North Carolina People; Dr. LeRoy Walker, President Emeritus US Olympic Committee

Leaving friends Happy Fourth of July to you this weekend. The great Olympic spectacle on television that we all enjoy so much will begin in about a month and there's no one in our state more qualified to talk to us about this great and wonderful international than Dr. Laura Walker who was the head of United States Olympic Committee a self-avowed successful Olympic coach. Let me talk with you second funding for North Carolina people is made possible in part by teachers. Mark called me a wealthy man and by contributions from you when See TV viewers like

Roy I should've told folks it's good that you were transferred in say central and then you're here so glad to be worth writing and so many other things together like that that I ever made of love. Yes I've had a lot of fun but I've got to be ready integrationist Tex off next month. Well recently we were over talk it was Jacques Rogge and some of the officials and some of our friends it known for a long time in Athens and they wanted to list some additional problems. And my comment at that time Bill was we have about a year. So let's not take only animal problems let's try to do something about some of the solutions to these problems because the games will be like and I will open with opening ceremonies on the 13th of August. Several things are going to be weak there. The

venue's will not be up to the Sydney standard but it did make a difference. You have to think about the athletes we've lost along the concept to begin with decades ago and how do we effectively put the games on to the satisfaction of governing bodies to the satisfaction of the national epic committees and simply hope for the best. They really upset about security and it's a question of how much money you want to put into it to still be in a quandary as to whether or not that money is going to successfully defend all the athletes and officials and spectators ready. It would open whether we are ready or not. And the question is since we are no longer dealing with the laurel wreath concept how we can keep it under control to get it up to the level of closure on that great day when we start thinking about China.

You and I and everybody else who enjoys your letters have been reading a lot about Marion Jones as a problem. Now this time you're doing this problem together. Tim Montgomery What is the issue here Roy about steroids. What what are we trying to do here. Well I'm concerned for say one thing in particular that would marry and sell to the athletes and that is the time issue that is going to create the problem. We will be out in Sacramento in early July to have our pick Chiles. If this gets into a court situation whether you are innocent or guilty. He will never complete that with a full step should have to go through the governing body has not made it in his statement about it which is unfortunate because you have to start with your governing body and once those hearings have been heard you have to go to the National Olympic Committee and they make a decision and they pass that decision on to the day World Court deals with drugs

and over in the corner with all the control. Here's the I will see the international committee can say I don't accept any of that and those athletes are not eligible to participate in the games. And that takes time. That's going to say working through that long cycle how in the world can that be done by August 13. And this is the problem. I've said this over and over again and one of the things that nobody seems to want to read that parenthesis is that BALCO you remember Marion said I've never been positive. Well that Cole has manufactured steroids it is non-detectable And so this creates another problem in terms of the hearing and the cycle. We have to do some things now because you could be on the steroids that is non-detectable and have that advantage which we try to disallow by the rule in the first place. And

so we have to do other things and we are looking. Given what you said now does the Olympic structure go with that great American principle of justice that you're innocent until you're proven guilty and therefore you should be left alone as a sort of the way they should. But the problem is if you have a positive on the A sample you're really a guilty by what a sample does reveal. We have said that often to the international committee and to various governing bodies and they said we don't care. We don't care if you do not have the hearing. If you come to the conclusion and move it through those steps to get to the sea we will do things where the steroids positive is not the issue. And this is creating a real furor and now because they can hear people testify I don't know what Marian's former

husband will say. Her sense there was her money that bought the steroids that he was using. So it's a very delicate thing and it's going to play havoc with us in a few weeks in Sacramento which means the trials as a whole process still anchored an amateur version of the some of the stars get so much money for maintenance and support it. I remember one time you were talking to me about Mr. Moses and what it took to keep him an amateur station. Well decades ago I was really in favor of some support for athletes within the boundaries of amateur sports. And I remember very well it was in Greece that I argued for what we refer to them as a trust fund and that trust fund was to help athletes with expenses to help them with the general living conditions and so forth.

