Representant Les Etats-Unis d'Amerique: Reforming the USOC Charter

Abstract

This Article proposes a reorganization of Olympic and amateur sports in the States not yet entertained by Congress, the USOC, or the legal academy. Congress should revoke the USOC's charter as a patriotic organization. The USOC should be divided and reformed. The Olympic-related functions of the USOC should be recast into a government corporation. Thus, the financial, political, and legal functions of representing the United States in the Olympic movement would be administered like those of a corporation. The governance of amateur sports should be removed from the USOC's charter and privatized into an association of the individual sports. Part I of this Article discusses the background of the Olympic movement in the United States; the various attempts at USOC reform in 2003; and the role of federal corporations as chartered by Congress. Part 2 analyzes where the source of trouble for the USOC; the changed context of the USOC over the past 25 years; the USOC's structure and its failure; division of the USOC's functions into two new organizations; and the future of the USOC.