar in 2022 but per the NHL the Columbus Blue Jackets can’t, or won’t, put things on hold to send some guys to PyeongChang in 2018?

Starting from that premise, that the Olympic enterprise is not relevant (enough) for the league that for a generation has supplied the guys in the most important team sport on the Winter Games program, the IOC finds itself looking at just two cities left in the race for 2024.

When three cities have already fallen away: Rome, Budapest and Hamburg.

When the 2022 Winter Games campaign saw just two left standing by the end — Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan — with five other western European cities pulling out along the way because taxpayers or officials would have nothing to do with it: Oslo, Munich, Stockholm, Davos/St. Moritz and Krakow.

This is the moment of clarity.

The old model, the more of the same, is the one in which bid committees don’t tell the truth about the costs of their government-funded Olympic bids.

Examples:

Rio 2016, bid book $14.4 billion, reality check $20 billion or more. Tokyo 2020 bid book $7.8 billion, now estimated at maybe $15 billion, possibly $25-30 billion. Sochi 2014, bid book we won’t even go there, final tally a reported $51 billion.

Paris 2024 is more of this same.

The Paris people say they have 95 percent of their venues built. It’s the 5 percent that aren’t that mark the big-ticket items: that athletes’ village along with media housing and an aquatics complex. The Paris bid book costs those out at over $2 billion.

History says that $2-billion figure would be way low. It’s almost a guarantee, actually.

If there is one thing we have learned in this social media age, it is this:

Even those things that seem certain and stable can unravel, and quickly.

The almost-probable unraveling connected to that athletes’ village — wouldn’t it be fast and furious and the end game hugely uncertain? Consider how quickly the entire Budapest bid came crashing down — just weeks.

Wouldn’t a bet on Paris 2024 be the very same thing that has gotten the IOC into the deep credibility hole from which it is now looking up, seeking a way out?

When it should, by any reasonable measure of risk assessment, be seeking calm? Seeking stability?

As Garcetti also said Tuesday in the LA presentation:  “We believe LA2024 offers the Olympic movement something creative and new — not more of the same. This is an important time for our collective Olympic movement. A time that demands new thinking, new ideas and new solutions.”

The key difference: LA, just as it was in 1984, is privately financed. Surely with considered respect to the mayor, Wasserman said, “Free of government interference,” adding at another point, “The bottom line for everyone is that the bid we delivered to you in February of this year is the Games we will host in the summer of 2024. You can count on it.” Garcetti called it a “no risk, no surprises budget” because there will be no new permanent new venue to build. The all-in number: $5.3 billion, again, privately funded.

What does the reasonable person bargain for? Certainty.

Gene Sykes, the bid’s chief executive officer, noted that LA could have run the risk of building a new village — but opted not to, instead using the existing dorms at UCLA: “It takes a huge risk off the table.”

When risk is thus appropriately managed, then you can start laying out the “something creative and new.”

Wasserman, in Q&A, noting the advantage of not having to worry about construction: “We don’t have to build those facilities that normally take up the time, effort and resources of most bid and [organizing committees] … Our view is, because we will have two things that most [organizers] never have, time and money, to invest in growing those sports in the United States, to growing those sports in California and in Los Angeles … what a great place to start, when we have those seven years to really focus on engaging the youth, to develop sport in a way that, frankly, very few people have ever had the opportunity.”

The mayor, also in Q&A: “We see our legacy not just as a physical legacy. So often, the Olympics are about, what are you going to build? For mayors, it’s about — what part of town are you going to revitalize? Our experience from 1984 is what’s more important is the human legacy. It’s one of the reasons the profitability from the 1984 Olympics has spent $250 million on people and facilities and coaches. So, for instance, in a low-income area of Los Angeles called Compton, two African-American girls named Venus and Serena Williams were exposed to tennis as little girls. Today they’re two of the best tennis players in history. Our vision is to have a human legacy that sports is made free and universal for all youth in Los Angeles — forever."

Ruggiero, in the presentation itself: the chairman and chief executive of The Walt Disney Co., Bob Iger, would chair an innovation the bid is calling a “Sports Ambassador Program.”

It would, she told sports officials, “identify business leaders in California to work with you to maximize commercial opportunities in the United States.”

Let’s see — NBC is the IOC’s most important Olympic partner. Now welcome to the team Disney, which owns ESPN and ABC and (like NBCUniversal) runs a bunch of theme parks and operates signature movie studios.

