Pablo Torre Finds Out - Why Olympic Sports in America Will Never Be the Same: A Deep Dive

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

An existential paranoia has been lurking beneath the surface at the Olympic Village, where the most pressing story doesn’t get talked about on TV. We field an urgent video call from Team USA diving coach Drew Johansen about the "unintended consequences" of the system quietly responsible for more than 1,000 Olympians who competed in Paris. And how the most recent update in the NCAA’s legal fight could sink your favorite Olympic sports back home on campus... and at the 2028 Games, in Los Angeles. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Maybe there's one more run, 2028, you know, or will it, well, we see it degrade so fast in the next two to three years that the story of L.A. is, you know, where did all our great Olympians go? Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraff Kings Network. this as getting a postcard from Paris. What's happening where you are? Where are you right now? Yeah, well, I'm in a hotel outside of the village where I can record this without the distraction of the dorm and my roommates.

There's six other people in there from two other sports, and it was just going to be chaotic. So I came to the hotel that my wife's in outside of the village. And everybody thinks the Olympic Games is all about glamour. And it's hard work. We started on day one right after the opening ceremonies. And then we'll go until the day before the closing ceremonies. Okay.

So the wee in question here, the we that is competing until the day before Sunday's closing ceremony, is none other than the United States Olympic diving team, which is coached by the man who wanted to join the show today, despite being in the middle of all of that. And his name is Drew Johansen, who was also known as the head coach at Indiana University, and he's also the greatest diving coach in America. Because, yes, of course, we are a show that loves a deep dive.

But also, this episode is about a hidden and uniquely American story that you're not going to see on television. This is a story that is lurking just below the surface, as it were, of these Paris games. And you may have seen two of Drew's divers, by the way, become the first Americans to meddle at these Olympics, when the perfectly named Cassidy Cook and Sarah Bacon, otherwise known as Cook and Bacon, won Silver in the Women's synchronized three-meter springboard,

which was the first time the U.S. has meddled in that event since 2012. But instead of simply celebrating, what Drew and many other coaches in the Olympic Village, across many other sports, have all been feeling, quietly, is something else. A truly existential paranoia, a paranoia that is shared by Drew's wife, Jenny, a fellow Olympic diving coach.

Jenny and I have been a coaching team, you know, since we, you know, even while we're dating, and then into marriage and into parenthood. And Jenny's been a big part of all the success of every Olympics I've coached at. This is my fourth Olympics coaching. I should establish also that it's kind of absurd that you're talking to me right now, Drew, because this is about the busiest time. You could possibly be in communication with a guy. in New York, who has been curious about what it is that you are doing over there on a day-to-day

basis, but also what actually is occupying your brain beyond simply winning medals, which you've already done in Paris. And so how would you begin to explain why it is that we're talking today? My job is the head diving coach at Indiana University. That's what pays the bills. That's what feeds my family. That's what's going to say. send my daughter to school, that's going to be my retirement. There's a lot going on back home in the sporting world, in the NCAA world. We're going to start with the Supreme Court's unanimous ruling, siding with former college athletes against the NCAA when it comes to player compensation.

Fear, paranoia, you know, I'm worried. I had the famous song, it's the end of the world as we know it. This is the end of the NCAA as we know it. Well, the Olympics only happens every four years. single year there's a Final Four basketball tournament. Every single year there's a college championship, now college playoffs expanding to 12. Every single year there's conference championships, major conference championships that give these unbelievable streaming and television deals. And this is where the athletes finally say, hey, we want to share in that revenue. In an historic first, the NCAA and

Nation's Power Five conferences have reached a deal to pay their athletes. The ACC, Big 10, Big 12, SEC and PAC 12 accepted the general terms of a settlement that will see the NCAA pay nearly $2.8 billion in damages over 10 years to nearly 14,000 athletes dating from 2016 to now. I'm not against that at all, but the repercussion, the unintended consequence is, I think, threatening the Olympic sports. The sport of diving exists under the umbrella of swimming. And as revenue share comes to us, it is coming. There's a lot of Olympic sports that are worried, and we're all talking about it here in casual moments.

