Chicago 2016?

I'm pretty lukewarm on the whole Olympic fever thing. NBC brings a zillion hours of TV coverage of what happened the night before, there's a lot of flag waving, and there's a collective chest beating about medal counts. It's just not that interesting to me.

I find that the athletes themselves present a compelling story. They've worked countless hours to develop skills in their respective sports, and I respect that. My issue is that some sports aren't all that, um, Olympic, and others aren't really that interesting.

Take beach volleyball as an example. Why is beach volleyball an Olympic event? It's a nice passtime for the hardbodies who hang at the beach while the rest of us are working, and it has a professional tour for the devotees. But a world competition for Olympic medals, I don't get it.

Equestrian events should present the medals to the horses. Basketball in the Olympics...not as good as a the NBA, or even most NCAA games. Gymnastics and track and field events, those seem to me to be most "real" Olympic events, traditional events that have some heritage. I take a bit of notice, and hope there's not too much drug enhanced performance in what we see, and it's fun to see world class track stars go head to head.

That brings me to the subject of Chicago's bid for the summer games eight years in the future. Is it really a matter of great local pride, or is there something else? Check out the Chicago 2016 website, where you can already buy souvenir clothing http://www.chicago2016.org/

If Chicago hosts the Olympics, there could be events added that have local significance, for example:

• Olympic competition to quarterback the Bears. It's usually the more the merrier anyway, and the Bears aren't likely to have regular quarterback eight years from now...or eight weeks from now.
• Olympic competition to determine the best pizza, New York need not apply, and there will be no French judges.
• Olympic stacking old kitchen sets to save parking places. This really belongs in the winter games.
• Olympic fastest driving through a construction zone.
• Olympic beer chugging. The women's division would be more interesting.
• Olympic pickle bucket drummer and saxaphone player doubles. Events would be held under the train tracks next to Sox Park, where all the great pickle bucket drummers got their start. Saxaphone players gold medal round is based on playing "The Flintstones" theme over and over. And over. And over.
• Olympic polka dancing, a real crowd pleaser. Favorites usually come from Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Chicago area, known world-wide as "the polka belt".
• Olympic "see how many relatives you can give patronage jobs" competition. If he hasn't been ousted by then, the Toddmeister will likely have the gold clinched years before the games.
• Olympic auditing. This would determine, as part of the games themselves, who made the biggest pile of money putting on the games in Chicago.

Any events you want to add?

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NASCAR yesterday at Michigan: Carl Edwards wast he winner --as predicted here on Friday. Not so good for the other recommendation, Jimmie Johnson was 17th. This weekend: BRISTOL AT NIGHT!