President Obama should consider creating a sports czar
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 02/18/10 at 4:02 am
http://dailycaller.com/2010/02/18/president-obama-should-consider-creating-a-sports-czar/3/
Should President Barack Obama seriously consider adding a new Cabinet post, creating a federal director of sports in the United States? Consider the sports initiatives that Obama has been involved with during his 13 months as President and a case can be made that sports in the United States deserves specific attention. Obama has suggested that college football have a championship game and there have been reports that his administration is thinking about investigating the Bowl Championship Series.
Obama went to Copenhagen last October under somebody’s pressure to lobby the International Olympic Committee to select Chicago as the site of the 2016 Summer Olympics. The International Olympic Committee expected Obama to genuflect in front of them as in past years Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin begged the IOC for Olympic Games in 2005 and 2007. Blair got the 2012 Summer Olympics for London and Putin got on his hands and knees and secured the 2014 Winter Games for the Russian Black Sea resort in Sochi.
American Presidents have been involved in sports issues for more than a century. Theodore Roosevelt saved college football in 1905. Franklin Roosevelt decided baseball was too important for the country’s morale during World War II and kept the game going. Dwight Eisenhower tried to put a thaw in the Cold War in the 1950s by sending Americans to compete in the Soviet Union in sports events. John Kennedy signed the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act. Lyndon Johnson signed the NFL-AFL merger legislation that allowed football to grow in 1966. Richard Nixon used ping-pong or table tennis matches to open the door to China in the 1970s. Jimmy Carter ordered a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics in retaliation to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Bill Clinton was asked in 1995 to mediate the Major League Baseball Players Strike and George W. Bush included an anti-steroids statement in the State of the Union Address in 2004.
The United States Supreme Court granted the National and American Leagues of Baseball an antitrust exemption in 1922 because the court felt baseball was a game not a business. Because of that ruling, the Oakland A’s ownership cannot relocate their team to San Jose because San Jose, California is within San Francisco Giants territory and the New York City metropolitan area cannot go after a third Major League team as the New York Mets and New York Yankees control the New York territory.
Government is involved in every aspect of sports from stadium building to labor laws concerning collective bargaining that preclude 18-year olds from playing in the National Basketball Association.
The federal director of sports question was brought up by Osarose Isibor, a University of San Francisco Sports Business Management graduate student as part of an electronic blackboard discussion, which centered on Congressman Emanuel Cellar’s role in 1961, which gave the National Football League the right to sell the league’s 14 teams as a single entity to television networks.
Cellar, a Democrat from Brooklyn, N. Y., rammed legislation through the House in 1961 that ultimately became the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and changed the sports landscape. The 14 National Football League owners, after much arm twisting by Commissioner Pete Rozelle, agreed that a single entity model would be better for the league and with that piece of legislation signed into law by President John F. Kennedy on September 30, 1961, the National Football League was able to use the legislation as leverage to get a then big money network TV contact with CBS in 1962 and get additional operating capital. The TV deal helped expand the league’s American footprint.
The Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 is not the only piece of federal legislation that helped build the National Football League or other sports but it is fairly significant. Take a look at the relationship between the federal government and sports or rather let’s let the University of San Francisco student lay it out.
“Sports is a multi-billion dollar business that crosses municipal, state, and even country lines. The revenue generated from sport related activities is so large that there should be a government correspondent that deals specifically with this subject. The government has a cabinet position that deals solely with monopolies and anti-trust issues,” said the grad student. “The four major sports leagues (Major League Baseball, the NFL, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League) today do not compete in a perfectly competitive market nor are they monopolies. There is really no classification for the type of market that these leagues compete in. For this reason, I believe that within the monopoly and anti-trust department of the government, there should be a position that monitors/studies/analyzes the business of national sports, maybe called the Federal Department of Sports Related Activities. This department would be responsible for things such as improving competition, regulating the sports market, calculating the Sports Domestic Gross Product, etc. If the authority needs to be delegated further down to the states and even cities that host professional teams, then so be it.”
The United States government has provided antitrust exemptions for college sports, approved a merger between the National Football League and the American Football League in 1966, and has given a non-profit status to the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) under the Amateur Sports Act of 1978. President Richard Nixon signed into law Title IX on June 23, 1972 and while the legislation was to guarantee women had a fair chance at being accepted into any college, the legislation has morphed into a sports issue with big time college sports programs having to make room for women and giving them scholarships sometimes at the expense of men’s sports programs.