And it wasn't controlled by agents. We had several banks that took care of this money and doled it out as the individuals actually needed it in terms of their living conditions and going to school. And that trust fund situation now has evolved to the control of agents sponsorships big money salaries in excess of you would almost think that they were going to retirement as a as a as a freshman and that now has they evolved into something that is almost uncontrollable that this moment has commercialism then invaded the Olympics to an excessive degree and excessive is a moderate term. We will never go back to what I used to call the laurel wreath concept when the athletes competed as you well know at the beginning of the games. I think it as the Games opened and our great

benefactor that started the games he wasn't thinking about money all the athlete wanted to do was to get the laurel wreath put over his head for his victory. That exist no longer. And so now it's how much appearance money would you give the athlete. And the classic example that you look at now is there used to be six indoor meets in New York than none except the Mille Rose games and they have sold the games out to another benefactor. And those sponsors there were three in the know meets in Philadelphia. Then this is just in track and field and now television is controlling most of the operations. And it's until some one can convince the educators. If you read the story about the gymnastics mothers

and how they started this almost when the young daughter is just out of diapers. Force them to compete when they're not even when they're injured. It's it's worse because it is so pervasive that institutions helping it by permitting the athletic department to be department to its own liking into its own control. You will know who the presidents are. Only if you read a book about the institution but everybody would know the coaches and the players and how much money is being paid to those and in comparison to what the president the chance of the universe to maybe I will start to ask is probably down I want to go back to something earlier in your career move forward. The college scene literally for a minute. I was in Miami at that

famous meeting and Proposition 48 which you were the principal author of And spokesman for the fight that took place on the floor began to put an academic requirement into eligibility to play. Where do you get the motivation for that and you've stuck by this rule of life all your career academics academics that couldn't be something make something of yourself. Was that a motivation that you developed out of your own career where you were successful as you've been. It was Bill and I believe that the statement that I heard Conant make at a meeting in Hollywood decades ago. That there are more teachable moments in sport and athletics than any other discipline in a university. Now he doesn't mean that it's better what he was trying to get over it was a team situation.

The whole ability to get the best out of your body to when you said goals for what you're trying to do in sport. That setting goals is an art and the key is trying to set them at the right level not so high that I can make excuses if I don't reach them because Excuses are the expression of the untalented to begin with and not so low that I can achieve them without giving my very best. And I have believed in that because. I was reared to believe that you feel better about things that you have to really work hard for. And I've always thought that if you put the pressure and I mean pressure in the looses sense so to speak on an athlete with the rules and the expectations and the goals that they will meet them as long as you make

excuses for them they will think then they can rely on the excuses. And this is what I thought the Proposition 48. You know if you remember it was not looking for academic scholarship. It was almost a minimum standard. And I thought that study they should not and they said well we're trying to get this because African-Americans need to have a better chance. But I was I was insult to begin with because I think that African-American but was it eight hundred at the time and 400 for signing your name signed your name. You know that and that creates a dilemma as you try to deal with the young athlete. They've already put me in a position of helplessness in terms of my own ability to really try to work hard to achieve and keep in mind this is only the beginning that education is to prepare you for life. That was the least that

beginning of what all. Well I tried to achieve once I had left this sacred ground of the universe. Now you and I served together for more than 10 years old thing called the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. You saw heard and listened to all the debate and heard not one person who appeared before you would be in that process. As said all is well in college board out of 100 witnesses that. But that's bad enough but then we began to discover for example the graduation rate today. The ROI in the last final four three of the four teams in that competition had a graduation rate of less than 30 percent. Now what's it going to take to begin to make us understand what we're doing here. What do you think's got to happen.

They've got to find some way to achieve a balance of. My goal and what it takes for me to reach my goal without being hostage to the costs that it is that is almost prevalent universally what it takes to an athletic program. Now on that point you know we heard time and again out of the hundred fourteen institutions that play intercollegiate sport maybe 10 of them make any money. That startled you might it does me. It really does and I think that until they come to some agreement that I'm not going to build a stadium that seats 100 to 15000 people and I have to make the adjustments of the cost the interest rates. I mean putting somebody at risk for the next 30

years to try to pay that debt off because of the expenses accruing all the time the salaries are getting bigger and bigger. The coaching situation now and I'm doing a little history on the CIA double They told me and five of the coaches that made it to the first tournament and several years after coached basketball and they also came from football and they had about a half a dozen maximally if they were really in the elite class of coaches. And now you have coaches by opposition is no such thing is in football that you're playing offense and defense anymore. You're specialist and it costs and so you Bill you imbed it now because of the stadium where need so many people. I remember that when they had it take out it clips and I paid 10

20 and the happy a ton. And they have gone up from 15000 capacity stadium decades ago to seventy two thousand seats. Well that's a burden for the university. And the thing that bothers me most is they have said that this is a university function and so we've had to balance the budget. The budget cut is very rarely it the place where the expense is occurring and so I'll drop something off in my department. I won't renew some contracts and then that margin of error begins to get larger and larger. And now as you know that less than 20 percent of the major institutions in the black. And sometimes we list all the expenses that are really there you know. Well you know we made the proposal in the

