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Dang it Jared, You're always first. And on this one, I agree with you.

Jared and Andrew;

You are both wrong on this one.

Young people worldwide need clean "role models" like those who compete in the Olympic games. Without these young folk who strive to be their very best without the aide of performance enhancing drugs, we will be left with drug-addicted rock stars and professional athletes who do nothing but mark up their bodies with distasteful objects and tattoos and do whatever it takes to get the big bucks.

I, for one. do not wish my grandchildren to have that sort of greedy imbecile influencing their decisions in the future.

Whereas my daughter was greatly influenced by Olympic athletes who competed in the L.A. Olympics. I also have three granddaughters who have competed in the junior Olympics.

Since everyone is concerned about the cost of hosting the games, I would suggest that the businesses and corporations who would stand to get the most monetary benefit from the games be the largest contributors to funding the host city's efforts.

I know that there is much more to be discussed on this subject – especially in light of our President attempting to genefluct at the feet if the IOC in order for Chicago to be named the 2016 host.

However I shall leave this at just my not-so-humble opinion.

Yeah, cuz Michael Phelps was such a winner…

Michael Jordan even said that children shouldn't look up to athletes and celebrities as role models, but to family members, and he is the greatest athlete in history.

Michael Jordan isn't the greatest athlete in history.

And Michael Vick is better?

Even though they should not, they do. Therefore we need to present to them the cleanest athletes. As a child I looked up to Bart Starr as a role model and I know that most youngsters do look up to sports figures. My son thought Joe Montana was the greatest human being that ever walked the earth even though I set forth each and every day to put myself in between the scum of the earth and the law abiding public. This is something that is a fact of life, so therefore we need to put the cleanest athletes in the forefront for the young folks to see.

FYI, Jared, I happen to be a football fanatic and I kind of agree with my son. Not even the aging Brett Favre can stand alongside Joe Montana. And I am a Seattle Seahawks fan.

Barack Obama would argue that is brings the world together just for a few short weeks, but each time we learn a little bit more about each other.

Vick never did anything that bad.

Who is better?

So a DUI and smoking a bong are worse than killing and abusing living things?

There have to be people who were in better physical shape from an "athletic" point of view as well (Ironman-triathlete-types).

But if you're talking "greatest" from the perspective of renown, Ali and Pele are probably the only ones with the same level of world fame and "greatness".

And that's exactly what the Berlin Olympics did in 1936… oh wait.

Michael Jordan brought in billions of dollars for the NBA. Ali and Pele aren't in the sports that dominate the industry.

Boxing was king back in the 60s, far more so than basketball is in a global sense now. Football and baseball have more followers than the NBA in much of the US and are much larger industries, so if your argument is the NBA is a big deal, it isn't. Ali almost certainly brought in billions of dollars in today's dollars for boxing and he wasn't even boxing for several years. And soccer was king around the world when Pele was at the peak of it, basically in the same way Jordan was king of basketball when it finally hit the big time globally (~1992 is when this started).

The Munich games in 1972 did that. After a fashion.

Mexico City with the black power salute did this as well, after a fashion.

Ali did not bring in billions of dollars for boxing back then. The only way boxing made money was from people going to the fights. There was no PPV that they have now. Boxing hit it's peak during Tyson's era. Actually, the most PPV sales was the Oscar De La Hoya vs. Mayweather fight that took place on May 5, 2007.

Boxing has always had a huge industry surrounding it. And PPV doesn't bring in nearly as much attention and money as having a fight televised or on the radio for a major network back in the network monopoly days.

PPV brings in around 50 million for each big fight. Boxers now are getting treated better than those back in the day. Ever see the movie A Cinderella Story?

In 1974, Foreman and Ali got 5 million each for their title fight in Zaire. In 1974 dollars. Big-time boxers were generally better athletes than they are now. So "better treatment" is sort of relative.

