Preps Alcove: One last glance at the 2016 Olympics

The Olympics don’t feel like the right platform for golf or basketball.

Several elite-level golfers backed out of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, citing health concerns, and the U.S. men’s basketball team had trouble filling its roster at one point –- which, of course, didn’t stop the team from rampaging to a gold medal. Even if you count the early-round hiccups in which the U.S. endured close calls, was there ever a doubt that the men’s or women’s team would emerge victorious?

Few other sports experienced issues with athletes preferring not to play in Rio, and it highlights a key problem: Why would athletes who already have an enormous stage (such as the NBA or pro golf circuit) want to travel to an Olympic competition, where the prize money and prestige is negligible by comparison? I don’t mean to say it’s not meaningful for the U.S. athletes –- if you saw Carmelo Anthony after the U.S. won, you’d know it had meaning for him –- but this is more of a working vacation for the basketball players than the pinnacle of their careers.

I wouldn’t advocate penalizing the rest of the world because our golfers and basketball players are only somewhat interested in participating. But given that the U.S. has such a stranglehold on both the men’s and women’s game, and given that Olympic golf can’t hold a candle in prestige to the international competitions of PGA golf, would it be so wrong to drop these sports in favor of something else? Perhaps something that truly needs the Olympics as a stage, similar to swimming, gymnastics or beach volleyball?

And do you even remember who’s won a gold medal in their basketball careers, post-Dream Team? How many NBA players can you safely identify as having won a gold medal in 2012 -- or even 2016? Either the U.S. wins the gold like it’s supposed to, and the players return from the peripheral achievement to their more-celebrated NBA careers, or it loses and gets labeled a massive disappointment. Does anyone have any idea who has won golf golds, even in this current Olympics?

It was Justin Rose. I looked it up.

The best thing you can say about the basketball is it gives teams a chance to at least be competitive with the U.S. year after year. This cannot possibly be something the United States or the rest of the world wants. Bill Simmons of The Ringer advocates on his podcast for the United States to restrict its roster to players age 25 or younger, which I found to be a compelling alternative. For golf, the problem is that all the world's greats compete on our TVs every week, so it's just another event on the schedule -- and it's not even a top-four event, with the Majors carrying greater weight.

I have many other musings about the 2016 games:

• How thrilling was it to see Waukesha native Gwen Jorgensen win in the triathlon? It’s not a celebrated sport, held Saturday morning on the day before the Olympic closure, but it’s downright breathtaking to read about her run of success in the world triathlon circuit and see it culminate with Olympic gold. Also, how fascinating that Waukesha South (throwing in men’s gymnasts Paul and Morgan Hamm) and West Allis Central (a litany of medal-winning speedskaters in the Winter games) have become area strongholds of Olympic fame, even without widespread success in WIAA athletics?
• Pewaukee resident Pati Rolf got the thrill of a lifetime just to officiate the indoor volleyball in the Olympics, but she attained even greater recognition when she was asked to officiate the women’s gold-medal match, where China defeated Serbia. Rolf is the former head women’s volleyball coach at Marquette University.
• Volleyball is the best sport. This is not open to debate.
• Beach volleyball has gained a pretty impressive following since its inclusion in the Olympic games in 1996. Am I a little unpatriotic for rooting somewhat for the hometown Brazil team to defeat Kerri Walsh-Jennings and April Ross in the semifinal (though, admittedly, still wanting the American team to win bronze, which they did)? I found myself rooting a lot for non-American entrants, particularly later in the Olympics, when the medal count had gotten pretty lopsided in our country’s favor. The rest of the world must really hate us when the Olympics roll around. We're the Yankees (literally).
• One of my favorite Olympic observations: the number of sports in which you can win a gold medal while wearing khaki pants. My count includes archery, shooting sports, dressage and equestrian, sailing, golf and table tennis. My brother-in-law advocates that table tennis be struck from the list and fencing added. I disagree.
• There are a number of reasons why I think track and field has fallen from the perch as the “it” sport of the Olympics, giving way to gymnastics and swimming. The stadium in Brazil appeared half-full at times, though the specter of Usain Bolt seemed to draw a pretty great response (and rightfully, because no matter how many medals Michael Phelps wins, Bolt is more fun to watch). One of my biggest complaints about track is that it insists on archaic rules: Women still can only compete in the heptathlon while the men have the decathlon, as if women are somehow incapable of lasting the full 10 events. Furthermore, the weights for the throws are roughly the same as they are in high-school events for the women, whereas the men’s shot and discus get heavier. In an era where equality has already gained massive footing, why in the world is that still OK? These are small matters, but there will come a time when world track and field administrators need to think outside the box to keep the sport relevant, and that's not what we're seeing here. 
• I am fascinated to know how NBC and the rest of the coverage map handles the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, which is 10 hours ahead of the central time zone. The emphasis on live sports in primetime continues to pervade everything, even to the point that NBC will not show live events in favor of showing them at a more favorable later hour. In an era where social media and streaming options enable us to watch what we want, ratings are way down, and I wonder whether the network will concoct a new approach to the next games.
• Speaking of coverage, am I wrong to feel a little jaded by the overall Olympics media experience? Competing TV networks can’t show more than a morsel of highlight reel on news telecasts, and companies were barred from using certain hashtags on Twitter. Not to get all grandpa on you, but that’s not the intent behind the Olympics, a gathering of nations in the spirit of competition. The corporate entity of the Olympics has finally hit home for me, and it makes me appreciate the experience considerably less.
• I think rugby will get a whole lot bigger in this country and beyond between now and the next Olympiad. The best thing about the sevens rugby is how quickly games move –- it might be the shortest time commitment to watching any team sport anywhere, and that’s a huge boon in an attention-pulling Olympics environment where there’s a lot going on. That is a fun sport to watch; even if I don’t know all the rules, I can follow the play. Contrast that with wrestling, which very much deserves to remain an Olympic sport but has so many intricate rules that it’s hard for anyone less than a diehard to follow completely. Even someone like me, who has a decent handle on folkstyle wrestling, would struggle big time with Greco-Roman. Germantown’s Jesse Thielke lost a match where the nuances of the sport factored heavily into the outcome.