Though Team USA Olympians come from every walk of life, most of them have one thing in common. They are former college athletes.
About 75% of the more than 600 athletes on the 2020 Team USA roster for the Tokyo Games come from NCAA institutions of every division.
"We have the best system in the world, and it's evident by how our pipeline organically comes through college to Team USA," said Sarah Wilhelmi, senior director of collegiate partnerships at the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee.
In this week's Social Series, Wilhelmi, along with Scott Stricklin, director of athletics at Florida and chair of the USOPC College Sports Sustainability Think Tank, discussed the importance of the collegiate model in fielding competitive Olympic teams.
Keeping the pipeline strong
Unlike many countries competing in the Olympic Games, the U.S. does not provide direct financial support to the Olympic movement. As a result, the USOPC is privately funded and is in large part supported by the development of athletes that occurs in college sports.
To that end, U.S. colleges and universities spend over $5 billion a year on Olympic sports, Stricklin said. This investment provides opportunities for student-athletes to develop into Olympic-caliber athletes at their school facilities and not because government officials hand-select them to compete on global stages.
"We have a tremendous advantage because of what college athletics does, what it provides, and how it has allowed us to not only stock our U.S. Olympic team with collegians but also end up winning a lot of medals," Stricklin said. "It is incredibly efficient for USOPC, and it's really successful once our athletes get to the Games."
Since 2017, the USOPC Collegiate Advisory Council has advocated for strengthening Olympic and Paralympic sport programming at the U.S. collegiate level. This 10-member group is made up of administrators from colleges that have historically contributed to Team USA's success at the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Despite all the successes of this model, however, some challenges exist.
"We have a lot of Olympic sports that are in trouble, that are not being prioritized on campuses," Stricklin said.
In his capacity supporting the USOPC, Stricklin helps peer administrators understand how integral college athletics are to the Olympic movement. He also wants to help assess what can be done to ease some of the burden that makes schools consider dropping Olympic sports, such as developing policies that favor a more sustainable model where "these sports and these young people continue to have a voice and have a place where they can train on our campuses."
NCAA President Mark Emmert recently called for NCAA member schools and conference to think differently about how they support Olympic sports.
Influence beyond Team USA
The impact of the U.S. college athletics model on the Olympics isn't just domestic. For Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016, athletes from over 100 different countries competed in the NCAA system prior to competing in the Games. While the USOPC is still crunching the official numbers for the 2020 Games, an ncaa.org database shows more than 1,000 athletes from more than 100 countries competing.
Further, the U.S. remains an attractive avenue for elite international athletes because it is the only place in the world where you can earn a degree and continue to develop as an athlete concurrently.
"It speaks to the importance of the college model helping amplify and sustain sports globally," Wilhelmi said. "(The U.S. collegiate model) is truly a beacon for a lot of countries."
For more on current and former college athletes at the Tokyo Games, visit The Road to Tokyo 2020 on ncaa.org throughout the Olympics.
