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Dysfunction Run Amuck
Part II: How Did We Get Here?

Posted November 21st, 2008 at 5:03 PM by Adam Jacobs

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Olympics

This is the second article in a seven-part series titled “Dysfunction Run Amuck: USA Track & Field and the Need for Change”.
Click here to read part one and to view a publication timeline for the entire series.

Before plunging headlong into the tenuous situation facing USA Track & Field and the areas of dysfunction that threaten its future, it is important to take a step back and put everything into context by examining the relevant history of the organization, track & field, and the amateur sports movement.

One-hundred-and-fourteen years ago a French nobleman named Pierre Frédy, Baron de Coubertin, had a notion that moral and social fibers of young people would be fortified if they competed in amateur sports. That vision led him to found the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which of course, resulted in the founding of the Modern Olympic Games.

The sport of track & field has been the premier Olympic event ever since the first Olympic Games, which were held in 1896 in Athens, Greece. As such, it exemplified de Coubertin’s ideal of amateurism, and was jealously guarded for decades by the IOC. For example, Olympic champion Jim Thorpe was famously stripped of his 1912 Stockholm Olympic medals once the IOC discovered that he had been paid for competing in professional baseball earlier that year.

As the 20th century progressed, amateurism became an increasingly-outdated ideal. The only people who could afford it were the aristocrats. After World War II, the Cold War hijacked the Olympic Games and forever corrupted de Coubertin’s grand vision. Instead, Olympic sports would become a symbol of the power struggle between the U.S. and its Capitalist Allies and the Soviet Union and its Communist comrades. State-sponsored “amateurs” such as the East German Olympic team finally corrupted de Coubertin’s vision beyond recognition by infusing Olympic sports with cutting-edge technology (e.g., performance-enhancing drugs) and, of course, money.

By the time 1970’s rolled around, self-financed amateurs from the West were at a considerable disadvantage to their Iron Curtain counterparts and began finding ways to level the playing field. Steve Prefontaine and others began getting secret sponsorships from shoe companies and under-the-table appearance fees from meet directors. Pre began a long battle, both with the AAU to finally expose the hypocrisy of “shamateurism,” and the arbitrary judgments of then USOC President Avery Brundage, a zealous adherent to amateurism. Admittedly, Prefontaine’s vision of the Olympic ideal was in direct contrast to de Coubertin’s and Brundage’s idealistic vision. However, Pre’s vision also reflected the needs of athletes and the realities of sport in the modern world.

Although his untimely death in 1975 didn’t allow Pre to witness the fruits of his labors, he played an integral role in the movement to reform amateur sports in the United States and that achieved its goal three years later when Congress enacted the Amateur Sports Act. The landmark legislation established the United States Olympic Committee and provided for specified requirements for its member national governing bodies in each Olympic sport. It also provided important legal protection for individual athletes, included provisions to ensure diversity and, most notably, finally enabled athletes (especially female athletes) a guaranteed role and opportunity to work within their own national governing body for the betterment of the sport and the athletes it served.

For years, the AAU had maintained a ruthless control over track & field and other Olympic sports; often dispensing judgments in an arbitrary and self-serving fashion. Now all of that was gone. With a new set of rules came a new name, The Athletics Congress (TAC), and the athletes finally had their say. Every committee had to consist of at least 20% of current and former athletes. Fourteen years later the organization officially changed its name (according to the USATF website) to United States Track & Field, “to increase recognition for the organization and the sport in the United States.”

Twenty years later in 1998, the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act revised the original legislation to better reflect changes in the sport, most notably the fact that track & field was no longer an amateur sport. It also expanded the USOC’s role, which meant it now had purview over the Paralympic Games. In addition, it increased athlete representation in the USOC, and it protected the USOC from getting sued by disgruntled athletes who might not qualify for the Olympic Games.

A year prior, Masback, a graduate of Princeton and the Yale Law School as well as a former world-class miler with a PR of 3:52.02, had taken over as chief executive officer of a financially troubled USATF in July 1997 and remained in that role until January of 2008. During his decade-long tenure, he rescued USATF from financial meltdown and more than doubled the $6.7 million in revenue that was being generated by the organization when he first came on board. That was a long way from the $3 million debt that Masback had inherited when he took charge of the organization. He also managed to extract the USATF from the thorny role of drug overseer by handing over those reins to a new, independent agency, the United States Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the mission of which was to enforce the World Anti-Doping Code in the United States and bring accountability and fairness to drug testing process.

However, most insiders agree that there were some other leadership areas within USATF with which he had less success. Primarily, it came down to Masback not being able to prevent the Board from interfering with the day-to-day operations of the staff, and gaining cooperation from the Board of Directors as a whole.

Lynn Cannon, the USATF national secretary who has served in a variety of other leadership roles in USATF and the USOC, described these issues and how the actions of John Chaplin, the Men’s Track & Field Chair, and Stephanie Hightower, his female counterpoint on the Board, presented specifically arduous hurdles to organizational improvements Masback was seeking, saying, “Craig had a lot of [great] ideas … yet … these people ha[d] the ability to bog him down with their power trips and all the spending … So much of his energy went into dealing with these kinds of power plays and issues that he couldn’t turn his attention to bigger picture things that he really wanted to [tackle].”

