COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- There is no question that the U.S. men’s gymnastics team leaves Paris with more than a bronze medal: they are coming home with an increased attention on their sport.
"It always starts to get me more excited. Watching the Olympics, you see what the human body is capable of doing,” Ohio State gymnast Kameron Nelson said. “It just makes me want to work even harder to be one of those top athletes."
Kameron and the Ohio State Buckeyes went up against three of those top athletes this year at the collegiate level: Paul Juda and Frederick Richard competed at Michigan this season, and Asher Hong was at Stanford. All three of those Olympians were in Columbus in April for the NCAA National Championships, with Hong and the Cardinal taking home the title.
Seeing them all on the Olympic podium just a few months later made things much more real for Nelson, who has also competed as part of the U.S. National Team.
"I think that was like probably the greatest part for me. Just like knowing how they work, knowing how they think, and then going out there to compete,” he said. “If you look at the Olympic team, even the alternates, every single one of them came from an NCAA program.”
That is an important distinction for men’s gymnastics as a whole.
In 1981, there were 59 Division-I NCAA men’s gymnastics programs. Now, there are only 12. That is a 79.6% decrease, and some believe it could decrease even more.
“If you don’t see that many college teams left, then it’s hard for you to say come in here and do more gymnastics because there aren’t that many scholarships to be had,” said three-time Olympian Blaine Wilson, who also competed collegiately for Ohio State. “For me, college helped me in the Olympic Games. When you get into that setting, it's loud, it's crazy. You can hear all kinds of stuff and it gets you prepared for that atmosphere."
Wilson said there are a couple reasons for the decimation of men’s college gymnastics. First, there is how schools go about being Title IX compliant.
“I have nothing against women’s sports, I think it’s great, but it crushed us,” he said. “Because the lower the programs, they were just hacking them off one by one.”
Now, the concern is more men’s gymnastics programs could get cut as college sports moves towards revenue-sharing and universities have to prioritize.
"A lot of colleges are going to a tiered system -- Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 -- and at OSU gymnastics is Tier 3,” Wilson said. “My son just turned 15 and he's going to be a freshman at Thomas Worthington, and that's all he wants to do is gymnastics. He lives, breathes, you know, gymnastics. So it's hard for me to look at him and say there might not be any programs around soon.”
While men’s gymnastics has been one of the hardest-hit sports as the landscape of collegiate athletics changes, there are many programs watching what is happening and worrying.
Ohio State Athletic Director Ross Bjork knows this is the first big project he has to tackle in his first few years with the Buckeyes.
"There are tough decisions. The model will look differently,” he said with regards to keeping Ohio State’s athletic department intact. “How we fund our sports based on financial aid, based on revenue sharing, based on NIL, is going to look different for each one. How we do that is to be determined."
Bjork is determined to do all he can to keep all of Ohio State’s 36 sports.
"We call it Project 36, because that's what we want to stick to and that's the mission and the vision to do that, but it's going to look different,” he explained.
Nelson and the Buckeyes can adjust to different, they just don’t want their program to disappear. They hope things balance for the good of future gymnasts who are just now starting, all the way up to future of Team USA continuing to make the podium or even just the Olympics in general.
"I think it just goes to show how much the NCAA is doing for the Olympics,” Nelson said. “It's extremely vital.”
