Selling Your Mother - The Crass Professionalism Of The Olympics

Chariots of Fire is what one thinks of every four years when the Olympics come around.  Two amateur runners – a Presbyterian minister and a Jewish Oxford intellectual compete for the gold. One running for God, the other for Jewry, but both for England.  It was a magnificent display of personal integrity, athletic talent, and patriotism.  A bygone era, one never to be seen again, recreated, or repeated.  The days of amateurism are over, and the Olympics are nothing more than a market exercise for professional talent – an NBA final, World Cup, UEFA championship, Wimbledon Final all rolled into one. 

Who cares about the Olympics? Wimbledon was fought and won, soccer has its champions, and nothing except archery, perhaps, remains amateur; but there too, sponsors buys archers, shooters, and rowers who compete for endorsements and the financial rewards that come from success. 

The very purpose of Olympic amateur athletics, a display of patriotism and world community is history. The days of Americans against Britons, may the best man win, wreaths and applause, and not a dime collected and banked are barely remembered.  Oh yes, there was Jesse Owens, a black man who won gold at Hitler's Third Reich Olympics, Spitz and Phelps, Bob Beamon, and a few other amateurs; but the whole ecumenical spirit, the camaraderie, the joy of competing in and of itself? Gone and forgotten. 

The Olympics offers one more feather in the cap of NBA millionaires, another bargaining chip for the next contract cycle, and a boring, repetitive, been-there-done-that playground athleticism, one more round of over-the-rim slam dunk smash mouth basketball. What one wouldn’t give for some unknown athletes from Slovenia or New Zealand.

 

Not to be.  The NBA will make millions from the show as will sponsors, merchandisers, and media outlets. The Olympics is a sports extravaganza, a money-making hoopla with virtually nothing at stake.  While the NBA (American) team loves the U-S-A chants from the bleachers, they are there to be the country's Harlem Globetrotters, a vaudevillian show of ballhandling wizardry that makes the game popular entertainment and rakes in thousands.  The Olympic basketball tournament is no less than a vaudevillian minstrel show - whoop it up, grab some medals, and go home. 

Well, there is archery, say purists; and curling; but athletes from just about every other event from badminton to swimming are professionals.  They may not be paid by contract as athletes competing in tennis, basketball, or soccer are, but are paid handsomely through product sponsorships and endorsements.

 

Finally the NCAA, the American Amateur Athletics Association, is agreeing to professionalizing college athletics whereby athletes will be able to negotiate contracts based on performance and market value.  No longer will the millions in college sports revenues go only to coaches and universities. 

In other words, there is no longer any such thing as an amateur athlete, so why are there still Olympic games?  Why should anyone pay to watch already wealthy athletes make even more? Is it really about excellence or about brand image?

None of this is surprising, of course.  The Olympics are a mirror of the world, a highly competitive, market-driven, dog-eat-dog place where there is no room for diddlers.  Who in this modern era wants to see some modestly talented college girls in a 52-38 basketball contest?

An unintended good consequence of this professionalized Olympics is that xenophobia has been pretty much wrung out of Olympic sports.  LeBron James may be representing U-S-A in principle but he is just representing his brand - and to show the world that basketball is the showplace for African American athletes who have no peers.  The American team shouts 'black America', the most naturally gifted, supremely athletic group of men that ever ran and jumped. 

Women love to watch swimming - all those lithe female bodies they wish they had and all those muscular, trim torsos they would like in their beds -  and it is given prime time on American television. Gender has gotten twisted into the laundry - Lia Thomas formerly William Thomas - has been disqualified from swimming with women - and women's basketball is a lesbian thing, so there is some prurient interest to generate revenues.

 

And gymnastics - women love that too and the networks hype up the rags-to-riches, ghetto to trapeze personal interest stories that add to the action on the parallel bars; and Simone Biles, as sweet and good as she is, stands to make millions off this idolatry. 

The point is, 1) there is nothing wrong with the professionalizing of the Olympics because all sports are becoming paid enterprises; 2) spectators have become duped by the money, glitz, fame, and merchandising of athletes.  A sucker is born every minute, and the viewership of the Olympics just goes to show it; and 3) the United States and much of the rest of the world has become a media-frenzied, market-obsessed place. 

So, it boils down to the hoopla – the opening ceremonies’ extravaganzas, a point of national pride.  This year 2024 Paris is bound and determined to show its mojo to the world, regain its allure as the cultural capital of Europe if not the world, and has outdone itself with a sound and light show of unimaginable glitz, glamour, and showmanship.  A transgender Last Supper was the centerpiece, a political, cultural, and historical statement.  We are not the Paris of de Gaulle or Louis XIV, Olympic organizers cheered. We are multicultural, diverse, and inclusive.

The sporting aspect of the Olympics is the last thing viewers are interested in.  Maybe spend 10 seconds of airtime on the men's 100 meter dash, but fill in the hour with personal stories of adversity, courage, and the dynamics of race, gender, and ethnicity.  Who really cares where a bulked up, high-toned sprinter is from and what his upbringing was like?  

Sports should be more like the New Criticism of literary theory - read the text.  All meaning is there, forget the anecdotes, the ancillary influences, the incidentals of the athlete's life that have nothing whatsoever to do with his track time. 

Last but not least, when will cities finally realize that the Olympics are simply not worth it?  Does Paris really need any more international popularity? More stadiums, and some unnecessary but hoopla-ed infrastructure improvements?  

Time to pack 'em up, put 'em in storage, and forget about them.