Several board members and those with inside knowledge of USATF leadership during Masback’s tenure expressed similar evaluations of Masback’s performance and the forces that hindered his progress. Many went even further, suggesting that Masback’s eventual resignation in January 2008 was largely caused by his growing frustration over the intractability of some of the USATF Board of Directors (Chaplin and Hightower, in particular) and their knack for impeding his ability to break free from the same institutional paralysis that had plagued USATF for years.

“Craig [Masback] simply had enough and was so fed up with how the politics on the Board prevented him from shaking up the status quo.” said a high-level executive at USATF who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “He recognized the problems with USATF’s governance structure, but there was no way that the board members who had exacerbated the problems would allow him to take action … it was simply time that he left and for a new CEO to try their hand at shaping up those areas at USATF.”

Now the Director of Business Affairs for Nike’s Global Sports Marketing Division, Masback declined to comment on these issues but was glad that TheFinalSprint.com was taking a serious look at USATF governance and operations. Unfortunately, Nike’s policies on public and media relations prevent Masback from engaging in discussions about his tenure at USATF.

Prior to Masback’s resignation, and while he was dealing with such inefficiencies at USATF, the USOC was immersed in its own dysfunction and controversy. In 2003, after a seven-month reform period that had been prompted by ethics scandals, and in light of an early investigation into the USOC’s handling of the Salt Lake City bid process and bribery charges, the number of members in the USOC board of directors went from a bloated, unmanageable 123 members to a lean 11. This success prompted the USOC to turn their attention over similar structural and management issues at the NGB’s that it oversees, including USATF.

Mark Muedeking, a former USOC General Counsel, said that Senator George Mitchell, “Recommended that to avoid such conflicts of interests in the future, and the management problems that led to the USOC’s handling of the bid process for the Salt Lake City Olympic Games, that the USOC needed to adopt corporate management techniques and streamline their leadership structure.”

During his tenure at the USOC, Muedeking had observed that many of the specific changes recommended by Mitchell and employed by the USOC over the subsequent years are the types of changes now being demanded of USA Track & Field. He is now a partner, along with Mitchell, at the global law firm DLA Piper.

As the USOC continues to franchise its governance model and USATF approaches a vote on their restructuring proposals, many in the sport and on the board have voiced their concerns about USOC’s interfering in USATF affairs. In the process, they have raised several questions, including:

Is it “appropriate” for the USOC to insist on such a drastic restructuring at USATF? Does the USOC have the legal authority under the Amateur Sports Act to mandate such changes at USA Track & Field? Is the USOC impeding on the sovereignty of an independent organization? Can the USOC significantly reduce the funding it provides to USATF or even move forward with de-certification if their reforms are not enacted? Would USATF be successful in challenging such consequence in court?

Those questions and the views of USATF Board members and legal authorities will be addressed in the next installment of TheFinalSprint.com’s series: “Dysfuncton Run Amuck”. It will be published on Tuesday, November 25, 2008.

The other topics that have already or will be covered and the publication dates for each segment are as follows:

11/20 - Introduction

11/21 - How Did We Get Here?

11/25 - USOC Mandates / A Question of Authority

11/28 - Cannon’s Allegations / Financial Mismanagement

11/29 - ‘Jets vs. Sharks’ Dynamic / Racial Tensions

12/02 - Overstepping / Conflicts of Interest

12/03 - Pres. Election / Logan / Restructuring

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CREDITS:

Segment Title:
“Part II: How Did We Get Here”

Series Title:
Dysfunction Run Amuck:
USA Track & Field and the Need for Change

Author:
Adam Jacobs, Editor-in-Chief of TheFinalSprint.com and CEO/President of the TFS Media Network. Jacobs also serves on the Board of Advisers for Giving Athletics, Inc and is a co-founder and the current Executive Producer of the Running Film Festival (RFF).

Additional reporting by:
Jimmie R. Markham, associate editor and podcast co-host at TheFinalSprint.com. Markham is also the founder of 400meteroval.com.

Special Thanks To:
Mark Muedeking: Currently a partner at the global law firm DLA Piper, Muedeking earned his JD from the University of Notre Dame in 1980. Prior to joining DLA Piper, Muedeking served as the Managing Director and General Counsel of the United States Olympic Committee and a member of the US Olympic Team staff for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney. Hired in connection with management changes implemented as a result of the Salt Lake bid scandal, he was responsible for managing all legal affairs of the organization, including representation of the athletes and the US Olympic Team in disputes arbitrated before the American Arbitration Association (AAA) and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Muedeking was also involved in Senator George Mitchell’s investigation of alleged steroid use in Major League Baseball, an investigation into alleged ethics violations by the directors of an NGB for an Olympic sport, and the formation and oversight of an independent, international panel to review the alleged cover-up of doping violations at USA Track & Field.

James Dunaway: A senior editor at Track & Field News for four decades, Dunaway writes for the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) and is the editor of American Track & Field and Athletes Only! He has covered fourteen consecutive Summer Olympic Games, twice served as president of the Track and Field Writers of America (TAFWA), and written stories for newspapers around the country, including The New York Times and Austin American-Statesman.

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Please direct all inquiries, including requests to reproduce or republish this article, to Adam Jacobs: adam(at)thefinalsprint(dot)com