The first Olympic Games of the new millennium are history. The GSJ's Mary Jo Curtis talked with Howard Chudacoff, Brown's faculty athletic representative to the NCAA, about the difficulty of achieving Olympic success and the poor ratings for NBC's coverage of the games. Chudacoff is also a professor of history and a faculty adviser to the Brown women's basketball team.
I would not make too much out of the lower TV ratings. One problem, of course, is the time difference between here and Australia, which removes the ability to view events as they are happening. Another is the saturation of competing entertainment that TV viewers have. A third is perhaps the over-emphasis on patriotism; that is, NBC pounds the American side into people's heads so much that they may be either blasé or too confident of American victory - and therefore feel that watching is unnecessary.
I suspect that the end of the Cold War may have some effect as well. We no longer are battling against the Soviet Union, which by the '70s and '80s was winning more medals than the United States, and China does not yet appear to be as big a competitor as the USSR was. Thus the patriotic fervor does not seem quite so high-pitched.
Given the training required to reach Olympic-level competition, are its successful athletes really still amateurs?
I think this issue relates to the previous question about reduced viewership. I suspect that some Americans now see our Olympic athletes all as professionals, who, since they are professionals, are expected to win medals - and therefore fail when they don't win. There are no American underdogs to root for.
A number of Brown students and alumni competed in Australia. Are universities a breeding ground for Olympic athletes? Can an athlete-scholar be competitive in the Olympics, or does he/she have to postpone college to train intensively enough to succeed in an international arena?
It seems very difficult now for an Olympic athlete - except, perhaps in a sport like wrestling - to train solely in college. Even the most successful and intensive college programs are not enough; an Olympic athlete must train full time and therefore cannot be a student. Even at Brown, we have the example of someone like Tara Mounsey taking a leave of absence two years before her Olympic event (ice hockey) so that she can train with her team. This is all a part of professionalization and the extraordinary pressure that the American sports community puts on ultimate success. It is rewarding in one sense, disappointing in another.