The United States Government, with Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens playing an important role, took the power away from the Amateur Athletic Union in 1978 and the AAU’s fiefdom and created a national governing body for various sports organizations under the USOC banner.
Creating a federal cabinet position overseeing sports is not a novel idea. There are numerous countries across the globe that have a Ministry of Sport.
Russia, for example has a Ministry of Sport, Tourism and Youth Affairs, a “federal executive body with the functions of development and implementation of state policy and legal regulation in the field of physical culture, sports, tourism and youth politics.”
Sport Canada is part of the Department of Canadian Heritage and provides sports funding for Canadian athletes.
There is a lengthy list of countries with similar posts.
The United States government, along with state and city governments, is partners with sports, whether it is on the professional or college level. National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern freely admits that government is a sports partner.
According to Stern, there are three elements needed for sports teams to succeed. Government, cable TV and corporate support. Government has funded stadiums and arenas, provided tax breaks and incentives to build facilities and through the Cable TV Act of 1984 and the Tax Act of 1986 provided more revenues for sports owners. Without the Cable TV Act of 1984, ESPN might have folded, the tax act capped revenues that were generated inside a facility to pay off the debt of a publicly funded stadium or an arena at eight cents on a dollar. Neither New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan nor Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter could close the loophole that exists to this day. The 1986 Tax Act gives the lion’s share of revenues to sports owners even after stadium or arena leases are negotiated to give municipalities a slightly better deal for taxpayers.
The Super Bowl is designated as a special security event. The Bush Administration provided a great deal of security for the 2004 Athens Olympics. There were more American troops on the ground for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics than were in Afghanistan at the time.
Sports is a government partner although the fantasy is that sports is just a game and an entertainment forum. Given the wide scope of American government involvement in sports from the federal level to the local level and the billions of dollars invested in the sports industry, perhaps it is time that some thought is given to creating a sports cabinet post which doesn’t differ very much from other countries that have a Ministry of Sports position. Perhaps a sports czar will order a college football championship be played which will make everybody happy except some people in the college football industry who will lose their bowl fiefdoms.
Showing posts with label Olympics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Olympics. Show all posts
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Canseco, Sosa and the Olympics
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7521Canseco, Sosa and the Olympics
By Evan Weiner
June 18, 2009
10:30 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- Jose Canseco is hopping mad and is ready to unleash a class action suit against anyone that seems to be connected with Major League Baseball, the owners and the players and anything that isn't nailed down. Canseco's feels he has been blackballed for writing a book about steroids use in baseball and that has cost him a chance at the Hall of Fame and a job in baseball. While Canseco was looking to get even with someone even though he admittedly used banned substances, the New York Times was publishing a report that was leaked by somebody that Sammy Sosa failed a performance enhancement drug test in 2003. The drug test administered to Sosa was supposed to be confidential and the result was not supposed to be released to the public. Canseco's suit and the Sosa revelation came as the International Olympic Committee reviewing the various cities that are ready to lose billions of dollars in a bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Canseco, Sosa and the IOC are joined at the hip.
Canseco's tome on banned performance enhancing drug use in baseball brought to light steroid usage in baseball and it is because of alleged usage of banned performance enhancement drugs by baseball players, according to some in the know, that caused the International Olympic Committee to drop baseball from the quadrennial sports event known as the Olympics.
Canseco's book also spurred Congress to get off its collective duffs for one of the great shows of all time, the Major League Baseball comes clean hearing before a House committee on St. Patrick's Day 2005, where a parade of players including Sosa, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro hemmed and hawed about whether they used banned performance enhancing drugs before the Committee on Government Reform.
Congress, which among other things had two wars going at the time, took both the baseball owners and the players to the woodshed and shamed the two sides into toughening up their collective bargaining agreement in terms of drug testing but the St. Patrick's Day celebration of the great American game left one question that no one wants to answer.
If steroid usage in the United States is illegal, why weren't the players caught violating the collective bargaining agreement by testing positive for a banned substance looked upon as cheaters and not lawbreakers?
This is an important part of the entire banned performance enhancing drug usage problem that allegedly exists in sports and it gets back to whether athletes get special treatment. The International Olympic Committee's whole argument that baseball's drug policies aren't tough enough is laughable when you consider the IOC President Jacques Rogge was begging Italian law enforcement personnel to let the IOC police the Turin Olympic Village during the 2006 Winter Olympics because the athletes who might be caught with banned enhancers were really cheating and it was not a criminal offense.
