By
Ryan Finley
Arizona Daily Wildcat
The USA basketball team is going to win another gold medal in convincing fashion.
And nobody's going to care.
Olympic basketball has become a foregone conclusion for sports fans and has, therefore, lost the intrinsic value of sport itself - competition.
To put it simply, we're bullies. Nobody likes us because we beat them up.
As a sports fan, would you watch a baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Catalina Foothills Junior Varsity Softball Team? Hell no.
Would you pay money to watch the Raiders play my intramural team? Probably not.
The Olympics are pretty much the same thing. So what if the U.S. kills Zimbabwe or Trinidad and Tobago?
There's no game there. And when there's no game, there will be no fans. The United States has the best players in the world - everyone knows it.
Based on that fact, it's time to stop being bullies. There is no country in the world that treats basketball as seriously as Americans do. So naturally, our best is better than everybody else's best.
That's why Olympic basketball should be played by America's best collegiate players.
College players are younger, hungrier and will prove to be better competition with the rest of the world.
Maybe it's just me, but I believe that an Olympic medal would mean more to Loren Woods than Vince Carter. These college kids are just that - kids - and would be a welcome sight to a world of sports fans weary of watching Carter, Kevin Garnett and Antonio McDyess dunk and taunt nations like New Zealand and China.
So give me a team that's coached by Mike Jarvis or Lute Olson. Put the country's top 15 college players on the floor. There would be players from all walks of life and all political backgrounds - just picture Richie Frahm from Gonzaga playing alongside St. Johns' Bootsy Thornton. It would be a true melting pot - rich and poor, blacks and whites, haves and have-nots.
Kind of like the United States itself.
"But wait" - Dream Team proponents would say - "we need to send our best and brightest to the Olympics every four years. Do you see the U.S. leaving its best track stars at home because they might look like bullies?"
Basketball, though, is a completely different animal. If the United States sent Ken Griffey, Jr. and Mark McGwire to play Olympic baseball, the Stars-and-Stripes would win gold. No problem.
While major league baseball knows the importance of playing fair, Team USA continues to dunk taunt, and smack-talk their way to another gold.
No wonder the rest of the world hates us.
