The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) announced its new 11-person Board of Directors last June, and three people with Ivy League backgrounds were chosen to join Chairman Peter Ueberroth on the Board -- Dr. Harold Shapiro, former President of Princeton, Mary McCagg, a former Harvard rower, and Anita L. DeFrantz, who earned her law degree at the Penn Law School.

The Board’s appointment is part of the most sweeping governance transition in the history of the USOC. Included in the changes are a reduction in the size of the Board of Directors from 125 to 11 and a reduction in the number of standing committees from 23 to 4.

Shapiro is President Emeritus and Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton. He was elected as Princeton's 18th President on April 27, 1987 and served in that capacity until June 2001. Shapiro was a member of the University of Michigan faculty in the Department of Economics from 1964 to 1988. In 1977, he was named Vice President for Academic Affairs and Chairman of the Committee on Budget Administration. In 1980, Shapiro was elected President of the University of Michigan and Chairman of its Board of Regents.

Shapiro recently took time from his busy schedule to speak with us about his new role in the USOC.

Q: Now the governing body has been narrowed down into a small group, so what are the main benefits of a smaller organization?

A: I think it will bring more coherence to government and also more accountability.  My own assessment is that the Board previously was much too large to be manageable and therefore lacked, in my view, the appropriate motivation of all its members.  It just lacked the structure for accountability and for coherent governance. 

Q: Do you think there could be more challenges with just a few people having to focus on all the governing bodies?

A: I’m learning as I’m going and I don’t consider myself an expert, but my own view is that amongst the national governing bodies, there are some in terrific shape that are very well governed, they are running their responsibilities extremely well. Others, which are less well governed, are assuming their responsibilities less effectively. So I think the national governing boards are absolutely central to the sports and some of them are in great shape, others, I think, just like the U.S. Olympic committee, need to be thoughtfully reorganized or thoughtfully restructured in some way.

Q: Does the Board have input in that?

A: That is something we ought to do in partnership with the national governing board. This new structure means we have to learn from each other, trust each other, and try to do things together in an effective partnership together for the athletes in the Olympics.

Q: Do you know many people already with the governing bodies?

A: I do not know a lot, but I have been in touch with quite a few by mail and I have been very gratified with how the heads of these NGBs have reached out.  Most of them have written me and invited me to trials and things like than, so I have enormous good will towards them.  Most of them have just been doing their best for the athletes and the Olympic movement.  So we're going to have to learn a lot from each other, but I think it is a new day and it is a signal that accountability and transparency are two of the important watchwords going forward.

Q: What do you think some of the main challenges are going to be for you guys, not necessarily a month from now but in the future?

A: The Games in Athens take a lot of our attention right now, but these are short-term issues.  A lot of things have already been resolved, but we still have important responsibilities for these Games. The Board, I believe, has spent quite a bit of time addressing that but we will gradually have to shift our emphasis towards more longer term issues which have to do with, first of all, governance issues and mission issues, that is what should be the mission of the United States Olympic Committee and its various constituent parts. Obviously there are issues out there in the newspaper everyday that need to be addressed having to do with drugs and other methods of enhancing performance. Which ones are legitimate within our concept of athletic competition and which ones aren’t. So obviously I’m learning. 

Bioethics is an area in which I work in and teach in so that’s an area that comes naturally to me having to think about the ethical issues that surround enhancing performance by new technologies of one kind or another. And I think that's an important issue internationally, an important issue for youth sports. I think it’s an extremely important issue, period.  I’m hoping that we’ll be able to take some leadership in that area and not be dragged along kicking and screaming but that’s a longer-term issue. I certainly fully back the current policies, but that’s a matter that needs our attention for going forward.

Q: You mention the long-term mission, does the USOC strive to produce more winners or to promote sports as a lifelong activity?

A: Well, let me put it this way, first of all I don’t want to sound too much like an expert. I’m, relatively speaking, new to this, but it’s more important to me that we do the right thing rather than winning medals. I think medals are important. This is sport, this is competition. Hopefully you have fun here but it’s not just for fun.  These are elite athletes working at the very highest frontier of performing achievement and so winning is important.  But winning under the appropriate circumstances is much more important. That is, playing by the rules is as big a part of sport as the desire to win.  We’re not just about winning, we’re trying to win something in the context of the rules set down.  Fair competition is what we’re all about, which means there’s a clear set of rules which we all agree to obey.  So I think obeying the rules is the most important thing, but you hope to be able to win.

Q: Do you think there is a way to make it more of an even playing field in terms of what we may have compared to what other countries have?

A: I wouldn’t put it as a big problem, but I think it’s an issue that needs attention. For example, I was told at our last meeting that the USOC has put up a training facility in Athens, which, I am told, is the best training facility of any country available in Athens.  That is, whatever they have at home, the U.S. has gone through a lot of trouble to set up a training facility so the athletes can train with their need to workout.  Does that give them an advantage?  Well of course it does, so one could ask, well just like we have an international Olympic village, shouldn’t we just have an international training facility, and people have to go there to train? 

