Rachel Axon

1 week ago | sportsbusinessjournal.com | Rachel Axon

USA Swimming has hired Greg Meehan as its national team managing director, giving the national governing body one familiar with the country’s top athletes. The former Stanford women’s coach served as the head coach of the Olympic team for the Tokyo Games as well as the assistant coach in 2016 (Rio) and 2024 (Paris). At Stanford, Meehan led the Cardinal to seven Pac-12 titles and three consecutive national championships from 2017 to 2019.

2 weeks ago | sportsbusinessjournal.com | Rachel Axon

LA28 will mark the first time that women receive more than half of the quota spots in an Olympic Games after the IOC’s executive board approved changes to the sport program on Wednesday. Expanding the women’s fields in soccer and water polo represent the most significant differences from previous Games, with those changes helping to bring the women’s share of quota spots to 50.5%. With five sports added for its edition of the Games, LA28 will have 11,198 athletes.

2 weeks ago | sportsbusinessjournal.com | Rachel Axon

Carol Stiff’s work at ESPN is most evident in women’s basketball, particularly in college and the NCAA Tournament. But for most of her three decades with the network, she was responsible for programming other collegiate sports. Among the others ESPN had the rights to, Stiff keyed in on volleyball, gymnastics and softball for their growth potential. “There was a beauty of women’s sports,” Stiff said. “You weren’t having to box out anybody from five other opinions in the room.

2 weeks ago | sportsbusinessjournal.com | Rachel Axon

“The foundation of what you’re seeing now in college sports was laid by Carol Stiff, period. Are there many others that were in there? Yes. But Carol did as much or more as anybody in the business and in the sports world.”“Her impact goes well beyond ESPN. We are the primary beneficiary of her impact, because she was here for so long doing work on our behalf, on the company’s behalf.

2 weeks ago | sportsbusinessjournal.com | Rachel Axon

In a room full of college sports administrators and coaches dressed in khakis and polos, Carol Stiff burst in wearing a hot pink pantsuit. Stiff, a longtime ESPN executive, was at a resort in Amelia Island, Fla., to make the case for women’s college basketball and knew she needed to stand out, especially after colleagues had made presentations on college football and men’s basketball.