Oh, and that George Lucas Star Wars museum is due to open literally next door to the LA Memorial Coliseum by 2020. Perhaps on May 4. Get the in-crowd joke: “May the Force be with you.”

If Iger and Disney now, this being April and Denmark, wouldn’t it stand to reason that by or at the next major milestone on this campaign, an all-members assembly at Olympic base camp in Lausanne, Switzerland in July, there would be news of yet more significant Los Angeles and California companies on board?

“Our bid isn’t about money, or ego, or boosting American pride or, frankly, even winning or losing,” Wasserman said during the presentation. “It’s about something much deeper.”

His next words brought forth the Olympic force, the reason all of this matters, or at least it's supposed to:

"It’s about ensuring that our — and your — Olympic dreams remain achievable, as far into the future as possible. To us,” he said, and it is exactly this kind of relevance, rooted in new ideas and creativity, that the Olympic movement needs, not to mention just a little bit of a wink and a nod, “that’s a dream worth sharing.”

—

Disclosure: If I have spoken to Bob Iger, it has only been in passing. His wife, Willow Bay, is the incoming dean of the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California; she is the current director of the journalism division. I have been on the Annenberg journalism faculty for the past six years.

Reform the IOC bid process -- this doesn't work

The campaign for the 2024 (and, maybe, 2028) Summer Olympic Games moves this coming week into its next phase. It’s a carefully structured, overly programmed, International Olympic Committee-directed 10-minute road show. That is, both Los Angeles and Paris officials get 10 minutes (apiece) to present to the 20 or so IOC members due to be in attendance at a sports convention on the eastern coast of Denmark’s Jutland peninsula.

That far to travel for that little time and, moreover, to an audience that isn’t even one-quarter of the voting IOC membership? That is not anywhere near, to use a favorite IOC phrase, best practice.

Indeed, the whole IOC bid and campaign machinery — theory, structure, implementation — needs a thorough re-do.

For years, the IOC has sought to use the “evaluation” process as a means to have cities sell the IOC on their (that is, the cities’) merits.

That process needs to be flipped.

The IOC ought — better yet, needs, and better still, needs right now — to be asking, what are our (that is, the IOC’s) needs and what city can best fulfill our (again, IOC) needs?

It is patently clear to a significant cohort of Olympic watchers -- and some insiders, too -- that the bid process is broken and thus the IOC has arrived at a junction that spells crisis. Change must be effected.

The $51 billion questions on the table are whether senior IOC leadership as well as the rank-and-file members a) recognize the gravity of the problem and b) will respond.

It is worth noting that it was in the bid context -- see Salt Lake City, late 1990s -- that the IOC suffered its most existential threat. Until, perhaps and again, now.

As a result of the Salt Lake scandal, the IOC enacted a 50-point reform program.

Fast forward to a conference a few days ago in London. There, the former IOC marketing director Michael Payne called the bid process — as it is now — “toxic.”

Here, in a nutshell, is why:

The Barcelona 1992 Summer Games made presidents, prime ministers, governors and mayors everywhere believe that the glow from an Olympics could similarly jump-start their own government-funded infrastructure projects.

The Games come with a fixed seven-year deadline. That means stuff has to get done — airports, metro, light rail and sewer lines and more.

That deadline, in practice, has also produced ridiculous cost overruns.

Sochi: that reported $51 billion. Beijing: $40 billion. Rio: probably $20 billion. London: $15 billion. Tokyo: bid projected at $7.8 billion, now maybe $15 billion, who knows. Athens: $11-15 billion.

Over the past two, maybe three, years, the spiral of media— and in particular social media— reports have come back to bite the IOC in the backside.

As this space pointed out in a March 3 column and as Payne noted in his speech last Wednesday, the ever-increasing import of social media means community activists can leverage virtually any local grievance and turn it into as, he said, a debate “about whether to stage an event” such as the Olympics.

That’s what brought down the Budapest 2024 bid just weeks ago. And before that the Hamburg 2024 bid.

The Los Angeles 2024 effort — the bid and, if it succeeds, a Games — is privately financed. Just like 1984. This is the key difference between the LA effort and just about every other Summer Olympics since the IOC got itself into the jam it now finds itself in.

And it unequivocally is in that jam.

