USOC CEO Scott Blackmun isn’t going to give up on Olympic sports in colleges without a fight. He sees the threat of budget cuts and reallocations as athletics departments start paying more for its football and basketball players.
There are so many things that we can do. What we need to do is get together and decide what is our top priority, what are our top three priorities. We have identified a donor who’s willing to support us, subject to us collectively — and by that I mean the athletic directors and the USOC — finding a program that we think is really going to move the needle. … We need to preserve these Olympic sport programs.
College campuses are ideal training grounds for Olympians. They have the facilities, and athletes can live, train and study in one spot. We’ll see if these sports can hang on.
A couple of reports: USA TODAY, Louisville Courier-Journal.
And the previous dispatches from the War on Nonrevenue Sports:
- The original
- A 2011 roundup of cuts
- Andrew Zimbalist and SI’s Alexander Wolff toss aside nonrev sports as collateral damage
- Are scholastic sports a waste of time?
More to come. I hope not, but probably.
Duresport.com 