Let The Games Begin. NOT!

The city of Boston, which was to make the U.S. bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, terminated its bid on Monday when Mayor Martin Walsh said he refused to allow the city to be held responsible for cost overruns that it might incur hosting the Games and leave taxpayers to foot the bill.  Opposition to holding the Olympics in Boston has been wildly rampant there because the townspeople (archaic word, I know) feel that the money involved could be better spent on schools and infrastructure.

Sportswriter Christine Brennan has indicated that the United States Olympic Committee, having been the skunk of the Olympic movement for so long, should have done its homework before selecting Boston as the perfect city to make a bid for the U.S. of A.  after mending fences with the International Olympic Committee.  It turns out that Boston had the least support among the four candidate cities for the bid (Los Angeles, Washington, and San Francisco were the others), with a whole group of angry Beantown residents ready to oppose it.  Also, even though Brennan doesn't cite this, the financials were way, way off.  Anyway, she holds the USOC at fault for all this, and she adds that whichever substitute city is selected for the U.S.'s 2024 bid bears the burden of the USOC's  previous incompetence going into the bidding process.  Whoever is at fault for this, it looks perfect, all right - a perfect disaster.

Oh, well . . .  

The United States Olympic Committee has until September 15 to come up with a substitute host city to make an American bid for 2024.  I'd go with San Francisco, because it's a beautiful city, it has a perfect climate, and it's not stodgy ol' Washington . . . and it's not LA, either.  LA has already hosted the Games twice, and it's time that collection of suburbs in search of a city gave someone else a chance.

(Note: Philadelphia ruled itself out long ago for 2024. Pity.)