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A panel led by former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue will recommend the U.S. Olympic Committee find ways to get people inside the Olympic movement more actively involved in making decisions, The Associated Press has learned.
The panel will submit the report to the USOC board at its quarterly meeting Friday.
Two people with knowledge of the report told AP it does not recommend drastic changes, but does seek more input from athletes, former athletes and other insiders, including people working with the national governing bodies of the individual Olympic sports.
The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the report before its release.
The USOC's last big structural change came in 2003. It included a drastic downsizing of the board and called for more ``independence'' - greater input from people without a direct stake in the Olympics. The Tagliabue report urges the board to find ways to get stakeholders more involved in the process again.
The reduction of the USOC board from 125 people to 11 was a response to scandals involving the Salt Lake City Olympic bid and other issues that brought key Olympic figures to Washington for uncomfortable congressional hearings.
In an interview in December, Tagliabue said the NFL operated quite well with what was essentially a board of 32 owners, though he would not necessarily recommend increasing the size of the USOC board.
But, he said, there should be a way to bring people with more institutional knowledge into the movement. Lack of that kind of knowledge was a main complaint last year after the board surprisingly ousted Jim Scherr as chief executive officer and replaced him with Stephanie Streeter.
That, along with Chicago's last-place finish in the voting to host the 2016 Olympics, which went to Rio de Janeiro, led to an outcry about the way the USOC does business, which in turn led to the Tagliabue panel.
Since the panel was formed, Streeter has been replaced by Scott Blackmun as CEO. The U.S. team led the world with 37 medals at the Vancouver Olympics, and overall, the tenor of the conversation has become more positive.
Among those on the 14-person board were Pat Ryan, the CEO of the Chicago 2016 bid, and Skip Gilbert, head of USA Triathlon, who was one of the USOC's most outspoken critics.
Tagliabue, who cemented the NFL as America's most successful and popular sport while he was commissioner from 1989-2006, gave the USOC a compelling and authoritative point man when it decided to look into reform.
The former commissioner suggested one way to bring more people into the decision-making process without bloating the board would be to form committees and have experts well-versed in Olympic issues advise those committees.
``So if you feel development of top athletes is key, you need to have an athletic development committee,'' he said in the December interview. ``If distributing your events on the Internet and cable and new media is important, then you have to have a new-media committee.''
The report will be presented to the board and others Friday, but no immediate action is expected to be taken.
