The Olympics, Empires and the NCAA. Title IX won the games.

The Paris Olympic games are over, although the Para-Olympics are right around the corner. I spent much of the last few weeks watching Olympic Prime Time. Congratulations to Mike Tirico, Snoop and the NBC crew for bring us a wonderful experience. Jim McKay would have been touched by the moments you highlighted. Good Job!

Two consistent themes were mentioned during both the swimming and track events: the medal count and the the university affiliations of many of the athletes on both Team USA and international athletes. I took the bait and looked deeper into these counts, having spent my life working with numbers for the government as a civil servant and a contractor. For your edification and enjoyment, I have prepared a few tables on each topic.

The first two tables show the medal counts based on political groupings - to highlight what the medal count would be if the African and European Unions fielded teams rather than having their member states do so. There is no surprise that the statistics are skewed toward the EU. 

African Union members were counted there, rather than in BRICS or the Commonwealth. Between being part of the unified military, and economic block or giving consent to changes in the British monarchy, I chose the military alliance.

Non-aligned nations are in South Asia and Middle East and in South America - places where some form of federal government would benefit the people by putting elites against each other.

This breakout is similar to national comparisons regarding educational statistics that put the United States in a low position, to the alarm of those who dislike public education, rather than either disaggregating the U.S. into its 50 separate state educational systems or considering Europe as a single system the way the world looks at the U.S. Perhaps the U.S. needs a more regional form of government with each region having its own Olympic Team. A great many worthy athletes are not allowed to compete - but I will circle back to that point in a bit.

This is a look at the medal count in terms of regional games in the "off years." It provides a bit more visibility as to where the non-aligned teams are from.

The next slice of the data considers all of the NCAA in terms of nations, schools and  - what I am surprised no one has yet published - Athletic Conferences!  These data are based on a listing of medal winners published on the NCAA web page.

Note that I counted individual athletes rather than medals held by teams - so team participants are each counted as getting a medal.

Note that four of France's medals are from UT. Hook horns, baby!

So, a lot of the European Union and Commonwealth medals from that first table are really NCAA medals. 

Note that from this chart, most of the Texas gold medals by NCAA athletes were earned for France. Vive le France, Cheri! 

Schools with less than 5 medals were not listed here, but there were plenty of them. To catch those in a total, it is best to look by conference. Again, I am shocked that this chart has not come out yet (although my not seeing it does not mean it has not been done). This table is, of course, ranked by conference and total medals. 

The ACC and SEC are tied at 77 total, with the B1G a close third at 77. The SEC wins the gold medal count. The Power 4 conferences have 262 of the 328 medals awarded to students and alumni (although the Big 12 was way behind with 27 total - closer to the Ivy League than the top 3).

After finishing these tables, I realized that I did nothing to identify which sports each conference was strong in. I am a social scientist, not a sports reporter. You can look at the NCAA web page and do your own research on which conference is strong in which type of sport (team, swimming, track and other).

A few days ago, I was browsing YouTube and came across a story about how climate change will affect the Olympic movement. The comment was made that most of the world will be priced out of competing due to the lack of climate protected facilities. The comment I made is based on these tables. It was that having advanced training facilities in the US is already the case for success, with the exception of the Chinese teams. 

As warming increases, even more of the training of Olympic athletes will be in the United States. The Olympic movement has become entertainment of the American sports viewing public, with elite athletes sponsored by American capitalism.

A huge chunk of the medals from Paris were the product of training in the member schools of the NCAA, especially in Europe and the Commonwealth. If anyone doubts the impact of Title IX, they should not after looking at these tables. 

The NCAA is now the bulwark against all sport being a wholly owned venture of the capitalist system (at least to the extent that the University system is not dominated by capitalism - although the argument can be made that it always has been). Again, 262 of the 328 NCAA medals are from Power 4 conferences.