I don't see another revenue stream coming in. I just see a redistribution of funds. And as they have to redistribute the funds, they're going to have to make cuts. And I really worry about the Olympic sports, and I worry about my sport of diving under the umbrella of swimming. All these things are worries of all of us Olympic coaches. So we just heard Drew Johansen worry about the unintended consequences, as he called them,

of the enormous changes that are underway in college sports, which are roiling the Olympics behind the scenes. And you may recall that in March of this year in an episode that we titled A Conversation with the NCAA's Biggest Nightmare, I interviewed Jeffrey Kessler, the lawyer bringing about these changes about this very concept. How much do you think about or care about this part of the conversation, right? The potentially unintended consequences of the ways that the business is changing because, as we said at the very beginning,

you happen to be one of the most powerful people when it comes to influencing the change. I spend my life as an antitrust lawyer. Antitrust lawyers believe that competition produces good results. And that's the whole philosophy of that legal system, which is our country's legal system going back to 1890. Jeffrey Kessler represents the lead plaintiff in the landmark case of House v. NCCAA, where in a class of ex-college athletes,

led by former Arizona state swimmer Grant House, sued for billions in back pay over the unpaid use of their names and images and likenesses. And in my interview with Jeffrey, what we also foreshadowed was how the NCAA and the Power Five conferences would inevitably settle, as opposed to, fighting reality in a courtroom.

But the reason that all of this has such a terrifyingly vast impact on these Olympics, this event that the whole world is celebrating right now, is simple. And particular to how Team USA operates, which is extremely unlike other nations, as Drew explains. Talk about wrestling, talk about swimming and diving, talk about gymnastics, talk about tennis, talk about fencing, talk about all these Olympic sports that are so fun to watch every four years and are such a contributor to the medal count for Team USA.

They are driven by the collegiate system. 75% of the almost 600 American Olympians in Paris have come through that collegiate system, in fact. And in the last summer games in Tokyo, more than 80% of America's medals were won by athletes who came through the NCAA as well. But that's not even the craziest part. Because in the Paris Olympics right now,

there are more than 800 athletes who came through the NCAA system who are competing for other countries, which is, yes, more than the NCAA produced for Team USA itself. And so with this entire system now changing suddenly, creating domino effects everywhere, I also needed to find somebody who could demystify how this insane sports pipeline even came to be. I am Victoria Jackson.

I'm a sports historian and clinical associate professor of history at Arizona State University. And I'm a former NCAA champ and professional track and field athlete. And the first thing that Professor Jackson wanted to clarify for us is that it's not the NCAA that actually deserves the credit for developing so many of the world's Olympians across all these different sports. Credit is actually due to one very specific group. I mean, strangely, it's American college football players. So much of this funding is actually the monies that college football players have generated over the past half century, but, you know, those monies not being shared with them and then being redirected to supporting Olympic sports programs at their colleges. The ideology that is allowed for this to happen is amateurism because of the kind of ballooning of the big. of big-time college sports centered around college football. What has become for football players is sports for others' sake. They are paying for those other athletes, world-class educations, and also their Olympic dreams. So it's sports for others' sake is what amateurism became in the

collegiate space. Drew, I'm looking at just the uniqueness of this when it comes to global sports when it comes to the Olympics itself, other countries, to be very blunt about this, are not arranged this way, right? Like, only America has a college system that has supported has been the pipeline for development for its Olympic performance. It's certainly unique. You know, we use sports to help raise our children, and it's grown over the years. And as collegiate programs have, you know, they've been around for a long, long time, but in the Olympic Charter there's a word called Olympism, which means the endeavor to blend sport with culture and education.

And I've learned traveling over the years that that happens different in every country. And the U.S. to me has embraced those three things, the blend of sport, culture, and education better than anywhere. USA diving has been on an uprising since 2008, I would say, going into 12, when we shifted focus on realizing the NC2A is the backbone of our sport instead of denying it. And all of a sudden, the medals started coming and kids started doing great. They do well in school so they're confident. They have great futures ahead of them, so they're confident.

