There was one really interesting thing Lloyd Irvin did that, in my opinion, was really ahead of its time. It's worth keeping in mind for future use.
He had a very well thought out in-house sponsorship package in which select athletes were basically on scholarship. The "Medal Chasers" lived in what amounts to a fighter house or a small version of a gladiator training school from ancient Rome. They trained full-time, and had their basic living and competition expenses paid. It was a little bit like a full-ride football scholarship, without all those pesky school classes. In many ways, they lived like full-time professional athletes without first having attained what many people consider to be the key credential in sport BJJ, which is the black belt.
There appears to have been an attempt to tailor the Medal Chaser experience to the individual athlete's needs, resources, and skills. Some of the Medal Chasers might have had instruction or paid work opportunities through the main school, and others might have received only a partial scholarship. Overall, though, it was a systematic effort to invest in athletes at the key point in their career when they needed material support the most. They attended more tournaments, they got more turns at bat (so to speak), and they started racking up wins.
Was the program perfect? No. There were definitely abuses, some of the things that went on in the fighter house were pretty sketchy, and people rightly criticize some of the cultural "3%" elitism that developed. But even with the down sides, there was so much about the Medal Chaser program that was good and unique.
Plenty of parents invest in their own son or daughter's career, and many instructors have a special individual student they mentor, but for an instructor to proactively recruit and invest in athletes before they become high level competitors was new to BJJ. It's been done in other sports (university athletics come to mind), but it's seldom done in private industry, especially in a sport that doesn't attract a lot of money. Big expense, big risk, small short-term payoff.
Speaking of money, it appears that there was some kind of organized corporate sponsorship activity by which a sponsor such as Ronin could help and support an entire team of Medal Chasers, instead of just a few athletes. This helped future professional athletes build their brand and gain public recognition. Most other athletes have to fight their way to brown or black belt before being attractive to corporate sponsors, but the Medal Chasers had an opportunity to develop a relationship and history with some of those companies prior to reaching the highest level of competition. So besides just training and going to tournaments, Medal Chasers got at least some career development and career planning for at least a few lucky athletes. Some academies do have a system for grooming people who plan to make a full-time living in the sport, but only Lloyd Irvin put together a comprehensive system for doing it. The athletes he supported, in many cases, received a life-changing opportunity that enabled them to have an outstanding launch to their professional careers. Many people who benefited from the support rightly feel a strong bond of loyalty and gratitude toward the person who made it happen.
With all this support, and competent instruction, and a high concentration of good training partners, an average athlete would get good, fast, and a good athlete would become phenomenal.
The fact that a system like this was home-grown in the USA, and not something imported from Brazil, was very exciting to a lot of Americans. Everyone wanted to see a home-grown team from outside Brazil produce large numbers of champions that could dominate at the world level. For a while, it looked like the plan was starting to work. In another decade or so, I think LI would have been the dominant global team.
It's very sad that an idea this good was poisoned by the unpopular business practices of the owner, and by the severely immature and unethical behavior of a few of the Medal Chasers.
