Volleyball's Balance of Power in Question

"Can you imagine [NBA star] LeBron James setting up a video camera at the baseline to scout Kobe Bryant?" Blanton said.

USA Volleyball pays some top indoor players $80,000, the complaint says, but no salaries to beach athletes.

By contrast, the complaint says, top Swiss beach teams split a $500,000 "bonus pool"; and leading Swiss players get travel support, coaching and cars.

Most top U.S. beach athletes play on the professional AVP tour -- where consistent winners such as 2004 women's gold medalists Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor can make decent money but lesser lights are hardly getting rich.

At last August's Manhattan Beach AVP stop, for instance, Walsh and May-Treanor's first-place winnings totaled $28,000. But each of the eight two-woman teams that finished tied for 25th place took home $250.

What irks so many players, they say, is that it's at the beach, not indoors, where the U.S. stands a better chance of winning medals. The U.S. fields four beach volleyball teams at each Olympics --two women's teams, two men's. But there are only two indoor teams -- one women's, one men's.

Since 1996, when beach volleyball was introduced at the Games, U.S. teams have won five medals, three gold. The indoor teams, in that span, have won none.