NCW accepted restructuring. But the president back in charge. You've just seen Todd Turner's efforts at academic reform which was inspired from this commission. How do you feel about that new way of measuring progress isn't it important. More often and the end of the year to say to young person look this is where you are in your academic program. You've got to do better or you're doing fine or whatever you know. And you know to some extent we've been influenced by the courts also. I remember very well that a few years back when I was coaching you could not go to the pros until your class finished. Right. And now we're only a proving ground for the eventual selection. You had. I don't know how many freshman and high school students that went to the lookout that we called it and the selection process for the pros high schools and so now

that is kind so much out of control and when the courts change that rule because they say that a person has the right to be able to make a living so to speak. The law read concept without concern about that when Peter Cooper there for us has started the games and we've gone so far over toward the marketplace that our whole attitude about the thing has changed. The minimum standard to graduate. We have made so many changes and add. Taken the marketplace concept that it's going to take some real change by the U.S. to AA and the courts. The young man Clairette from Ohio State got as far as the Supreme Court to look at his situation as to why he didn't even

finish his freshman year as a matter of fact that he cannot go to the pros. And fortunately this particular court said no we're not going to give you permission. But he was going to be accepted by the NFL. That's how far to go. Yeah. When I last get to a happier note this development you've been undertaking down at East Carolina University. What's it all about. What are you trying to do. Well these two prongs to that one thing here in my old community I started something called afterschool Academy. We probably spend less time in school than most industrialized nations around the world. And I asked the superintendent once why do we then have that and would and delegate have given us a very serious and litho report about what they refer to as the gaps between it's an ethnic situation and that everybody should have a

chance. And we should put a lot of money there. But it can start in your junior year and so introduce something called the afterschool academy that we expect the students who have not made the grade and now they are putting a lot of reliance on the test for you to move to the next level that we need to do something about it. And there were two factors they one we had to change a lot of our mode of teaching and not just holding class and looking at what other actual gaps and deal with those gaps and usually they were in math and English and some of the other core courses that East Carolina. I wanted to try to reduce the gap among our coaches because they are depending upon what I called a stopwatch in the bullhorn just yell and to work harder. But you have to try to train the people who want to work harder at so to speak. And

so I started these counted because number one they had more of the kind of Staff that I needed and the bomb mechanics and I sized physiology and it is going exceptionally well. We have it. Large number of athletes from other countries at least about 15 or 20 countries that are trying to say I don't need steroids I don't need a support mechanism. If I can coach better and if I can see the problems I can design the training profile to make the athlete better and a better performance. And it's no longer a matter of just coaching. You've got to analyze and you try to can you believe you're trying to save 100 of a second in a hundred metres and you can set a separate number one and number six place a hundredth of a second because of the new technology and timing you know.

And so it's going well. We don't accept any athlete without his coach because we can't heal all the problems in the two week period and we need the coach they had to understand what is what do we do in this profile for the athlete. I remember the time when you have an indoor mate in that 50 yard dash. They all came down it's like fingers on the hand nobody pick second place. You couldn't let me do it that's why it's so much but now it's so electric electronically. Well what are you up to next year. You're not going to journey to Athens this summer i know but are you going to keep up and keep an eye on him all the way. You recall that one of the things that we talked about the Knight Commission. And Jay Leno makes a sort of joke out of it. And when he does those on the street interviews and he has some of the most simple questions that I would call just beginning civics. It's cool

that you should know. And these are people that are working and living in the community and they can't answer them. They don't know anything about the government. They don't know what the Senate does. They don't have much regard for the election process. And so I want us to come back even to the whole Peace Corps thing where we said these fundamentals are good and we take them over to a broad broad. I think we should have a educational Peace Corps volunteer Peace Corps something right here that we really believe in and we get the people starting probably at the elementary level. This is the kind of thing that's going to be important as you try to contribute to the community in which you. A little but dear friend you've always been a teacher for all that I have said Giraffe know you've worked with you and you haven't lessened a bit at all

right here in this conversation and I wish it could go on but thank you for what you do for what you've done for the Olympics all over the world and what you do for college sports and what you do for North Carolinians. It's been a joy to see you know. Ladies and gentlemen you've enjoyed this visit again. It was a great North Carolinian. Dr. Leroy Walker until next week funding for North Carolina people is made possible in part by what just about managing well. BAIER great deal signs the wealth managed to learn from the world around us. Together we can explore common possibilities and

by contributions from you when See TV viewers like you.