The irrefutable evidence:

For public consumption, the IOC is essentially just letting the road show and evaluation process play itself out. Behind the curtains, it is trying to figure out how to cut a 2024/2028 deal between the last two cities standing, LA and Paris.

When the history of all this gets formally written, this note: this space was the first to suggest this very thing — the 24/28 LA/Paris double-double. Look it up: September 15, 2016. (Also predicted in that very column: Budapest would fall out via referendum.)

The Denmark road show is being held for the benefit of the international sports federations. Two years ago, this very same sports convention was under the leadership of the judo federation president, Marius Vizer, who was at odds with IOC president Thomas Bach, and no 2022 Winter Games bid-city presentations were allowed, purportedly to cut the cost of bidding as part of Bach's Agenda 2020 would-be reform push.

For the past year, the federations have had a new guy in charge, Patrick Baumann, from basketball. Now Paris and LA get to present. It also happens that as of a few weeks ago Baumann is also the head of the 2024 IOC evaluation team. No criticism should be implied or inferred of Baumann (like Vizer, a very smart guy) or the way he ended up leading that evaluation team (long back story) — the point is, how can the Agenda 2020 reforms look anything like but what real life has proven them to be, hollow?

Back, of course, to the point of the bid process: personality politics cannot be the basis for a billion-dollar decision. That’s just basic.

Similarly, it makes little or no sense to cater to the sports federation officials. Unless he or she is also an IOC member -- they don't vote.

The IOC has a distinct credibility problem. A key reason is that it is perceived, appropriately, as the establishment, particularly in Europe, where taxpayers are mightily angered at the spending of their euros on what they perceive, rightly or wrongly, as Olympic waste.

So: essentially forcing a bunch of folks to jet into Denmark for  two 10-minute presentations? Just to feed the egos of international sports federation leaders? And then everyone goes out to the lobby for snacks and cocktails?

There is a much better way.

The IOC needs to reverse the paradigm.

The IOC should not be asking whether (pick one, A, B or C) the archery or badminton or canoeing president likes city x's pretty video.

Again, no vote unless an IOC member and, besides, that's in line with this theme — which city can impress us most?

In turn, that leads to this kind of question: city x, why is it important to your redevelopment strategy to build an athletes’ village that you have already budgeted at some billion-dollar obscenity that we nonetheless know, because history says so, is laughably low?

The IOC is not a redevelopment agency. It is not an urban planner. It is about sport. That is what the Olympic Charter makes plain, time and again. Sport. In the service of humankind.

To that end, the IOC should be asking, what is your detailed strategy to connect with athletes and other young people, and not just in your country? Don’t bore us to death with school programs. Tell us about connection and engagement. Tell us something innovative, creative and exciting.

More:

Right now, the IOC produces a fat evaluation report filled with answers to questions such as the number of hotel rooms in city x or its airport capacity. These questions are relevant. But they are relevant mostly to IOC staff. This next sentence is critical: the staff does not vote.

This logically produces a huge disconnect in the evaluation and thus the bid and the election process. Why?

Because the members largely do not care.

Again, on issues such as the whether it's the Westin or the Hyatt or runway 26-left or 18-right, the members mostly do not read these reports. So this entire evaluation process, which after Salt Lake is supposed to form the underpinning for the most important decision the members make, is a colossal waste of time, money and resource.

Better:

The IOC should lead a focused inquiry that determines which city is most likely to:

— engage young people, with a detailed plan for how, and in particular on mobile platforms and across social media

— produce not just moments but heroes to inspire those young people across seven years, to and through opening ceremony and the 17 days of the Games, if not beyond

— take a leadership role across the Olympic and broader political landscapes by demonstrating transparent fiscal stewardship, responsibility and stability in all budgets related to the production of a Games

— voluntarily submit all such budgets to scrutiny by internationally accepted accounting experts, those reports routinely to be made matters of public record

— stabilize if not energize the Olympic movement in the host nation and around the world

— spark sponsor and audience interest domestically and internationally

If the IOC did that for 2024, there would be only one conclusion. It would be so easy. Crisis solved.

Not cool anymore: hockey guys being hockey guys

Three years ago at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, with the women’s gold-medal ice hockey game between the United States and Canada teetering on the edge, time winding down in the third period, the American forward Kelli Stack sent a shot down the ice. The Canadian net was empty, cleared moments before for an extra attacker.

