On the last day of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, Kyle Snyder made both history and $250,000. He became the youngest American to win an Olympic wrestling gold medal, and USA Wrestling’s Living The Dream Medal Fund awards any wrestling gold medalist a quarter of a million dollars.
When Snyder left Brazil, he flew straight to Columbus, Ohio, to begin his junior year at Ohio State, diving headlong into classwork he missed. In the winter and spring, he plans to defend his NCAA national championship, wrestling again for the Buckeyes after accepting that $250,000 from an outside organization – all within the parameters of NCAA rules.
This past week, several Olympic medal winners returned to campus just as college football season opens, and the monetary rewards they reaped from their accomplishments highlight a contrast between how the NCAA views them and the players filling those stadiums. Athletes competing for their country are free to collect prize money from specific donors. Athletes responsible for bringing massive revenue to their schools are barred from receiving any money beyond their scholarship and a small stipend.
“College athletics,” Mike Novogratz said, “has become so confusing.”
Novogratz, a former hedge fund manager, spearheaded the Living The Dream fund before the 2012 Olympics. An ex-wrestler at Princeton, Novogratz became a billionaire as a principal investor at Fortress Investor Group and used his fortune to benefit USA Wrestling.
Before the 2012 London Olympics, Novogratz and other former wrestlers on Wall Street created the fund as an extension of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s “Operation Gold” program. The USOC pays athletes $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze.
The Living The Dream Medal Fund amplified the rewards, paying not only the $250,000 for gold but also $50,000 for silver and $25,000 for bronze. Wrestlers also receive cash for podium appearances in the world championships: $50,000 for gold, $25,000 for silver and $15,000 for bronze.
“It’s a good way to inject energy into the sport and send the message that people care about the sacrifice people were making,” Novogratz said. “It’s mostly meant as a way to make wrestlers feel special. We’re the highest-paid medal in the Olympics.
“It’s a very nice thing to do. I don’t think Kyle Snyder or [fellow 2016 gold medalist] Helen Maroulis wrestle for that kind of thing. People who put themselves through the hell of wrestling have a very different calling. It’s a Spartan lifestyle. It’s a brutally tough sport. It’s a real reward for someone who put themselves through that.”
When he helped start the fund, Novogratz assumed he wouldn’t have to worry about NCAA guidelines because an NCAA wrestler winning a medal at the Olympics was so rare. But to be sure, he and USA Wrestling reached out to the NCAA to clear it. Novogratz figured the reward would have to be put into a trust until the wrestler’s collegiate career was over.
He found, though, that the NCAA had special dispensation for Olympic athletes. In the NCAA’s words, provided by spokeswoman Stacey Osburn:
“College athletes who are representing their country may accept prize money from their country’s Olympics governing body [in the United States, that would be the United States Olympic Committee]. There is no limit to the award money that the governing body can provide for the Olympics.”
The rule is as simple as that. Katie Ledecky will swim for Stanford after earning more than $100,000 from the USOC in Rio. Joseph Schooling received the equivalent of about $740,000 from Singapore’s Olympic governing body and maintained his eligibility to swim at Texas, where he will be a junior this year.
And Snyder will return to Ohio State’s wresting room $250,000 richer. Under NCAA guidelines, Snyder also was able to accept the $50,000 he won at last year’s world championships.
“For his parents, obviously, we feel great about it because it’s just knowing he’s getting a little bit of a jump on his finances,” said Steve Snyder, Kyle’s father. “It’s been a great learning experience for him because he invested a good bit of the money he won in 2015, and he’s got some other plans this time around. He’s not sure, but he’s definitely going to invest the money, whether it be in equities or real estate.”
At Ohio State, where athletics generated more than $167 million dollars in revenue in 2015, other athletes will not have the same opportunity. Asked to explain the NCAA’s rationale behind the rule, Osburn declined.
“NCAA members created the rule so we have nothing further at this time,” she wrote in an email.
There are, of course, distinctions between Olympic reward programs and rewarding revenue-sport athletes with cash prizes. Football and basketball players of Snyder’s world-class caliber will have opportunities to make millions of dollars after their collegiate careers, whereas wrestlers – along with swimmers, fencers and athletes in similar non-revenue sports – will never have similar chances to cash in.
By allowing athletes to receive money only through the USOC and the individual sport governing bodies under its umbrella, the NCAA also limits influence on collegiate competition. “There were no Princeton guys who won,” Novogratz said jokingly.
Then again, money for athletic performance is money for athletic performance, regardless of where it comes from or when the performance takes place. Nobody would begrudge Snyder’s financial gain for hard work and grand success. But wouldn’t an Ohio State booster offering a $250,000 award to any player who won a Heisman Trophy be pretty much the same thing, except not wrapped in the flag?
“One hundred percent,” Novogratz said.
