Maybe back here in the sports department you missed the news: The United States Postal Service is trying to recover money it paid to cyclist Lance Armstrong and his teammates. The USPS wants a refund because Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs and, therefore, violated the terms of his contract.
RETURN TO SENDER: $30 million.
I don’t know about you, but I have a few questions and they don’t have much to do with Armstrong.
Such as: What is the post office doing in the cycling business?
Were Armstrong and his teammates delivering packages in the French Alps?
Couldn’t they have just called FedEx like the rest of us?
USPS, of course, justifies the expenditure as a marketing expense, perhaps hoping everyone would write a few more letters instead of emails or send a few more packages at Christmas. The USPS claims it received $100 million worth of exposure from the deal, a claim Armstrong uses against USPS to prove he owes nothing in the way of a refund.
Call me cynical about such claims. Why? Because I’m cynical.
Did you make the connection when Armstrong and friends were riding the Champs-Élysées or wearing the yellow jersey and powering through the Alps? Did you think, hmm, U.S. Post Office + Armstrong = ...
“Honey, I’m going to the post office!”
“Cancel the FedEx account!”
No, you changed the channel and ate some more Cheez Whiz.
Well, it turns out that the USPS sponsored several sports teams and organizations. According to some reports, it spent close to $50 million on sponsorships for the New York Yankees and Giants, the Chicago Bears, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and NASCAR and U.S. cycling, which collected most of the funds ($40M).
In return, Armstrong’s team was called the U.S. Postal Service Pro Cycling Team and riders wore little USPS patches on their racing kits, in case you didn’t notice (and you didn’t). This money was then presumably used to help fund the team to pay for the usual essentials of cycling — bikes, helmets, anabolic steroids, blood transfusions, tires, EPO, uniforms, mysterious doctors, blood doping paraphernalia and a star (Armstrong).
Postal officials claimed the sponsorship would increase business abroad where cycling is popular, but an audit revealed that international sales account for little of the USPS revenue (2.6 percent), probably because they are the UNITED STATES postal service and not, say, the French postal service.
Why would USPS think it needs such a sponsorship? It has been granted a monopoly by the federal government. No one else is allowed to deliver letters or use that mailbox by your house, and USPS has sued or threatened to sue anyone who has attempted anything close to it, including a Boy Scout troop that was delivering neighborhood Christmas cards and a kid placing fliers in mailboxes to offer lawn-mowing services.
Talk about eliminating the competition.
It’s the equivalent of Major League Baseball telling the Yankees they are the only team that can wear gloves. The USPS is given favored status by the government — no taxes, no licensing fees, no regulations. The USPS doesn’t even have to show a profit — because it will be subsidized.
And they still can’t succeed.
USPS has had eight straight years of losses — $2.8 billion in the best of those years and $15.9 billion in the worst — and it has defaulted on payments to retirees. Any other business would be formally bankrupt.
In sports terms, they are the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Documents show that the USPS cycling sponsorship included a clause about morals and drugs and failing to pass drug tests — in other words, no cheating or the deal is off. Now USPS wants its money back and there is precedence. Earlier this year, an arbitration panel ruled that Armstrong must repay a promotions company $10 million for cheating and lying about it. The company had paid Armstrong about $12 million in bonuses for victories in the Tour de France.
Meanwhile, USPS officials should consider new ways to market itself to the public rather than buying a piece of a sport's team.
Here's an idea: Just deliver the mail on time.
Doug Robinson's columns run on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Email: drob@deseretnews.com