"USOPC Is A Near-National Secret?"
This phrase was written by Rich Perelman, Editor of The Sports Examiner (an all-in-one source for commentary, coverage, and results across all 40 sports and 445 events on the Olympic and Winter Games program.) I fear that I have to agree with him.
The Examiner explains that “the overall takeaways from the 53-question survey are that sport is important in the U.S., but that Americans know very little about Olympic sports and how they are administered in the country.”
Could you kindly click today’s issue? Then scroll down to “3. CSUSOP poll shows support for LA28 Games, no idea about USOPC.”
CSUSOP = Commission on the State of U.S. Olympics and Paralympics
LA28 = Los Angeles 2028 Games
USOPC = United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee
I believe that I was first hooked on the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. I still have several Olympic Special issues of Sports Illustrated magazines, including the one below.
This issue aims to follow up on yesterday’s Amerideaf’s Newsletter issue, “CSUSOP's July Survey Does Not Mention Deaflympics!!!”
Read the below poll that has impacted me so hard:
“Some 43% said they did not know what organization was charged by Congress to coordinate “amateur sports activity” in the U.S. The USOPC was named by just 21%, the President’s Council on Physical Fitness was cited by 16%, and the NCAA by 9%.”
Twenty-one percent (21%) of the people interviewed named the USOPC!!!!
Impossible because the Olympic Games have dominated the list of most-watched sporting events for decades.
The swimmer in the SI Cover issue above was the first female sportscaster in the United States and the first to cover the Olympics for television, which she did in 1968, 1972, and 1976.
I guess most of these 21% of people should be over 50 years old. I don’t recall that the US Olympic broadcasters in the most recent Olympic Games had explained the functions of the USOPC.
This poll could boost the 2018 claim of Michael Harrigan, a former executive director of the 1970s-era President’s Commission on Olympic Sports, which developed the Amateur Sports Act of 1978. (Donna de Verona was one of its commissioners.)
According to Harrigan, the Act transformed the U.S. Olympic Committee and required it to assume new responsibilities and mandates. However, many sources claimed that the Act created the USOC in 1978. It is totally false. Read “Amateur Sports Act Established USOC in 1978-???”
To explain what the causes of what went wrong are, Harrigan told the Colorado Springs Gazette newspaper on January 31, 2022:
“The U.S. Olympic Committee has never once held a seminar for its member organizations on the letter, spirit, and intent of the [Amateur Sports] act under which they operate, which is incredible when you think about it. So it’s no surprise then that people get it wrong. They have no sense of history.”
He also wrote about this topic in a 2018 piece for Sports Business Journal.
Good News: On September 15, 2022, the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado, formed the “Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act and Title IX” working group to assist the museum in correcting the misinformation about the Act.
The members of the group are Michelle Dusserre Farrell (a 1984 Olympic silver medalist in the sport of gymnastics)(not pictured), Gary Johansen (a former aide to Sen. Ted Stevens and a retired USOPC in-house counsel), Donna de Varona, Howard Gorrell, and Michael Harrigan.
The group will do its best to increase the public’s awareness of the USOPC's responsibilities and mandates so the USOPC’s secrets will no longer be.
