What Animal Is Joe Eating?

We Got The Bid

Posted: 4/16/2007

Now that we won the US bid for the Olympics, we’re being annointed the front runners in the race to host. The IOC likes to move the games around, and they haven’t been in the Western Hemisphere since 1996, and the other bidders in the Americas are Rio and Monterrey. Monterrey isn’t even an official bid, and it’s doubtful that they’d be able to come up with the funding, and Rio is preparing for the 2014 World Cup. It’s also doubtful that Rio (or any city for that matter) would be able to stage both events in such a short timeframe. Throw in Rio’s notorious anarchic crime problem in the surrounding slums, and you can minimize that city’s chances.

However, I think the biggest thing in our favor is NBC’s Olympic television contract, which expires after the 2012 London Games. The American television contract is by far the largest, and American bidding for an American Games would be much greater than it would for a Prague or Tokyo Games. Add Chicago’s Central Time Zone advantages for American television to an extremely telegenic plan designed to showcase the city’s beauty, and you create what appears to my eyes as an insurmountable advantage.

There are a couple of challenges that we’ll have to overcome: one, the disasterous legacy of the Atlanta Games, and two, the world-wide political situation. The first can be overcome by time, and convincing the IOC of Chicago’s more urbane sensibilities. The latter will have been remedied by the official selection date in 2009.

Why L.A. Lost

Now, I like L.A. a lot, and almost moved there twice, once in 1984 for college, and again in 1999, but in my narcissistic mix of pride and schadenfreude, I looked for blog entries from Californians complaining about losing the bid. To my surprise, there’s been little hand-wringing in L.A. over their losing bid. I suppose after having had lived in the South for five years that I’m no longer used to seeing graciousness in defeat.

So why did L.A.’s bid fail even though they have all of the facilities in place? Well, L.A.’s bid reeked of committee-think. The games would have been spread from San Diego to San Francisco to Las Vegas, and athletes would have been housed in old university shared-bathroom dormitories. Their Games would have been guaranteed to be profitable, but they would have lacked imagination.

David Davis of LA Observed asked Barry Sanders, the head of L.A.’s Olympic Committee, what his favorite memory from the 1984 Olympics was. Davis said “Sanders proceeded to wax eloquent about the mega-dollar sponsorship deal he helped put together with Coca-Cola.”

Instead of attorneys on their committee, they needed movie and television producers, who are used to living Chicago’s unofficial motto, “Make no little plans.”

What Animal Is Joe Eating?

Updated 12/6/06

We Got The Bid

Why L.A. Lost