What is even more troubling is how one law enforcement official in Harris County, Texas views athletes taking banned substances. "I’d like to see any players who have broken the rules face up to it publicly and do everything within their powers of persuasion to dissuade young people from using these drugs as opposed to sending them to prison. I think the truth has great powers for them. It’s got to be awful for them to know that they cheated and then perhaps committed perjury," said Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos to a reporter who did a story on her in the Houston Chronicle newspaper about two weeks ago.
The shame of being named a cheater triumphs breaking the law.
Some members of Congress are thinking about reviewing Sosa's testimony in light of the New York Times report. There is one player who got caught up in the Congressional hearings who pled guilty to lying to Congress. Houston's Miguel Tejada, who plays in Lykos' Harris County, didn't fess up to lawmakers about his anabolic steroids usage. Tejada could have faced a year in jail and deportation on February 11, 2009 when he appeared in court. Instead he got what amounted to a slap on the wrist as on March 26, he received probation.
So much for the seriousness of lying to Congress or breaking the law. Tejada did have an out though, he is from the Dominican Republic and you can buy steroids at any local pharmacy in the country as there is no law against its usage.
Canseco's class action suit contends that he isn't a Hall of Fame candidate because he is blackballed and McGwire, in Jose's opinion, has been blackballed too. Canseco claims he and others are missing income opportunities because they are not in the Hall of Fame. That one Canseco should take up with the Baseball Hall of Fame, the body that empowers baseball writers with 10 years of more experience on the beat to vote on which players belong in the baseball shrine. Why writers who are allegedly journalists should vote on an honor is a question that newspapers never really faced until recently when some papers publishers or editors found it unconscionable that writers voted on the very subjects that they were supposed to be covering. Former Baseball Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey wasn't too bothered with newspapers who barred writers from voting and once boasted that more writers voted for Hall of Famers after the edict came down from the papers.
Major League Baseball and baseball writers depend on one another and baseball writers do the right thing and promote the game as if it is part of their job.
The same writers who had an idea that players were juiced in the 1990s but gleefully went along the great home run race of 1998 between McGwire and Sosa which allegedly restored interest in the game after the 1994-95 players strike because it was in both the game and the writers best interest to prop baseball back to pre-1994 interest levels.
It did lead to some writers actually speculating that players were taking something and to a juvenile confrontation between then Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly and Sosa in the Chicago Cubs clubhouse where Reilly offered to take Sosa to some Chicago lab to get drug tested. Reilly apparently forgot that even baseball players have a right to privacy.
The more serious American sportscaster Bob Costas speculated that some players were juiced in various discussions as did the Washington Post’s Tom Boswell.
Reilly, who for some unknown reason is considered a must read writer, never got a response from Sosa. If Reilly had the goods on Sosa he should have done some investigative reporting and backed it up but he decided to showboat in a clubhouse. Reilly was not a serious journalist that day although it is questionable if Reilly has ever been in the same category of the Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Anderson or of Red Smith or Dick Schaap. Anderson would never have pulled a stunt like Reilly did with Sosa.
Sosa was a star and this is where the IOC comes in. The IOC could never get McGwire, Sosa or others to play in the Olympics because Major League Baseball was never going to suspend its season for two weeks for what essentially was a meaningless tourney for big leaguers. The IOC wants big names and used the lack of Olympic style drug testing as an excuse to throw baseball out of the games. Rogge wants big names; baseball isn't going to give him that. That is why baseball is not in the Olympics and the drug testing issue is the ruse.
The IOC reviewed baseball's application to get back into the Games earlier this week and while the New York Times Sosa story didn't help the cause, the IOC still wants stars not top rated minor leaguers even though that is what they get from FIFA for the football (soccer) tournament. But even the IOC delegates know it would not be wise to pick a fight with FIFA because there is no way they could win. The FIFA World Cup trumps the Olympics.
The IOC thinks it is a nation not a sports organization and why countries buy into the IOC is ludicrous and defies any reasonable explanation. The IOC has left behind billions of dollars of debt in host cities that wanted the two week athletic event and does so without any remorse. In fact, the way the IOC looks at it, it is an honor to host the Olympics although if you ask everyday people in Montreal, Sydney or Athens that might look at it a bit differently as the bill to host the Olympics takes generations to pay off.
