A relatively routine piece of NCAA rules-making last year provided a college athlete with an extraordinary reward Friday night.
Singapore’s Joseph Schooling, set to be a junior at the University of Texas, won the gold medal in the 100-meter butterfly at the Rio Olympics, where his competition included superstars Michael Phelps, Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh and South Africa’s Chad Le Clos -- who all amazingly tied for second.
The achievement – Singapore’s first medal in Rio -- qualified him for an award of about $740,000 from the Singapore National Olympic Council that he will be able to keep without forfeiting his remaining college swimming eligibility.
Prior to the NCAA rules change in 2015, that would not have been possible.
In 2001, the NCAA’s Division I schools adopted a rule that allowed athletes to accept money under the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Operation Gold program, which provides cash based on athletes’ performances at the Olympics or, in non-Olympic years, a world championships or similar competition.
But, according to the rationale statement that accompanied the 2015 rules change: “Unlike other legislation related to benefits from the USOC or national governing body, the exception for the Operation Gold program does not apply to international student-athletes. Establishing a similar exception for benefits provided by international equivalents of the USOC … promotes student-athlete well-being and fairness among elite level student-athletes and reduces compliance monitoring concerns.”
The proposal, first offered in September 2013, wound its way through the NCAA’s multi-step legislative process and was approved by the Division I Board of Directors without any schools subsequently calling for its repeal.
It became effective Aug. 1, 2015 – but it became really effective Friday night.
Schooling’s performance triggered a payout from what is called the Multi-Million Dollar Award Programme — so named because athletes in an individual Olympic event can win up to $1 million (Singapore) for a gold medal and a team can win up to $2 million (Singapore). The money comes primarily from a Singapore National Olympic Council sponsorship deal with Tote Board, a company comprising a variety of wagering enterprises.
Under the incentive program’s rules, Schooling will have to give 20% of his award money to the Singapore Swimming Association, but he’ll still be left with a tidy sum.
Schooling went to Texas after attending the Bolles School in Jacksonville, Fla.
He has won multiple NCAA championships, dominated competition at the Southeast Asian Games and Asian Games, won a silver medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and a bronze at the 2015 world championships. But that world championship medal came against a field that didn’t include Phelps, who had been suspended from completion by USA Swimming following a drunken-driving arrest.
Friday night’s performance in Rio fully validated Schooling – and he joined a group of Longhorns men’s swimmers who played a role in the U.S. team’s gold-medal in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay. Townley Haas swam in the final, Jack Conger and Clark Smith in the preliminary. All three will get Operation Gold awards of at least $25,000 that are funded by the USOC and USA Swimming.