They have great facilities and great coaches, so they're confident. But then something happened on the day of the opening ceremony in Paris that was completely coincidental, I am told, in terms of the timing of it. But symbolically, it was perfect. because right as America was watching the Olympic porch advance through Paris, the long-awaited settlement paperwork for Grant v. NCAA was finally filed by Jeffrey Kessler and the plaintiffs and the NCAA. And yes, the paperwork still needs to be approved by a judge,

and there will undoubtedly be all sorts of legal challenges to it. But what we now have are details about how much revenue-sharing money these schools can start paying athletes, which is a maximum of 23.1 million, additionally, every year, as early as the fall of 2025, and the schools have the right to divvy up that money among athletes however they want. But what sent shockwaves through the Olympic Village in particular was actually a different part of the settlement,

which trickled out a bit later. Because the settlement also agreed to get rid of scholarship limits across all sports in the continued interest, once again, of uncapping athlete compensation, which is, of course, great for football. football players. But what is capped now instead is roster size. And so

they established 45 brand new limits listed for 45 different college sports except for diving. Because while men's and women swimming have a new limit of 30 scholarships each, diving

wasn't even mentioned by name anywhere at all. I didn't find out until a day and a half later. Obviously, the opening ceremonies was quite an experience and, you know, the phones were blown up and, you know, you don't dig into those things until a day or so later. So I found out from some diving coaches back home that let me know about the filing. And I said, what,

what filing are you talking about? They sent me an article. The very premise, though, that you and your position would find out about this stuff, secondhand, third hand, full disclosure here, we've been emailing back and forth as some of this has been unfolding. And the idea that you were sort of reading it in the same articles that I was trying to scrutinize, was that surprising to you, the idea that you would be from the outside looking in at the future of your sport? Yeah, I mean, that's been a little bit of the plight of a diving coach. I think I'm kind of used to it, you know, the way we're structured in the NC2A. You know, we don't necessarily get a seat at the table all the time.

conferences are making decisions about diving, they defer to the head swim coach. They're the ones that have the boating powers and get into the meetings. The NCAA level, we have a little more voice, but most cases the swim coaches are our bosses, so we have to collaborate and work with our bosses and tow the party line. So kind of used to it doesn't really mean it's right or maybe this is why we're talking because maybe it's time to not be used to it anymore. Just that very dynamic between swimming and diving. I've noticed, in a lot of the reporting and a lot of the labeling around all of this, it's swimming and then almost as an afterthought, diving is included.

Can you explain that power dynamic in blunt terms for people who have no idea how any of this works? We are an event or three events in a swimming and diving competition that scores points that contributes to the team to try to win the team title. You know, the last three years, we've been the Big Ten champions. Our men and our women have won conference titles with that combined effort. And Indiana is a historic program for diving, and it always has been supported, and I'm confident that it always will be. I'm talking to you because I'm worried about my colleagues. The landscape is changing with revenue sharing and roster limits.

You know, we're going to have to cut kids from teams. We're going to have to reduce our squad size. And now that collaboration between a swim and a dive coach, even in my situation. We're going to have to sit down and decide, you know, who can stay on the team and who can and what's the right amount of divers to have on the team to win a team title. And when you look at the total structure of how swimming and diving points go towards the team, a really good swim coach can win an NC2A title or a Big Ten title without any diving. So we're really in a weak position as squads now are going to get smaller. budgets are going to be stretched. And the thought of, well, we can support a diving program to get 50, 60 points at a conference

championships. Well, why don't I just bring in another swimmer or two to make up for those points and actually maybe take a budget saving step and just eliminate diving so I don't have to pay that salary anymore? So in other words, just to be very clear about this, the incentives for swimming are different from the incentives for diving, that you guys have sort of had this big brother, little brother. I don't know if that's preferred metaphor you want to use here, but it feels to me like little brother has been lumped in with Big Brother.

And now that there are changes from a financial perspective coming to college sports in general, Big Brothers realizing, oh, little brother might be getting in the way of the stuff that I want. That's a good way to put it. I've been to every major competition that a diving coach can go to, and I've seen America win gold, silver bronze, multiple times. But the most exciting event I've ever been to is the Big Ten Championships. Because swimming and diving combined as a team sport has become this really great exciting event for divers and swimmers that trained together all year, representing their university. but I feel that's all in jeopardy now. You know, the pie is only so big.