The IOC went over the bids for the 2016 Summer Games from Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo this week in Copenhagen. On October 2, the IOC will announce which city gained the right to lose billions hosting the Games. London is finding out right now just how much it really costs to host the Games and the jubilation of winning the bid for the 2012 Olympic Games back in 2005 has faded as the real cost of the holding the Olympics is beginning to hit homes.
The London Games will be missing baseball and softball. For whatever reason softball was cut from the Summer Olympics program. The American women also did well in the Games, could it be that the women are being punished because Major League Baseball didn't play ball with Rogge? Only the delegates know for sure, but given the IOC's history it would not be a surprise if that was true.
Sports is a business, Canseco thinks he is being shut out, Sosa was outed and the IOC and others think athletes using banned performance enhancer drugs is merely cheating, not unlawful. Just another week in the toy store of life, sports.
eweiner@mcn.tv
By Evan Weiner
June 18, 2009
10:30 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- Jose Canseco is hopping mad and is ready to unleash a class action suit against anyone that seems to be connected with Major League Baseball, the owners and the players and anything that isn't nailed down. Canseco's feels he has been blackballed for writing a book about steroids use in baseball and that has cost him a chance at the Hall of Fame and a job in baseball. While Canseco was looking to get even with someone even though he admittedly used banned substances, the New York Times was publishing a report that was leaked by somebody that Sammy Sosa failed a performance enhancement drug test in 2003. The drug test administered to Sosa was supposed to be confidential and the result was not supposed to be released to the public. Canseco's suit and the Sosa revelation came as the International Olympic Committee reviewing the various cities that are ready to lose billions of dollars in a bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Canseco, Sosa and the IOC are joined at the hip.
Canseco's tome on banned performance enhancing drug use in baseball brought to light steroid usage in baseball and it is because of alleged usage of banned performance enhancement drugs by baseball players, according to some in the know, that caused the International Olympic Committee to drop baseball from the quadrennial sports event known as the Olympics.
Canseco's book also spurred Congress to get off its collective duffs for one of the great shows of all time, the Major League Baseball comes clean hearing before a House committee on St. Patrick's Day 2005, where a parade of players including Sosa, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro hemmed and hawed about whether they used banned performance enhancing drugs before the Committee on Government Reform.
Congress, which among other things had two wars going at the time, took both the baseball owners and the players to the woodshed and shamed the two sides into toughening up their collective bargaining agreement in terms of drug testing but the St. Patrick's Day celebration of the great American game left one question that no one wants to answer.
If steroid usage in the United States is illegal, why weren't the players caught violating the collective bargaining agreement by testing positive for a banned substance looked upon as cheaters and not lawbreakers?
This is an important part of the entire banned performance enhancing drug usage problem that allegedly exists in sports and it gets back to whether athletes get special treatment. The International Olympic Committee's whole argument that baseball's drug policies aren't tough enough is laughable when you consider the IOC President Jacques Rogge was begging Italian law enforcement personnel to let the IOC police the Turin Olympic Village during the 2006 Winter Olympics because the athletes who might be caught with banned enhancers were really cheating and it was not a criminal offense.
What is even more troubling is how one law enforcement official in Harris County, Texas views athletes taking banned substances. "I’d like to see any players who have broken the rules face up to it publicly and do everything within their powers of persuasion to dissuade young people from using these drugs as opposed to sending them to prison. I think the truth has great powers for them. It’s got to be awful for them to know that they cheated and then perhaps committed perjury," said Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos to a reporter who did a story on her in the Houston Chronicle newspaper about two weeks ago.
The shame of being named a cheater triumphs breaking the law.
Some members of Congress are thinking about reviewing Sosa's testimony in light of the New York Times report. There is one player who got caught up in the Congressional hearings who pled guilty to lying to Congress. Houston's Miguel Tejada, who plays in Lykos' Harris County, didn't fess up to lawmakers about his anabolic steroids usage. Tejada could have faced a year in jail and deportation on February 11, 2009 when he appeared in court. Instead he got what amounted to a slap on the wrist as on March 26, he received probation.
So much for the seriousness of lying to Congress or breaking the law. Tejada did have an out though, he is from the Dominican Republic and you can buy steroids at any local pharmacy in the country as there is no law against its usage.
