Sha’Carri wins first gold, Olivia Reeves makes US weightlifters proud
Sha’Carri Richardson won her first gold medal in Paris, US weightlifter Olivia ended both a dry spell and a record, and the US basketball team stormed into the final.
PARIS – In NCAA language, the term “Olympic sports” has a derogatory connotation.
These are the sports that you can’t make money from.
At any major university, the list of athletic programs that don’t generate revenue is much longer than the list of athletic programs that do. If you look at the numbers for most NCAA Division I athletic departments, especially the major conferences, it usually looks like this: Football funds everything. Men’s basketball maybe funds itself. That’s it.
This reality reflects how one-sided the interest is among alumni, supporters, and the general public. Most of the time, Americans don’t pay much attention to “Olympic sports.”
Until these sports actually Are Olympic sports.
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For about two weeks every four years, Americans take a special interest in swimming, diving, gymnastics, track and field, volleyball, rowing, and basically any U.S. athlete who could add to our medal count.
That’s what makes it so special. It’s a moment to celebrate and recognize those who don’t normally get the attention. All of the American families in Paris who made the trip to these Olympics, as well as the many young people watching at home, experienced something rare and unique. They were captivated by sports they wouldn’t normally watch and were proud to cheer for a nation and a flag rather than a professional or college team.
This creates powerful memories and examples that last beyond the chosen sport.
“I grew up watching swimming and gymnastics,” said Team USA’s Nelly Korda, the world’s leading golfer and Olympic gold medalist in Tokyo. “… As a kid, I watched so many athletes and all their pure emotion on the podium when their flag was raised and the national anthem was played. And when I finally got to do it myself, there was a huge rush of emotion. A few tears rolled down my face.”
Korda didn’t play golf in college. She turned professional at 18. But her two U.S. teammates this week at Le Golf National are Lilia Vu, who was an All-American at UCLA, and 21-year-old rising star Rose Zhang, who won the 2022 and 2023 NCAA individual championships at Stanford.
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There are so many other examples of athletes from “Olympic sports” at American colleges at the Paris Games. So many great stories.
Stories like that of Lauren Scruggs, 21, of the U.S. team, who won gold and silver in fencing at these Olympics, becoming the first black American woman to win an individual medal in the sport. Scruggs won a national championship as part of the fencing team at Harvard.
“Fencing is and certainly has historically been a non-black sport,” she told reporters at these Olympics, “so I hope to inspire young black girls to take up fencing and believe that they can have their place in this sport.”
According to the NCAA, more than 1,200 current, former or future athletes were registered for these Olympic Games. They came from 125 countries and represented 251 universities. Of these, only 385 athletes were on Team USA. College programs are a global feeder system for the Olympic Games.
That’s what’s at stake as NCAA athletics enters a phase where no one seems to know what will happen next.
A huge problem is looming: Most “Olympic sports programs” are on the wrong side of economics, and many college campuses are facing belt-tightening.
In addition to the realignment of conferences that disregards geography, there is the introduction of zero compensation and no-strings-attached transfers. All of this together makes college sports much more expensive for schools.
Major athletic departments have money, of course. But they will need more and more of it to continue to maintain competitive programs and travel to conference games across the continent.
When it comes to football and basketball? Sure, no problem.
But other sports? We’ll see. It’s easy to be afraid of the direction things are going.
“What we offer in the NCAA is unique. It’s been said many times: We’re the envy of the world,” said John Speraw, the USA volleyball coach who also coaches the program at UCLA. “… I think there are a lot of questions about it right now. I think there’s a lot of concern. I think the concern is justified.”
In January, Loyola Marymount University of California announced that it would eliminate six of its 20 sports programs at the end of the school year: men’s and women’s track and field, men’s and women’s rowing, women’s swimming and men’s cross country.
“The NCAA landscape is changing rapidly,” LMU athletic director Craig Pintens said in a press release announcing the cuts, “and colleges of all sizes must adapt to provide the best student-athlete experience while becoming even more competitive.”
Fewer athletic programs would mean fewer scholarships. Fewer scholarships would mean fewer athletes coached by lesser coaches and with less resources and competition. And fewer athletes would ultimately impact the Olympics by providing fewer opportunities for spectators to aspire to the same greatness in a sport not played at their high school.
The realization of many budding dreams depends on the ability of universities to master this time.
My goodness, what could go wrong?
At a time when you can’t count on anything from the NCAA, you can count on this: The leadership of the member institutions and conferences will do what is best for them and not anyone’s Olympic ambitions. It’s about self-interest and the bottom line. That’s why Zhang’s Stanford volleyball team will rack up more Bay Area frequent flyer miles this fall than a business traveler playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
How much longer will athletic departments be willing to ship all their athletic programs back and forth across the country like this? (Let me remind you that Katie Ledecky was a swimmer at Stanford.)
With less money available, which major college sports teams will feel the impact?
Hint: They won’t be the ones feeding the NFL.
Rather, they will be the ones who feed all these Olympians and the dreams of those who come next.
Reach Gentry Estes at [email protected] and on the X-Platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes.