"A Cinderella Story" is not a boxing movie. If you are referring to "Cinderella Man", that's the Depression era of boxing, not the heyday running from Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, and Ali-Frazier-Foreman. During the Depression, almost nobody, not even boxers who got some money and better treatment, nobody was getting it that good. That was the peak of the sport, not the Tyson-Holyfield era.

5,000,000 is worth $20,058,921.93 which is still about a 1/3 of what the big-time boxers get paid for their fights today.

"Despite De La Hoya's insistence that money was not a factor, the Mayweather-De La Hoya bout set the record for most PPV buys for a boxing match with 2.4 million households, shattering the record of 1.95 million for Evander Holyfield-Mike Tyson II. Around $120 million in revenue was generated by the PPV, which set another record. With the percentages factored in, Oscar De La Hoya ended up earning $58 million for the bout, the highest purse ever for a fighter. The previous record was $35 million, held by Tyson and Holyfield. Floyd Mayweather earned about $25 million for the fight."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Mayweather,_Jr…

I said 1/3 because this doesn't touch the endorsement deals, and the HBO series signing when they host those 24/7 programs.

Despite your focus on money, I'd still argue the Ali-Foreman-Frazier period was the peak of boxing, even money wise. I'm not sure anybody who has ever followed boxing could argue otherwise. Almost no American today casually follows boxing and could name the title holders. This was true even during the Tyson era (ie, they could name Tyson but not the people who had the titles). Everybody knew who was on top during the 60s and 70s.

Most people would simply not define "greatest", particularly in the context of Olympic athletes, with "richest". Greatest has more to do with impact, with things like casual association, with the growth of their sport, and the transcendence of it into a wider cultural phenomenon. There's probably 5 people on that list for sure: Ruth, Jordan, Ali, Tiger, and Pele. Gretzky is a maybe. And that's it.

Pele. Only time I've heard of him was in the moving Kicking & Screaming. I guess I've never been a soccer fan.

Ali was famous not just because of his fights, but because of his unique style of boxing. He talked the talk and walked the walk, which many boxers copy today. The problem with most sports today is that many foreigners are coming in and competing in professional sports, which has never been done before. If you took a look at the heavyweight champions, most of them are Russian. That's why most popular boxers today are in the super-welterweight classes and stuff.

Ali is also famous because he revolutionized boxing with his attitude and style of fighting. It's kind of like being the Bill Gates of the computer industry. Now with technology, it's easier for celebrities to make money.

Ali is definitely one of the greatest boxers of all time, but the whole sport has completely changed in rules and gloves and stuff, that it's not possible to compare in levels of greatness. That's what many boxing experts say since they don't have the complete statistics on all these great boxers.

Nowadays with boxing, the judges rely on the percentage of punches landed as a indicator of who won the round and also they upped the gloves and made them larger, which makes it easier for the boxers to defend themselves.

I think my point on Pele was that most of the world is and was consumed with soccer in ways that Americans simply are not. There are other sports that this is true for around the globe. Many of them are in the Olympics: badminton, rowing (Redgrave is a national hero in England), gymnastics, swimming, skiing, running. There's also several major sports that aren't (Am. football, cricket, baseball/softball). Since this is after all an Olympics thread, it seemed important to consider the global icon nature of some sports celebrities. By and large if you had heard of soccer around the globe, you thought: Pele. If you had heard of boxing, you thought: Ali. And so on.

Soccer players get paid a lot less than other professional sports players do. Tiger Woods is the highest paid athlete in the world. He just earned 1 billion dollars so far. I knew a professional soccer player for the American team and he got paid less than an average citizen would.

Yes, there weren't human so who cares.

lol Pele thats funny.

How about Joe Namath? Where would you put him, or Steve Young and Dan Marino for that matter?

Soccer players make a ton of money in Europe.

Just because everyone in here seems perfectly capable of ethnocentrism, doesn't mean the rest of the world doesn't matter.

Abusing dogs is not worse than smoking weed then would be your point?