Canseco's class action suit contends that he isn't a Hall of Fame candidate because he is blackballed and McGwire, in Jose's opinion, has been blackballed too. Canseco claims he and others are missing income opportunities because they are not in the Hall of Fame. That one Canseco should take up with the Baseball Hall of Fame, the body that empowers baseball writers with 10 years of more experience on the beat to vote on which players belong in the baseball shrine. Why writers who are allegedly journalists should vote on an honor is a question that newspapers never really faced until recently when some papers publishers or editors found it unconscionable that writers voted on the very subjects that they were supposed to be covering. Former Baseball Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey wasn't too bothered with newspapers who barred writers from voting and once boasted that more writers voted for Hall of Famers after the edict came down from the papers.
Major League Baseball and baseball writers depend on one another and baseball writers do the right thing and promote the game as if it is part of their job.
The same writers who had an idea that players were juiced in the 1990s but gleefully went along the great home run race of 1998 between McGwire and Sosa which allegedly restored interest in the game after the 1994-95 players strike because it was in both the game and the writers best interest to prop baseball back to pre-1994 interest levels.
It did lead to some writers actually speculating that players were taking something and to a juvenile confrontation between then Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly and Sosa in the Chicago Cubs clubhouse where Reilly offered to take Sosa to some Chicago lab to get drug tested. Reilly apparently forgot that even baseball players have a right to privacy.
The more serious American sportscaster Bob Costas speculated that some players were juiced in various discussions as did the Washington Post’s Tom Boswell.
Reilly, who for some unknown reason is considered a must read writer, never got a response from Sosa. If Reilly had the goods on Sosa he should have done some investigative reporting and backed it up but he decided to showboat in a clubhouse. Reilly was not a serious journalist that day although it is questionable if Reilly has ever been in the same category of the Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Anderson or of Red Smith or Dick Schaap. Anderson would never have pulled a stunt like Reilly did with Sosa.
Sosa was a star and this is where the IOC comes in. The IOC could never get McGwire, Sosa or others to play in the Olympics because Major League Baseball was never going to suspend its season for two weeks for what essentially was a meaningless tourney for big leaguers. The IOC wants big names and used the lack of Olympic style drug testing as an excuse to throw baseball out of the games. Rogge wants big names; baseball isn't going to give him that. That is why baseball is not in the Olympics and the drug testing issue is the ruse.
The IOC reviewed baseball's application to get back into the Games earlier this week and while the New York Times Sosa story didn't help the cause, the IOC still wants stars not top rated minor leaguers even though that is what they get from FIFA for the football (soccer) tournament. But even the IOC delegates know it would not be wise to pick a fight with FIFA because there is no way they could win. The FIFA World Cup trumps the Olympics.
The IOC thinks it is a nation not a sports organization and why countries buy into the IOC is ludicrous and defies any reasonable explanation. The IOC has left behind billions of dollars of debt in host cities that wanted the two week athletic event and does so without any remorse. In fact, the way the IOC looks at it, it is an honor to host the Olympics although if you ask everyday people in Montreal, Sydney or Athens that might look at it a bit differently as the bill to host the Olympics takes generations to pay off.
The IOC went over the bids for the 2016 Summer Games from Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo this week in Copenhagen. On October 2, the IOC will announce which city gained the right to lose billions hosting the Games. London is finding out right now just how much it really costs to host the Games and the jubilation of winning the bid for the 2012 Olympic Games back in 2005 has faded as the real cost of the holding the Olympics is beginning to hit homes.
The London Games will be missing baseball and softball. For whatever reason softball was cut from the Summer Olympics program. The American women also did well in the Games, could it be that the women are being punished because Major League Baseball didn't play ball with Rogge? Only the delegates know for sure, but given the IOC's history it would not be a surprise if that was true.
Sports is a business, Canseco thinks he is being shut out, Sosa was outed and the IOC and others think athletes using banned performance enhancer drugs is merely cheating, not unlawful. Just another week in the toy store of life, sports.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Friday, February 20, 2009
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2009m2d20-Why-arent-women-sports-groups-lobbying-for-a-return-of-softball-at-the-Olympics
Why aren't women sports groups lobbying for a return of softball at the Olympics?
Add a Comment
February 20, 2:33 PM
by Evan Weiner, Business of Sports Examiner
« Previous
If the International Olympic Committee decides to bring baseball back to their two-week sports extravaganza in 2016, Dr. Harvey Schiller should get a lot of the credit for pressuring IOC members to reverse their decision to drop the sport once the Olympics flame was extinguished at the closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Games. Dr. Schiller met with the Tokyo, Japan 2016 bid committee this week after lobbying IOC members at the National Basketball Association’s All-Star Game in Phoenix last weekend.