So they have to set budgets. So you're not going to be able to set a budget until you know the maximum number of athletes you're going to be supporting. And schools will then make a choice. But at that point, when that chunk of pie that used to go to building facilities, supporting broad-based programming, staying compliant with, within Title IX, there's a big strain on resources now, that that piece of the pie has been redirected. And each university is going to make a decision on which sports now

we're going to put the dollars to try to succeed at. So it'll lower the level in the Olympic sports. Which is not an entirely new phenomenon anymore, as you may recall, because during COVID, a bunch of colleges considered cutting those smaller, non-revenue sports that we, yeah, mostly pay attention to during the Olympics and not much otherwise. And this was true even in the Big Ten conference where Drew is a coach, which is otherwise flush with billions of dollars in those television contracts. And so lots of sports today continue to feel generally like they're running from the Grim Reaper. And this includes the

actual runners, like Professor Victoria Jackson. Track and field's really interesting because it's a core sport, right? It's a foundational sport and continues to be just the mainstay of the Olympic Games. But during the pandemic, when schools were cutting lots of sports, men's track and field was on the chopping block. And at like schools that had the biggest annual revenues coming in, so like Clemson, like all that football money in Clemson, somehow they just couldn't justify supporting a men's track and field team anymore, which is wild. And so, there has been anxiety less so among track and field people than other sports like men's gymnastics, men's tennis, swimming and diving. But now track and field has that anxiety also. Sitting here

in the Western states, the just ruthless killing off of the PAC 12 conference really showed Olympic sport athletes like you don't matter. My assistant coach here at IU was a long time diving coach at Michigan State University, and they dropped their swimming and diving program in the middle of COVID, never to come back. So that's what we're facing right now, and that's where I think we're finally becoming brave enough to speak up.

Who knows what my administration will think of this interview? Who knows what my colleagues or other swim coaches in the U.S. are going to think of what they're hearing here. But we've quietly said this, you know, amongst each other, And we've kind of fought for ourselves without trying to get out of, you know, out of line with the structure of an athletic department. And the fear of it completely being lost is one of the reasons I'm speaking out. What is the case for how you want the math to be done? Because, again, the superficial aspect here that people are maybe even reading optimistically is, but look, the scholarship limits up.

All this is good. But when you look under the hood of this, from the diving perspective, how should divers be counted, Drew? What is your vision for what's a fair way to feel a little less second class? I think there's only a couple of options. We're going to either move forward business as usual, and this will come to a head where it'll go to litigation, which is the last thing anybody wants, and there's too much of that happening. On that, though, who is suing who, Drew, in that hypothetical litigation that you want to avoid, but where to happen, who's on either side of that? It would be the diving coaches. It could even be the student athletes trying to fight for their own sport against where the rules are made at the conference level and at the NCAA level. So if we can't affect change there and our sport starts disappearing from school after school after school, that's,

that's probably where I think it would head. Another option would be to find a way to allow a diver to have an equal opportunity to participate in the team that they're on. Swimmers have an opportunity up to seven events. Not all of them do it, but they have that opportunity there, and the best ones do. And divers only have three events. So when you look at roster spots, we shouldn't be counted as any more than half of a roster spot. So two divers can equal the production of one swimmer. And that's how it's been for a long time.

The SEC has changed that rule, and they've made them one for one, but not given any more opportunity to the diver. So that devalues the chance of a diver making the team. Sounds weird to say that I want to be counted as a half, not a hole. But I still do until I have the equal opportunity to contribute to the team. You want to be a half citizen, actually. That would be the solution to being a second class citizen is to be half of one. And I think the third one, which is becoming more and more clear to me that's been talked about for years,

is, you know, diving is a standalone sport here at the Olympic Games. I'm the head coach of Team USA diving. And there's a head swimming coach, you know, living two doors down from me. And we're trying to win medals for Team USA. And I'm leading my team. He's leading his team. I'm funded by the USOPC. They're funded by the USOPC.

