College Sports
The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee College Sports Sustainability Think Tank is a first-of-its-kind effort to address the loss of collegiate Olympic and Paralympic sport opportunities in the wake of COVID-19. As an early result of the pandemic, more than 100 Division I programs were dropped, exposing the need for creative and collaborative management within the Olympic and Paralympic sport ecosystem. Led by University of Florida Athletic Director Scott Stricklin and USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland, this project included Division I athletics leaders, Team USA athletes and coaches, National Governing Body and USOPC executives, NCAA leaders and sport industry experts. The yearlong effort included large-group sessions and project-area working groups; it culminated in September 2021, following the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo.
The collegiate connection into Team USA is deep. At the Tokyo Olympic Games, more than 75% of the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team competed across 171 schools, and more than 50% of the 2020 U.S. Paralympic Team competed across 76 schools. On the winter side, more than one-third of the 2018 U.S. Olympic Team competed across 48 schools, while 25% of the 2018 U.S. Paralympic Team competed across 14 schools.
Preserving the opportunity for athletes to grow and thrive through collegiate Olympic and Paralympic sport programming will benefit not just Team USA, but athletes around the world. International student-athletes also thrive in our country’s athletic system, as it provides a worldwide training ground for personal and athletic development. In Tokyo, more than 640 college athletes represented 117 countries in the 2020 Olympic Games.
Following robust discussion in the fall of 2020, the USOPC Think Tank established four working groups to further ideate around concepts that encourage sustainable, broad-based varsity programming. The four concepts - sport sustainability, sport structure, vertical partnerships and Paralympic inclusion - served as the framework for actionable recommendations that were finalized in the fall of 2021.
OverviewThe sport sustainability working group was charged with exploring the benefits of offering flexibility for Olympic sports to manage their operations in a customized, efficient and creative manner. Typically, these sports are managed by NCAA rul...
OverviewThe sport structure working group explored current and potential policies to protect broad-based varsity sport offerings and reimagine the NCAA sport structure through flexible sport management strategies. As part of the sport structure work, s...
OverviewThe vertical partnerships group sought to connect sport-specific stakeholders to create resource efficiencies, explore increased exposure options and test revenue-partnering opportunities within a singular sport. The project challenges the curr...
OverviewSchool alliances are needed now more than ever, given campus resource limitations and the volume of adaptive programming on campus. Although there is not a broad-based collegiate Paralympic sport structure, there is a strong appetite for colleg...
Roundtable discussions occurred in 2020 and 2021 to vet sport-specific sustainability concepts for field hockey, men’s gymnastics, track and field, men’s volleyball and wrestling. These efforts included collaboration across NGB/USOPC staff, coaches associations, national team athletes, and collegiate leaders. Discussions from each group helped inform the USOPC Think Tank’s seven recommendations and included a review of additional sport-specific priorities; discussion summaries are located below.
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I didn't know I could be an Olympian until I arrived into the collegiate scene and I started to wrestle at a really high level.
Jordan Burroughs, University of Nebraska