Dr. Schiller has a lengthy resume with both in baseball and the Olympics. He was the Executive Director/Secretary General of the United States Olympic Committee, the President of TBS Sports, the Southeastern Conference Commissioner and the CEO of the YankeeNets group after the New York Yankees, New Jersey Nets and New Jersey Devils joined forces. He is presently the President of the International Baseball Federation. If anyone can persuade the IOC delegates that baseball should be played at the Olympics, it should be Dr. Harvey Schiller.
Baseball and the Olympics are not a good fit because of scheduling conflicts, which is one of the reasons that baseball was dropped after the Beijing Games. The Summer Olympics take place in the summer at the same time Major League Baseball is conducting its championship season. The IOC wants stars in all of its competitions and Major League Baseball will not interrupt its schedule and allow the top stars of the sport to play for national teams. American teams in past Olympics both as a “demonstration” and regular sport featured a lot of college kids and some minor leaguers on their rosters for the most part.
There was one other factor in cutting baseball.
Major League Baseball could not get the Major League Baseball Players Association to agree to the abide by the World Anti-Doping code. The IOC wanted baseball to get in line with their drug policies. It is widely believed because of these two issues, baseball and softball were eliminated from the Olympic roster beginning with the 2012 London Summer Games.
Major League Baseball would like an Olympic comeback in 2016, especially if Chicago lands the event. But there still is the scheduling problem. The National Hockey League has accommodated the Winter Olympics by shutting down the season and letting players compete for their national teams. The NHL wants to grow hockey globally and has used the Olympics as a marketing tool. The National Basketball Association jumped onto the Olympic bandwagon with its Dream Team in the 1992 Barcelona Games and has used the Olympics to grow the game globally.
Major League Baseball has set its sights on growing globally and would like to make inroads in China and on the African continent. Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association decided that an effective way to expand interest in the sport was by holding the World Baseball Classic, which started in 2006. The second World Baseball Classic will take place this spring but there are some problems with the format. The tourney takes place in what normally would be the early days of spring training, which means national teams cannot get top performances out of their pitchers. Additionally, American players didn’t seem all that enthralled with the concept in 2006.
But the real purpose of the World Baseball Classic is to introduce top-flight baseball into either non-baseball playing countries or developing/emerging baseball playing nations.
Dr. Schiller is pitching but the question is simple. Are IOC delegates listening?
Baseball has a big gun lobbying for them in Dr. Schiller but it appears that no one is taking up the case for softball.
The Olympics softball tournament is the pinnacle for women athletes who play the game. There really are no professional softball leagues in the United States or elsewhere that have high visibility or pay well and there is a theory that the IOC delegates for whatever their reasoning ended softball as a competition because the American women were just too good.
Were the American and other softball playing countries women caught in the crossfire between Major League Baseball and the IOC?
That is a good question because on the surface, few sports more deserving of getting a spot in the games than softball.
In 2005, the IOC decided neither baseball nor softball were a good fit for the Summer Olympics beyond 2008. Softball was ditched because as IOC President Jacques Rogge saw it, the sport lacked "universal appeal.” At last look, there 126 national federations that boasted softball teams which is more than baseball, hockey, sailing, rowing, triathlon or modern pentathlon.
In 2005, IOC delegates rated Olympic sports on its history, television ratings, spectator attendance, media interest, anti-doping policies, gender equity and global development. Softball failed to meet the Olympic-worthiness test.
By the 2000 Sydney, Australia Summer Olympics, there was a feeling that the two week, quadrienal event had gone too big. And in 2002, IOC delegates decided to cap Summer Olympics at 28 sports and 10,500 athletes and to conduct a review of the entire Olympic program.
There doesn’t seem to be an active campaign to get softball back into the Olympics picture. There is nothing much from the Women’s Sports Foundation, no major push from Major League Baseball or other softball playing federations.