maybe the NC2A should take that tact for diving. We're a small sport similar to golf. We're not very expensive. We get a big bang for our buck. You know, we just won silver a couple days ago. Cook and bacon are all over the place, and they're great representatives of our sport. This is the fourth Olympics that we've been, you know,

in the top two or three of the metal count of all countries. Well, that can be bought to any institution, or any college institution with diving being a separate varsity sport. All right. So this whole conversation about how to reimagine the sport of diving and how to reimagine college sports in general, it reminds me of where I first saw Professor Victoria Jackson, our sports historian slash national champion runner,

in the first place. Because she was behind a microphone in Washington testifying on Capitol Hill. We're pleased to have sports historian Victoria Jackson, Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University and a former collegiate cross-country and track and field champion athlete. Oh, goodness. I mean, it was the Commission on the State of the U.S. Olympics and Paralympics, and what I loved was that the co-chairs of the Commission

wanted to use it as an opportunity to show Congress. We need to, like, go back and redesign all of this. So that was cool. The past half century is indeed marked by American athletes' success on the international stage. But in too many cases, this success has come despite and not because of the design of the American sports ecosystem. This hearing took place last September,

which was months before I interviewed Jeffrey Kessler on this show in March, and months before the NCAA and the Big Power Five conferences agreed to reach that aforementioned $2.8 billion settlement in House v. NCAA, which was in May. But even back then, in September, Professor Jackson could very clearly see what was coming. I mean, the way to explain why this is all happening right now is because higher education chose not to clean up its own house. And, you know, this is an industry that proclaims itself like the leaders of innovation and any problem the world has.

Like higher ed will solve it. Just totally neglecting something that was like obviously on the horizon, obviously going to be deemed illegal. It's not just that, like, you have the skill set to fix it. Like, you had the obligation and the responsibility to fix this and didn't. But it was because higher ed chose not to redesign this in a responsible manner and get out ahead of it that we're in the place that we're in right now. And they're still opting not to optimize redesign. What I mean by that is, like, there's still a resistance to acknowledging that college football. is a sport apart. It is a sport apart from all the other sports played on university campuses.

It's serving the business of college sports, right? We just talked about how it's paying for the world's Olympic development. But it's also serving the industry of higher education in a way that the other sports simply are not. It is selling the idea of what it's like to go to college to American families. If we think about the potency of the image of a Saturday college football game and what that means in Americana, like, that is doing wonders. And, you know, if we need someone outside of the system to redesign it, if we really want to come up with something that's optimized, to serve all athletes in all of the different industries.

And, you know, I've been told that commissions in D.C. are the place where ideas go to die, but maybe we need another president's commission like we'd had in the lead up to the passage of the Amateur Sports Act in 1978, maybe higher ed. I mean, I don't know. I've been shouting at higher ed and university presidents that they're the ones to fix this and it hasn't happened yet. But there is value in keeping Olympic development on university campuses. And there's opportunity to go back to higher ed's core mission, which is serving the public. And opening up facilities for more public use and public play opportunities is. a way to also get buy-in from the public to support Olympic development.

So it's just interesting because, of course, football was the thing that was funding everything, but now you're realizing that without a seat at the table, when it comes to policy, you are not being considered as a priority that is potentially worth saving. So it's interesting because I'm, like, balancing two ideas. Like, one, thank God these football players being paid. Finally, it's insane that this market has been foreclosed to them. But on the other hand, it's the, for people who want to support college sports as a concept and Olympic success as a concept. It is one of those on some level unintended consequences that justice being brought to football is now forcing a reckoning with like, so what about everything else?

Absolutely. And I think what I see a lot of is the next step is blaming football players. And so what I'm trying to do is intervene and say, no, no, no. Like, football players have had a bad deal for a really long time, and we need to be able to better serve football athletes at colleges. And while we're doing that, we also need to show. the American public, higher ed leaders, that these other sports have value and need to be continued, like, they need the support that they've had. It's going to come from new pots of monies now.

So let's get to work figuring out where those pots of monies are. That I am optimistic about this, honestly. Like, there's a solution here where at the end of the day, athletes are going to be better served in all these sports. And we're going to have more participation opportunities, not less, if we do this right. You know, Drew, there is one level to this story that is darkly funny to me, which is that you're at a school in Indiana, which is a swimming dynasty. It's the premier program in America. Swimming and diving dynasty. There it is. Guilty of the very thing. I'm here to spotlight. But other schools, of course, do not have the same history, resources, interest, tradition. I've seen your facility. It's fantastic, giant black and white photos behind the diving boards. sophisticated technology, you have the best in-class stuff. That is a great recruiting pitch in a world in which everybody else is cutting back. But you're concerned about everybody else cutting back in a way that is, again,

