A Few Views on the Olympics

I may have been idealistic as a youngster, but that doesn't mean that I was wrong. I remember happily believing that the United States sent amateurs to the Olympics to take on pros from the Eastern Bloc. I didn't realize that some of our track athletes were professionals.

Though the collection of talent on the first Dream Team was amazing, I still wanted us to send college players. I was (and am still) fine with the fact that some country's professionals could beat our amateurs some of the time. That's part of playing the games. Fielding our amateurs against foreign professionals was just another reason to believe we were the GOOD versus the EVIL.

I'm also a little tired of the posing of the high profile athletes. There is no one that played or plays basketball that can touch Michael Jordan on the court, but was it really necessary for he and some of his teammates to cover the Reebok logo on their sneakers because of their Nike connections? Michael Johnson's golden shoed-performances in the sprints in 1996 were incredible, but they weren't nearly as remarkable to me as Keri Strug nailed that final vault WITH A BROKEN ANKLE. Remarkable. In a day when players skip games with twinges and blisters, she competed at the highest level WITH A BROKEN ANKLE.

SO SAYETH THE HIGHER POWER OF SPORTS