Dr. Schiller is on a campaign to bring baseball back to the Olympics. There needs to be someone to fill that role for softball. Until that happens, there softball will be a dead Olympics sport.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Add a Comment
February 20, 2:33 PM
by Evan Weiner, Business of Sports Examiner
« Previous
If the International Olympic Committee decides to bring baseball back to their two-week sports extravaganza in 2016, Dr. Harvey Schiller should get a lot of the credit for pressuring IOC members to reverse their decision to drop the sport once the Olympics flame was extinguished at the closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Games. Dr. Schiller met with the Tokyo, Japan 2016 bid committee this week after lobbying IOC members at the National Basketball Association’s All-Star Game in Phoenix last weekend.
Dr. Schiller has a lengthy resume with both in baseball and the Olympics. He was the Executive Director/Secretary General of the United States Olympic Committee, the President of TBS Sports, the Southeastern Conference Commissioner and the CEO of the YankeeNets group after the New York Yankees, New Jersey Nets and New Jersey Devils joined forces. He is presently the President of the International Baseball Federation. If anyone can persuade the IOC delegates that baseball should be played at the Olympics, it should be Dr. Harvey Schiller.
Baseball and the Olympics are not a good fit because of scheduling conflicts, which is one of the reasons that baseball was dropped after the Beijing Games. The Summer Olympics take place in the summer at the same time Major League Baseball is conducting its championship season. The IOC wants stars in all of its competitions and Major League Baseball will not interrupt its schedule and allow the top stars of the sport to play for national teams. American teams in past Olympics both as a “demonstration” and regular sport featured a lot of college kids and some minor leaguers on their rosters for the most part.
There was one other factor in cutting baseball.
Major League Baseball could not get the Major League Baseball Players Association to agree to the abide by the World Anti-Doping code. The IOC wanted baseball to get in line with their drug policies. It is widely believed because of these two issues, baseball and softball were eliminated from the Olympic roster beginning with the 2012 London Summer Games.
Major League Baseball would like an Olympic comeback in 2016, especially if Chicago lands the event. But there still is the scheduling problem. The National Hockey League has accommodated the Winter Olympics by shutting down the season and letting players compete for their national teams. The NHL wants to grow hockey globally and has used the Olympics as a marketing tool. The National Basketball Association jumped onto the Olympic bandwagon with its Dream Team in the 1992 Barcelona Games and has used the Olympics to grow the game globally.
Major League Baseball has set its sights on growing globally and would like to make inroads in China and on the African continent. Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association decided that an effective way to expand interest in the sport was by holding the World Baseball Classic, which started in 2006. The second World Baseball Classic will take place this spring but there are some problems with the format. The tourney takes place in what normally would be the early days of spring training, which means national teams cannot get top performances out of their pitchers. Additionally, American players didn’t seem all that enthralled with the concept in 2006.
But the real purpose of the World Baseball Classic is to introduce top-flight baseball into either non-baseball playing countries or developing/emerging baseball playing nations.
Dr. Schiller is pitching but the question is simple. Are IOC delegates listening?
Baseball has a big gun lobbying for them in Dr. Schiller but it appears that no one is taking up the case for softball.
The Olympics softball tournament is the pinnacle for women athletes who play the game. There really are no professional softball leagues in the United States or elsewhere that have high visibility or pay well and there is a theory that the IOC delegates for whatever their reasoning ended softball as a competition because the American women were just too good.
Were the American and other softball playing countries women caught in the crossfire between Major League Baseball and the IOC?
That is a good question because on the surface, few sports more deserving of getting a spot in the games than softball.
In 2005, the IOC decided neither baseball nor softball were a good fit for the Summer Olympics beyond 2008. Softball was ditched because as IOC President Jacques Rogge saw it, the sport lacked "universal appeal.” At last look, there 126 national federations that boasted softball teams which is more than baseball, hockey, sailing, rowing, triathlon or modern pentathlon.
In 2005, IOC delegates rated Olympic sports on its history, television ratings, spectator attendance, media interest, anti-doping policies, gender equity and global development. Softball failed to meet the Olympic-worthiness test.
By the 2000 Sydney, Australia Summer Olympics, there was a feeling that the two week, quadrienal event had gone too big. And in 2002, IOC delegates decided to cap Summer Olympics at 28 sports and 10,500 athletes and to conduct a review of the entire Olympic program.
There doesn’t seem to be an active campaign to get softball back into the Olympics picture. There is nothing much from the Women’s Sports Foundation, no major push from Major League Baseball or other softball playing federations.
Dr. Schiller is on a campaign to bring baseball back to the Olympics. There needs to be someone to fill that role for softball. Until that happens, there softball will be a dead Olympics sport.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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