USOC Expected To Add Board Members
By Laurie Cipriano l.cipriano@krdo.com
COLORADO SPRINGS – A U.S. Olympic Committee advisory panel, led by former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, recommends adding four members to the USOC’s board of directors.
The Independent Advisory Committee met Friday in Colorado Springs to discuss the report’s recommendations, which are expected to be implemented later this year.
The report recommends adding four additional voting members to the board. The findings state that of the four, one should come from the Athletes’ Advisory Council and another should be selected from the leadership of the national governing bodies of Olympic sports. The final two should be independent members.
In a conference call Tagliabue compared the board to an athletic team. “You need lots of talent. You need to have different skills and different positions,” said Tagliabue. “Everybody has to have a great work ethic.”
He said it was about careful selection. “You don’t get elected to teams, usually, and you don’t get elected to boards. You get carefully selected by a process that focuses on your talents and ability to contribute to the team.”
According to Tagliabue, collaboration is key. “The word team itself, T-E-A-M, I learned in my earlier life, stands for Together-Everyone-Achieves-Mission. That’s the kind of board I think the USOC will have going forward.”
The board’s expansion from 11 to 15 is expected to involve more Olympic insiders in the decision making process. “It brings the board executives who are involved full time in sports,” said Tagliabue. He stressed the importance of having members who had domestic and international sports experience. “They bring experience that we felt that was very important. We thought we were providing considerable additional opportunity for people with relevant skill sets to be working with the USOC.”
After the last report in 2003, the board was reduced from 125 members to 11. “It was my expectation that this would be more about fine tuning than a radical overhaul,” said USOC Chairman Larry Probst. “I think everybody felt that the work that was done in 2003 was extremely good work. Six or seven years have transpired and obviously we need to update some of that work and try to fine tune and improve it.”
The report also calls for the CEO of the USOC, Scott Blackmun, to be added to the board as a non-voting member.