The puck slithered and rolled for some 130 feet. It slid toward that empty net for a seeming eternity.

The American women had won Olympic gold in 1998. Then silver in 2002, bronze in 2006 and in 2010 silver again. If it went in, Kelli Stack’s long-distance shout-out would make it 3-1, United States. Just over 80 seconds to play. An almost for-sure gold medal.

But no.

The puck clanged off the post.

Moments later, the Canadians tied the game and, in overtime, won, 3-2.

Would it all be so different now if only Kelli Stack’s shot had gone in?

Would there even be a dispute between the U.S. women’s national team and USA Hockey? Would it be so righteous? So public? So ugly?

Just imagine the marketing and publicity opportunities that not only could but almost surely would have awaited the women’s team — the Americans winning in Russia, all of that. Think of the way the starring U.S. women’s gymnastics team has been celebrated after recent editions of the Summer Games. The U.S. women’s soccer team, of course. The women on the U.S. swim team.

But no.

Hockey is a smaller sport to begin with — sorry, hockey fans, but this is fact — and the Olympic women’s hockey tournament has proven the classic definition — sorry again, but three times in 20 years has established this is also fact — of what it means, practically speaking in American culture, to be first runner-up.

Instead of celebration, what we have here is another classic — a classic study in an optics, culture and governance problem.

And it did not have to happen.

Repeat — none of this had to happen, most (but not all) of the blame falls on USA Hockey and significant steps need to be taken to make sure things get made right.

The essence of the problem is simple:

What we have here are hockey guys being hockey guys.

In 2017, that simply does not play.

Credit to the women on the national team.

You’d like to think that in 2017, it would not take a group of younger women willing to stand up to a much larger group of older, white dude hockey guys for — and, this is being really, really obvious here — notions of equity and fairness.

But here we are.

The players recognized — or their advisers did, or both — that the time for maximum leverage was now, with the 2017 world championships due to begin later this week.

Should the players be asking for the moon?

Of course.

Are they going to get it? Like — salaries?

Nope.

Is there going to be progress?

Let’s start with some basics. Here, in a few paragraphs, is why the hockey guys are being hockey guys:

At its best, world-class women’s hockey is just that — world-class. USA-Canada, for instance, whether it’s at the Olympic or world championships, is typically first-rate stuff that, like that 2014 gold medal game, rivals other must-see sports products.

But consider as well other scores from the 2014 Winter Olympics women’s hockey tourney:

Semifinals: U.S. 6, Sweden 1. Prelims: U.S. 9, Switzerland 0.

From the Vancouver 2010 women’s hockey tournament:

Prelims: Canada 18, Slovakia 0. Canada 10, Switzerland 1. Canada 13, Sweden 1. United States 12, China 1. United States 13, Russia 0. United States 6, Finland 0.

The 2017 women’s world championships is being held in Plymouth, Michigan (where?). The hall seats 3,500 people. Reasonable questions on both counts: why?

If the women’s tournament would fill NHL arenas, wouldn’t it make sense to go to one?

If corporate sponsors saw an opportunity to step up these past couple weeks in a big way — and lord knows some major mainstream outlets in the press have made the dispute between the players and the federation a significant thing — wouldn’t it make logical sense that some company somewhere would have seized that opportunity? And yet — have any? Explanation, please?

For all that:

USA Hockey’s governance structure needs fundamental review and reform. Its board of directors currently stands at 116, 91 of whom are voting members. Go through the roster and the pictures — an astonishing number of these people are white and male.

To say that USA Hockey has a diversity challenge, and on any number of levels, is being gentle and generous. Each year, the U.S. Olympic Committee surveys its affiliated groups and puts together what is called a “diversity and inclusion scorecard.” USA Hockey's numbers confirm what those pictures show: its leadership is overwhelmingly white and male — hockey guys.

It was 15 years ago that the U.S. Olympic Committee’s board of directors stood at 123. It went through the media mill after an issue involving the then-CEO. After hearings that involved sessions before Congress, the board restructured, down to 15.

Now is the time for USA Hockey board to take steps on its own to slim down, too — and to make gender equity in the boardroom meaningful — before that reform is imposed on it.

Next, USA Hockey has played this dispute so poorly.

Look at how many medals the U.S. men have won — in all the years since the 1980 “Miracle on Ice,” two silvers, 2002 and 2010, and remember the guys have been NHL players since 1998.

