One Man’s Opinion: Georgia to Get Quite a Kick By Bill Crane In 1972, the then-United States Olympic Committee (USOC) relocated its headquarters from New York City to Colorado Springs, Colorado. In the following decades, twenty-five amateur sports federations and training programs (each privately financed) also relocated their athletic training programs, athletes, and training staff to Colorado Springs. In 1978, a federal statute, the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports act, was enacted, creating a federally chartered nonprofit corporation that does not receive federal government financial support (other than for a select set of Paralympic military programs). The renamed United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) received exclusive rights to use and authorize the use of all Olympicrelated images, marks, and trademarks. The USOPC then licenses those rights to sponsors and selected manufacturers as their primary revenue source, along with television broadcast rights to telecast the Winter and Summer Olympic Games every four years and related national and international trial competitions that precede each Olympic and Paralympic Games. Most other countries in the world, all of the Eastern Bloc, and our major sports competitors are funded by their governments, in all or part, with gifted athletes often used as props or elements of propaganda campaigns between Olympic Games. During the late 60s and early 70s, the National Professional Soccer League, and later the North American Soccer League, were attempting to launch a national professional soccer league across America. The Atlanta Chiefs were Georgia and the southeast’s entry in that league, including a season in 1973 as the Atlanta Apollos. Metro Atlanta and Georgia more successfully launched soccer as an amateur youth sport at the time, which continues growing to this day. I played on YMCA and AAA high school soccer teams from early elementary through high school. I met many of the Atlanta Chiefs, attended a few of their player training camps, and even met global soccer star Pelé at an exhibition game. Those years of play instigated my soccer fandom, which lasts through today. Several other attempts at a national professional soccer league came
October 2023 Our Town Gwinnett
and went until Major League Soccer (MLS) established a twenty-nineteam league (twenty-six in the U.S. and three in Canada). The MLS is a men’s professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) and headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, not too far from the headquarters of Major League Baseball and the NFL. The league and MLS team owners operate under a shared revenue model, and all teams have a salary cap on their rosters. Many youth soccer players from earlier decades are also continually fueling that fan base for the sport across the nation. Following that earlier example by the USOC relocating from New York to Colorado Springs, the headquarters of the USSF will be relocating from Chicago to Atlanta, thanks in large measure to a $50-million pledge and gift from Arthur Blank. U.S. Soccer plans to construct the nation’s first ever purpose-built and designated National Training Center for soccer, to be utilized by all twenty-seven of U.S. Soccer’s National Teams, as well as additional facilities for U.S. Soccer’s nine Extended National Teams (ENTs), including teams with athletes who have Cerebral Palsy, the Deaf and Power Soccer National Teams, and including locker rooms and training facilities designed to maximize accessibility for those players. In 2026, Atlanta and the Mercedes-Benz Stadium will play host to the FIFA World Cup Soccer Championship. The World Cup has a larger fan base and typically draws more international visitors than the Olympic Games. Though foreign-born players, mainly from Latin America and Europe, continue to fill the rosters of most MLS teams, often identified as the most skilled players, the U.S. has continually been upgrading the caliber of play and talent of our home-grown stock. Atlanta United operates a farm team system and a second franchise, frequently including a higher percentage of native-born American players. These new state-of-the-art U.S.-based training facilities coming to Atlanta should only expand the number and depth of those American players. The USSF headquarters and training center will require a large swath of land, leaning more towards a suburban or ex-urban site with interstate and quick airport access. The economic boon will later be measured in Continued on page 22
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