Athletes to USA Swimming and the USOC: Please, sir, can I have some more?

1000-years ago the western world had only three employment options: Peasant, religious, or royalty. Some 300-years later technology, but mostly the bubonic plague, changed all that. That is when the peasant class said to the royal class, "I am not going to plow your fields today because tomorrow I may be dead." Hence, the royal class was forced to pay the peasants to do the work that they needed completed so as to support the society around them and avoid anarchy and starvation. Capitalism and the Renaissance followed thereafter.

USA Swimming is a government certified monopoly and all the athletes within their umbrella are their "peasant class." What gives the governing body so much power is not their government sanction to be a monopoly but rather the exploitation of how much these athletes love their country and want to swim.

Garrett McCaffrey wrote a disturbing article for Swimming World in regards to the economic disparity between governing body officials and the athletes that bring in their salaries.

From Swimming World:

One year ago, the Pro Swimming Task Force was formed. Its main objective: financial support for the professional swimmer through the Athlete Partnership Plan. Had it passed, the original plan would have increased the annual $21,000 stipend and extended the reach of financial support from 42 members to 55 members of the national team. All athletes who placed in the top six in any Olympic event at U.S. National Team Trials, who also are top 16 in the world, would have made $50,000 this year from USA Swimming and the United States Olympic Committee. The proposal would have accomplished the goal of financial support for professional swimmers, but yesterday it fizzled out at the United States Aquatic Sports Convention.


[...] "What went wrong with the Athlete Partnership Plan?"

In the end it appears that the deal breaker came down to name and image rights. The athletes' agents argued that the athletes already do enough for the governing bodies with their name and image rights, and the 2008 profits for USA Swimming and the USOC would back the agents' argument. [..]

[Link]

My Take: USA Swimming, CEO Chuck Wielgus makes close to $700,000 a year. Coach Mark Schubert makes $250,000 or more. God knows what USOC, IOC and FINA execs make?

Mathematically it has come to a point where swimmers should forget going pro and accept a scholarship instead. They should forget swimming all year long as well and devote those six, long, hours, each day during the summer and the off season enhancing themselves, their families, their churches and communities. I think by doing so would not only reap lifelong economic and social benefits but swimming would remain a positive, life long, recreation rather than another burnout story as illustrated by Ian Thorpe, Alexander Popov, and our own, Michael Phelps.

Take a swimmer like, Dagny Knutson, who has effectively lost the potentiality of a $200,000 scholarship simply for the potentiality of a gold medal and supreme aquatic glory for our country? Is it an exaggeration to say that a gold medal won't mean a thing to the average American some 6-minutes after her event?

All the swimmers wanted; just 55-0f-them in total, was a middle class income. They won't get it but the suits in the NGBs will get that and more.

The video above is a scene from the movie, Oliver Twist, with Oliver asking for more "swill" for both himself and the other kids in an industrial age orphanage. they got none!