Yeah I guess so, he was clueless. People down in the south like that have no idea what is moral or not. I agree its bad, but drugs to me is probably worse, maybe based off my own personal experience of seeing abusers.

But doesn't Marino have all the qb records?

No I hear you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_National_Foo…

Doesn't look like it to me. Favre's passing him up on some of the important ones.

Seeing someone maiming and killing a dog isn't in your personal experience I take it.

Also, last I checked, the attempt to defend Vick in Atlanta was working off a charge that his accusations were based on race and that "people down in the south" were in effect, attempting to defend him against us meddling Yankees who had these funny notions that animal fighting was cruel and inhumane, and were racists to boot. Likewise it was the South Carolina police who wanted to charge Phelps with drug possession when it is again these funny northern/western states that permit it (at least regarding weed).

So if you are arguing that they have no idea what is moral or not, then your argument is sort of shot in the foot. More or less those funny Southerners have the same idea on morality as you seem to.

People are slow down south. That's why when they come to New York, they are amazed to see how fast we are.

None of those three are in the same league as Montana. Unitas and maybe Favre are the usual two that can get compared and not leave someone busting out with laughter.

Wow, way to slip into nothing more than regional bias you two. Which is EXACTLY what the Olympic promotes by the way. It's all pro-nationalism propaganda.

New York City love.

Yeah, and I'm from NC, so the next time you are feeling the anti-south hate, keep it to yourself unless you want this debate to get ugly fast.

I respect that.

think about all the houses that were brocken down in china just to build that sports nest or whatever they called it. i myslf enjoy the olympic games and believe that it inspires our younger generation and stresses on the importance of sports and all, but dont you think that the large sum of money that is wasted on additional frills and bows like those beautiful but nevertheless useless and irrelevant dances, songs, and decorations should have been put to more beneficial uses?

i agree with jared up at the top. they use way to much money. if we have it in america we will lose so much money its not funny.

Quite the opposite actually. Bringing the Olympics here will bring the tourists here.

The Olympics symbolize peace. The story goes that the Greeks and Romans had a war with each other; the war was lasting longer than usual for they both were dominant powers. It is said that two old men were playing chess; one had an idea, to have seven days of peace in which both nations would send their best athletes to compete with each other. This idea was taken up, and that’s how Olympics started. The Olympics stopped going on for some time and then one man decided to recreate the Olympics with more events and it is now held in different places, to only the Athens. That is how our Olympics started.
The Olympics bring enjoyment to the representatives and is entertaining towards the audience. When the representative wins a medal for his/her country, they feel good of themselves. New stadiums/buildings are made during the Olympics and can be used again. The Olympics also brings countries together, for example; representatives have shaken hands together and that is a sign of friendship. In the Beijing Olympics, North and South Korea walked together and carried the Olympic flag.
The Olympics promotes tourism. After the Beijing Olympics, a lot of people went to other places like, Disney land or the Great Wall of China. That can also lead to future visits. An estimated of 184,589,342 people attended the Olympics and a ticket for the Beijing Olympics cost $25 dollars so; the money they made was $4614, 733,550. Not only do the Olympics promote tourism, it makes money.
For all the kids that are watching the Olympics, they get influenced by how fit and strong the athletes are and want to be like them. It’s not only the kids it’s also the adults. They might want to become fit like them so they go to the gym and exercise. So the Olympics doesn’t only promote tourism and bring enjoyment, it also is influential to people to stay fit and live a healthy life. Now you won’t have to waste money at the doctors!
Now you can see how the Olympics aren’t a waste of money. Even you could help in making the Olympics a success by going there. It will also help the country’s economy if you do. This paper was only a few of the reasons why the Olympics are not a waste of money. I am sure you can find many more.

Sports are awesome. They are fun and they keep the body in shape. And they help us get to know one another. And its one way to keep peace with other countries…until one country cheats….But im in High School Track and when schools get together at a meet, Most of the Athletes are nice to each other and are good sports to one another, plus we had a meet today. The olympics are totally awesome.