USOC comes full circle with Blackmun pick

There's an inside story about how it is the U.S. Olympic Committee circled back to where it should have been all along, back to Scott Blackmun, who will be introduced Wednesday as its chief executive officer.

Blackmun served as the USOC's acting CEO in 2000 and 2001 and, if the world was fair and good things happened all the time to good people, would have stayed in the job that first time around for a lot, lot longer.

The story goes like this:

Someone asked Blackmun recently how comfortable he would be speaking with the press. It's an essential part of the CEO's gig -- the outreach, indeed bully-pulpit, function of the gig that the outgoing chief executive, Stephanie Streeter, who served in the job in an acting capacity for most of 2009, flunked almost completely.

So, anyway, that's what Blackmun was asked -- about how he could get along with those of us in the working press.

He said, well, you know -- I'm no Lloyd Ward.

His answer, pitch-perfect, drew appreciative laughs.

Indeed, on so many levels, Scott Blackmun is no Lloyd Ward. Ward, who replaced Blackmun as the USOC's chief executive, lasted in the post just a little bit longer than a year; Ward left the USOC in early 2003 amid ethics-related concerns.

Scott Blackmun is a class act. He is a first-rate guy.

One always hesitates to make proclamations, and in particular when it comes to the USOC, because with the USOC such things have a tendency to come back and bite you in a sensitive spot, but with Scott Blackmun the USOC is in the best of hands.

As Harvey Schiller, himself a former USOC chief executive who most recently ran the international baseball federation, put it in a post filed Tuesday to his Twitter feed, "Scott Blackmun is the right choice."

To be more precise -- sorry, Harvey -- it's a right choice. The USOC actually was in a no-lose situation because the other CEO finalist was Chuck Wielgus, who runs USA Swimming. You can be sure this space was poised to run a thoroughly laudatory column about Wielgus if he had been the pick.

Both Blackmun and Wielgus on Tuesday declined comment. You can also be sure, Wielgus being the class guy that he is, conveyed congratulations to Blackmun and promised his genuine support.

Dick Ebersol, the chairman of NBC Universal Sports & Olympics, issued a statement Tuesday that said, referring initially to the USOC's board chairman, "Larry Probst and the USOC have worked very hard in recent months to run a detailed and thorough search for stronger leadership. The high caliber of the finalists for the CEO position speaks well for their efforts. As their long-term television partners (since 1988), we at NBC wish good and great things for the USOC and for their new CEO Scott Blackmun."

(Once again, the disclaimer: I have been an NBC employee since 2006. Ebersol does not tell me what to write, or not.)

Blackmun takes over a USOC that holds, by virtue of circumstance, an unusual opportunity.

Chicago lost out for 2016 and in the most humbling way, a first-round exit. Four years before, New York was booted emphatically for 2012. Thus the USOC now finds itself in the extraordinary position of being able to thoroughly re-invent itself without -- and this is key, at least in the near term -- the pressure of trying to win votes for a city vying for the right to stage the Games.

"If you pick up 19 votes with New York and 18 from Chicago, that means you are isolated," Hein Verbruggen, the former president of the international cycling federation and one of the leading figures in the Olympic movement, said Tuesday on the telephone. "Do I have to spell that word for you?" 

The USOC not only needs to develop -- it has the luxury of developing and then embarking upon -- long-term strategies aimed at making itself increasingly relevant and vital within the wider Olympic movement.

Which leads to the obvious question: Why Blackmun?

For a good many reasons:

He's the right age, 52.

He has the right experience. That is, he knows the USOC, the Olympic movement and, more broadly, the business of international sports. Before his stint as the USOC's acting CEO, he was its general counsel and senior managing director for sport resources. When Ward took over, Blackmun became chief operating officer of the entertainment colossus Anschutz Entertainment Group. In that capacity, he oversaw big budgets and the development of stadiums and arenas. Moreover, he and his family live in -- and love -- Colorado Springs, where the USOC is based.

Blackmun has been a leader in anti-doping efforts.

Beyond all that, Blackmun has soul. He understands the inspirational role the Olympic movement can play -- and should be playing, to a far greater degree -- within the American landscape.

What gives him immense credibility within all these spheres is simply explained and is perhaps the element the USOC has often been missing throughout its history. Blackmun not only knows the people who matter, domestically and internationally - he has real relationships with a good many of them.

At the risk of repetition for those who are regular readers of this space -- the Olympic movement runs on relationships. That may be true of a great many things but it is particularly true in this instance, within an enterprise that likes to style itself the "Olympic family."

Blackmun is a welcome member of the family.

Within any family it's completely ordinary to have disagreements. But things get worked out.

One of the main reasons the USOC has been involved in a long-running dispute with the International Olympic Committee over the division of certain marketing and revenue splits, for instance, is because of a lack on the USOC's side of the relationships that might help bridge the divide.

Is it reasonable or logical to expect Scott Blackmun to solve that challenge immediately?

Of course not.

Is it reasonable and logical now to expect talks, and further to expect such talks to proceed in a spirit of goodwill? Absolutely. That's the Blackmun difference. He is not only a consensus-builder -- he is a consensus-finder.

Verbruggen, currently an honorary IOC member from Holland who served as the IOC's chief inspector for the 2008 Beijing Games and who now serves as president of SportAccord, the assembly of international sports federations, said of Blackmun, "He will defend the USOC's interests. I'm absolutely sure of this. But at least the guy is interested in what the other party thinks.

"This," Verbruggen said, "is something that has been totally missing."