Now look at the women — they actually win medals (every edition since women started playing in 1998, including gold at that first tournament in Nagano).

Just to be obvious — it’s not even clear yet whether the NHL guys will play at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

USA Hockey is roughly a $42-million per year enterprise. You can see from comparing its 2015 and 2016 budgets that there isn’t a lot of wiggle room in the numbers.

That’s maybe why there hasn’t been a lot of give from the federation side — not to mention the absurdity of trying to get a deal past a board of directors with 91 different agendas.

The federation was due Monday to announce a decision of some sort. Instead, nothing. Maybe because there was progress. Or maybe — 91 different agendas.

At any rate, here is some easy math:

USA Hockey could have solved this for less than a million bucks.

USA Hockey has now been battered with more, way more, than a million bucks of negative branding.

Who couldn’t see this coming and then, when it all hit, couldn’t or didn’t understand some of the basics of crisis management?

Didn’t anyone understand that this just invited the slap shot from Congress — whose members typically know next to nothing about sports but like to get involved when they sniff an opportunity for easy publicity?

More than a dozen United States senators, all Democrats — including both from Massachusetts (hockey state), one from Wisconsin (hockey state), one from Minnesota (hockey state) — signed a letter Monday asserting that “these elite athletes indeed deserve fairness and respect.”

To mix more metaphors, this time basketball: for those senators, that’s an uncontested layup. Too easy. Does USA Hockey really want more? (See once more, USOC, 2002/03.)

Back to soccer, and own goals:

Didn’t anyone understand that reaching out to the likes of club players — no, really — as potential replacement players for those now on the national team was not likely to generate a win?

And if they did so understand, what was that thinking all about — we’re just going to find someone to throw out onto the ice in Plymouth because, what? Let’s see. The United States is the three-time defending world champions and ranked No. 1 in the world. So — whoever is out there masquerading as the world’s No. 1 team would unequivocally be representing the United States the way USA Hockey would be proud to have the United States represented because, what? How many brewskis did it take at the hockey guy bar for that to sound even remotely reasonable?

Trying to be fair to the federation, a good chunk of the “news” reporting on the matter has not articulated with precision some of the financial realities that may be at issue — for instance, money is money, whether it comes from USA Hockey or the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Moreover, big picture, the women’s hockey team is not the women’s soccer team. The president of the United States was tweeting at the soccer team during the 2015 women’s World Cup. Huge crowds filled public squares to watch the likes of Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd and Abby Wambach. Maybe if Kelli Stack’s shot had gone in but — no.

For all that, USA Hockey has done itself little good throughout this dispute by letting the players and their representatives control the narrative.

To be fair, again, some of what’s at issue is inevitably the result of having to deal with NHL players — meaning unionized athletes who have bargained in their NHL lives for certain standards and benefits and are thus highly unlikely in their USA Hockey turns to accept anything less than what they are used to as NHL players.

This means air travel, hotels and more, and so in comparing the guys to the women, it may be that the comparisons are hardly apples to apples.

Even so:

The hockey guys fly business class, the women maybe not so much.

OK but …

If, on the way to the 2016 Rio Summer Games, the U.S. men’s and women's basketball teams can be together on the same plane — can someone please explain why the hockey dudes go executive while, in 2017, the womenfolk get sent to the back? Optics, people.

https://twitter.com/hbarnes/status/760675051817480193

For events like the world championships, as CNN Money reported, USA Hockey covers paid transportation for guests for the guys, and those guests get to stay at the players’ hotels, and get meals and game tickets. The women’s team? Not allowed to bring guests. And the players share rooms. Moreover, USA Hockey paid for disability insurance for the guys but not the women’s players.

The 2014 U.S. men’s team national jersey? It initially featured the men’s 1960 and 1980 gold medals. What about the women’s 1998 gold? Oops.

Here’s an argument advanced from the hockey guys camp — because women make up a smaller percentage of the federation membership, the federation not only can but should allocate inequitably less resource to the women’s national team.

Rebuttal, and this is too easy: whose job is it to build membership?

Oh, right: USA Hockey!

If you were writing a textbook outlining “culture problem,” you couldn’t make it any more obvious.

Like a puck, you know, hitting you in the pipes. That’s the instant the reasonable person thinks — maybe there’s a better way.