Tuesday, March 05, 2013

A Modest Proposal, Olympic Wrestling Edition

This is how a Lord of the Rings rolls these days, fellas
It has come to our attention here at Sportsthodoxy Central (which, near as we can tell, is a point somewhere in the Monongahela National Forest, based on the main co-authors' respective domicile locations) that the coach of the Bulgarian national wrestling team has gone on a hunger strike to protest the removal of wrestling from the list of "core" Olympic sports. Bulgaria is what you might call a big deal in the world of international wrestling, with a laundry hamper full of medals garnered over the years. So if anyone is going to make the grand dramatic gesture on behalf of the venerable sport of grappling (and no, we don't mean MMA here - that's the not-venerable-sport of a couple of bad tattoo art and a couple of ineffectual kicks followed by grappling) one would expect the Bulgarians to be at the forefront, in a place of honor.
However, there exists one fatal flaw in the plan, namely, that the goal of the strike is to shame the senior nabobs of the Olympics into restoring wrestling to its rightful place. This approach contains within it a logical fallacy, namely, the certitude that the Nazgul of Samaranch's inner circle in fact possess something even faintly resembling a sense of shame. As evidenced by the various scandals documented elsewhere - bribery, vote selling, and suchlike - it is quite clear that these particular Five-ring wraiths would not know what to do with a sense of shame if it sat on their collective face and wiggled.
As such - and as supporters of wrestling's place in the games - we would like to propose an alternate plan, one that we feel has a better chance of restoring wrestling to its appropriate prominence. And that plan is, in brief, a bribe. If we hope to attract the attention of the IOC, we should focus our efforts where it has been demonstrated to have had the most effect in the past, which is to say, in the transfer of filthy lucre. As such, we humbly propose creating a Kickstarer, or perhaps a GoFundMe, the stated purpose of which would be to raise sufficient funds to pay off each of the appropriate officials responsible and thus get wrestling back in the games. We furthermore suggest that the project be called BOOBBOW - Bribing Olympic Officials to Bring Back Olympic Wrestling - in part because any modern movement needs an acronym, and in part because BOOBBOW is just fun to say.
We look forward to your joining us in the fight against Olympic tyranny, and to your standing shoulder to figurative shoulder with us in the forests along the Monongahela of the mind as we raise the banner of BOOBBOW and sally forth into dubiously moral but inevitably effective battle.
Thank you.

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