not typically what you'd hear from a college coach who's trying to out-recruit everybody. So your fear for everybody else, here is what? If the sport gets any smaller, I think the average-sized teams are hovering around four men and six women. So as we're looking at, you know, swimming and diving program and having to make a cut, a swimming coach thinks that diving needs to feel the pain the same way, we can't get any smaller. And as programs disappear and, you know, maybe there will be a small period of time where it'll be easier for me to dominate in the collegiate level because there's less programs and I'm just scooping up all the top recruits. and at home Olympic Games in 2028 with a lot of our Olympic sports in jeopardy,

you know, we'll lose all that momentum in a hurry. And I feel it right now as I'm standing on the deck of the Olympic Games, wondering what are we going to bring to 28? How quickly will this have an effect on not just my sport, but all the Olympic sports that are housed in the NC2A? You're looking ahead and across the pool at China, which is the current dominant power right now. And simultaneous to that, as you wonder about how to beat the Chinese, you're wondering, it sounds like if Olympic diving will remain a sport for the United States.

Yeah, I think we'll field teams. That's for sure. It'll be more like the way we fielded teams in the 40s and 50s, for lack of the better word, true amateurs. you know but the other countries that have taken a professional approach towards training their athletes will certainly be able to dominate and the idea of pursuing an Olympic dream and pursuing an education together that they don't have to be mutually exclusive is what the Olympics is all about that's what the charter is about that's what that word Olympism means and it and I wish the NCAA could take hold of that and grab it and say, yeah, we want this. We do it better than anyone,

blending sport, culture, and education, and we're going to protect it. And yes, revenue sharing has to happen. It's happening. And I think it's a good thing on a lot of levels, but I'm worried about the unintended consequences. I'm worried about the repercussions. And I'm worried about the future, maybe there's one more run, 2028, you know, or will it, well, we see it degrade so fast in the next two to three years that the story of L.A. is, you know, where did all our great Olympians go? I apologize, Drew, if what we've done here today is going to make it at least a little bit more awkward for you when you get back home. This crisis that we're in now and, whatever, you know, feathers I might ruffle heading back home, we'll create conversation.

And I'm fine with that. As long as we can sit down calmly and debate the merits of how to move forward, I'll talk to anybody and be happy to share my thoughts moving forward. So I'm not too worried about uncomfortable conversations. Yeah, you're fairly comfortable with leaps of faith. get the sets given your back. I do have fate. Yes, sir.

Yeah, look, we're a show. Pablo Torre finds out that specializes in deep dives. It is only appropriate that we figure out what the actual, you know, Olympic divers are up to. So thank you. Awesome. Thank you. All right.

So just at the end here, as I contemplated what it is exactly that I found out today, I do want to state very clearly that Sunday's closing ceremony in Paris is marking the closing of an entire era, a truly unparalleled and I believe largely still misunderstood Olympic era. Because, yes, the regime that subsidized the foremost pipeline for Olympic talent development

in the world is coming to an end. Thanks to this antitrust settlement that is forcing long, long overdue change upon American college sports. This, too, is the story of these Olympics. But the other part of the other part of this festival, of being emotionally invested in random people that I did not know anything about, honestly, as of a month ago, is that I find myself rooting for Drew Johansen and the sport

of diving as a whole. Because Drew Johansson is not asking for anything that is terribly dissimilar from what everybody else in this story is fairly asking for, which is to be valued appropriately by the people, the administrators, in power. These administrators, by the way, who love crying poor these days, now that they've got to pay all these players, finally. Which is, as Jeffrey Kessler reminded me, truly absurd. So maybe the athletic director won't make $4 million, I'll have to get by on a million and a half dollars.

or maybe the conference commissioner will have to make a little bit less. Or maybe that gold-plated alumni room that they make into sweets will only be made of silver instead of solid gold. The money is there. So little of that is spent on the non-revenue sports now. And so as we now approach the end of the Olympics, what these administrators have is a choice. You can keep those gold-plated alumni suites, those gold-plated buy-out clauses, or you can go for those gold-plated medals and the Americans who win them. This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metal Arc Media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.