The People's Games
The Olympics were originally designed as an event for amateurs. But these days, to compete at an Olympic level it has to be your full-time pursuit. So when we see these athletes succeed, it's exciting, but in the back of your head you know they've trained their entire life to do this one very specific thing; and then they do the thing. Great.
Let’s imagine a truly amateur Olympics. Call it the People’s Games. A random selection of able-bodied citizens age 18-30 from every nation would be selected to participate in specific events, regardless of their athletic ability or experience. Don't get ahead of me here and start picturing a 29-year old 265-pound Verizon rep dying while trying to pole vault. Forget the real Olympic sports. Have them play games anybody can play.
Dodgeball, Tug-of-War, Mini Golf, Capture the Flag, Soccer. You can think of more.
Now our large friend Bubba from Verizon gets the call three months before the Games, goes on an inspiring Biggest Loser-esque diet, turns his butterbutt into a thunderbutt, and emerges as Team USA's anchor in the tug of war.
Imagine the pride you would feel if you were from his city (probably Youngstown, Ohio), or if you knew him. Even if you don’t know him, you're rooting for him, because when you watch the People's Games, you're not rooting for professionals versus other professionals, you're rooting for somebody like you.
Every kid on every playground across America would dream of one day being selected. And, as a neat side effect, there would be a global incentive to not be human lumps of buttercustard. My plan to get kids active is better than Michelle Obama’s. I should be the First Lady.
Anyways, the most important and exciting aspect of the People’s Games is the way the random amateurs make it more meaningful in terms of national pride and camaraderie.
When Brazil wins Soccer at the People’s Games, their national pride surges. It’s a statement: “Put any random eleven Brazilians on the pitch and we will humiliate that pitiful graphic designer from St. Louis you call a goalie.”
When Iceland wins Mini Golf, they’re saying “We have the composure of a weathered glacier face. You will not salt our herring.” (The translation doesn’t do it justice, but that’s powerful smack talk.)
When America wins Tug-of-War, we’re saying: put any eight Americans on a rope and we'll pull eight miserable Frenchmen 1800 miles across the Atlantic through boneshaking 50-foot waves, deposit their sorry asses on Plymouth Rock, hit them in the head with a Philly cheesesteak, and call them an Uber back to the Louvre.
And imagine if it was you.
You’re running through a forest somewhere in Russia. You hear shouts off in the distance as you slowly creep up to the crest of a small ridge. There. The flag. It’s the actual flag of Spain. You’re bracing yourself to make a go for it, when all of a sudden Sidney Dullwater of Holland, Michigan comes exploding out of the woods beyond the flag. Two Spaniards pop up out of nowhere and chase her. You count to 3, hearing nothing but your breath and thudding heart. And then….GO.
As you sprint, enemy flag in hand, over the last 100 feet to the safe zone, your family is at home, screaming at the television so loud it would wake the neighbors if they weren’t watching it, too. And just like one of those stupid sports movie montages: in bars and salons across the nation, your fellow Americans cheer and forget to drink (or cut hair, respectively). You charge over the line and into the arms of your teammates in an explosion of joy that covers the nation like when Yellowstone finally blows up. U-S-A! U-S-A!
The People’s Games would make heroes out of ordinary folk, which is our favorite kind of narrative. NBC tries to dig for emotional backstories for Olympic athletes, because we feed on that. But in reality, most Olympians’ story is: “I tried really hard for a very long time until I was the best and then I won and that is good.”
The stories that come out of the People’s Games would be so chills-inducing. They would inspire countless script treatments bought by major studios, who would sit on them for seven years and then scrap them in favor of an action movie about, oh what’s this? An ordinary person thrust into extraordinary circumstances!
There is a time and place to watch highly-trained cyborgs like Katie Ledecky doing their thing. But it’s their job to do that thing. And that’s not why games were invented. Games were invented for the people.