I think those are interesting issues, which I haven’t fully thought through.  But, as I look at it, there’s a genetic lottery, which we all accept.  Some people have better genetics for one particular sport than others, those people will have an advantage and there is nothing at the moment that we can do about it.  We just have to accept this, we know that some of us are never going to be whatever, and we accept that.  That’s not fair in some sense, but we accept that.  And the question is, what other things are we willing to accept.  Are we willing to accept the fact that some people had better coaching than others? There are some where even if you had the same facilities everywhere in the world some cultures are better than others.  And I think there are some differences we just have to accept an over time that will go up and down.  Sometimes you’ll have a better coach and sometimes I’ll have a better coach. I think it goes up and down over a long period of time so I don’t think it’s very worrisome.  The question of facilities or the question of time, like how much time elite athletes have to devote to their sport is very different by sport and different by country.  So historically speaking, when the Soviet Union began mobilizing itself for international competition essentially it put its elite athletes full time and supported them through the state.  We didn’t do that for a long time, and now we’re just recently doing that. The amateur professional thing has gone out the window, so I think we’re at a point of transition here and I just don’t have any settled view on just what differences are acceptable and what aren’t.

Q: You mentioned the amateurism for a lot of sports is kind of gone, what do you think are some of the main characteristics of the Olympic movement? 

A: Well, there are obviously still some amateurs, but there is some kid of act of Congress which has to do with the Olympic committee, and it defines amateur as those eligible for international competition, so it sort of sidesteps the issue which is probably the most reasonable thing to do in the current circumstances.

I think that sports, all kinds of sports, are becoming more and more professionalized in every sense. Not only the sense that money changes hands, legitimately, I’m not talking illegitimately.  But, everything is professionalized.  Take the book The Amateur about rowers.  They had to sleep six to a room in some cases to go to  (the Olympic) trials.   That image is going away.  Boathouses are totally different places that what they used to be.  Coaching also keeps going lower and lower into the system. People are being coached in high school in no ways like they were before.  Little league baseball itself is becoming more and more professionalized.  Not in the sense that the players get paid, but the resources that get poured into it.  Everybody gets uniforms, the carry their proud display of whoever it is that sponsoring them.  The facilities are much betters now and they have professionals take care of the facilities.  They actually pay umpires, and it’s not parents (umpiring games) anymore. It’s still parents coaching, but even that is changing. The professionalization of all sport is just proceeding at an enormously rapid pace so I don’t know how one could fight that. So the old fashioned idea of amateur is gone. 

Q: As a fan how do you feel about your role, since this year it will be the biggest sporting event of all time, and four years from now that will be the biggest sporting event of all time?

A: I’ll tell you why I agreed to join the Board.  It had to do with two small things.  One is I think that the way the Olympic movement structures athletics can have an important influence on young people. Sport is enormously important to many young people, and how the Olympic movement deals with sports has an important impact on them.  Second, and I want to be very modest in this way, it’s one modest avenue for international cooperation in an era in which we badly need that.  I don’t want to exaggerate it.  It can’t solve the world’s political problems, but it is sort of interesting in a way what happens if we work together on this. 

We go to the Olympics and we may have to run against the Cubans or anybody else who shows up. Anyone who represents a country, whether it’s Iraq or whomever, we can somehow do this without shooting each other. So I think that it can play same useful role, without trying to exaggerate what it can do.  Those are the two things on my mind.

Q: Do you think working at Princeton and at Michigan, two schools with such high academic standards and are successful in athletics, does that prepare you for this role?

A: Well, I think it’s certainly help. I learned a lot about athletics, both as president of Michigan and president here, so I wouldn’t want to exaggerate it. I also think it helps that I was on the executive board of the NCAA for some time.  So I think I know a good deal about college athletics. Of course, around 85 percent of the Olympians have been through the NCAA.

Q: Is it really that high?

A: That’s what I was told.  There’s now a joint task force, the NCAA and the USOC because a number of universities are dropping some sports and the Olympic committee is concerned about where these athletes would have a venue to improve themselves and provide competition. So, the NCAA has been a major source.  But my own view, however, is that that will not continue in a lot of other sports because there already are sports like tennis where someone like Andy Roddick can’t go to college because the competition isn’t good enough. And the same thing is true in some extent in swimming as well as in track. But, you have to remember that it’s only the U.S. In Europe universities have never been the source.  Athletes have always just gone pro or gone through a different mechanism. Only in the U.S., Canada, and to some extent Great Britain and Australia, the English speaking countries, so to speak, (are elite athletes going to college.)  In Europe it has been common to turn pro as a teenager for a long time. 

Q: What are you most excited about for the 2004 Games? Anything in particular when you go over there?

A: I’m excited about the spectacle and I’ll just try to get a feel for what it’s like. I hope to see some early round competitions because I’m going in the beginning of the Games. I still have to get back and teach this fall.