You may be right, and I would agree that the competitive record trumps anything else. However, it may just be my perception but I did sense that the USFSA was eager for Sasha Cohen to become the US #1, even during Kwan's peak. Michelle really never allowed that to happen with her clear dominance at Nationals, but it was striking the way Peggy and Dick would talk about Sasha as being "unbeatable" if she skated clean.
Of course, Peggy and Dick did not represent decision-making or marketing of the USFSA. They were not members of the international committee.
I have no doubt they were friendly with some of the federation leaders or at least in a position to chat with them and have some insider info on what the USFSA brass were aiming or hoping for. But I don't think there was any direct influence in either direction.
They had their own opinions about the kind of skating they liked best and most wanted to promote, and that didn't always correspond with the judging rules or trends, or the team selection rules and practices. It often seemed that the commentators were guessing about the judges' or federation's motives just as much as any fans were.
ABC/ESPN, and later NBC during the brief period Dick worked with them, also had their own ideas about how to market the sport to their audiences.
Again, what network executive thought casual fans wanted to see (because the sport is only valuable to the networks if it can attract millions of eyeballs, not just thousands or tens of thousands) was often very very very different from what skating officials want their sport to reward.
Dick Button more than any other single individual in the history of US skating has done the most to shape what networks and US audiences value and expect to see and expect to see rewarded. That has all been part of the national skating culture in that skaters and coaches and judges coming up through the ranks listened to his opinions when watching their sport on television and internalized many of the values he promoted. But still, his commentary tended to gloss over a
lot of technical details that he personally and/or the network producers evidently believed audiences would not be interested in.
And for much of the period that Button was commenting amateur/eligible events especially US Nationals on ABC, he was also producing professional competitions that promoted very different values than the Olympic-style sport. To that extent, Button as event producer was to a large degree in direct competition in attracting audiences.
And then there were also made-for-TV events in which elite eligible competitors competed under more relaxed, more audience-friendly rules, sometimes in pro-am competitions alongside ineligible pros. For a few years there, this was a great source of income for the network and the federation, so their interests meshed for a while. But it's not as if the networks or commentators could control how the eligible judges judged even in those events.
In fact, as a Jason fan, I like this concept of top finisher at US Nats because Jason is what we call a "clutch player" in team sports. He comes through in the clutch. To finish third on essentially a broken leg, where if I remember his interview correctly, he was only allowed medically to skate less than an hour a day and spent every off-ice minute in a boot; well, that's the mind-set I want on my "team".
And if he replicates his season, I have no doubt it will be again....
