CHRIS YODER
Gargoyle senior editor
Posted Monday, Oct. 5, 2009

BY NOW, YOU'VE all probably heard the news. Whether you're happy or sad is up for you to decide, but Rio de Janeiro will be hosting the 2016 Olympics, not Tokyo, not Madrid. Not Chicago.

I wondered what it would have been like if the Games had come to the Windy City. Those musings will just have to stay in my head.

But just pause for a second, and imagine the Olympics in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Chicago is a sports town. Between the Bears, the Bulls, the Cubs, the White Sox and the Blackhawks, there’s a good chance one of your favorite teams or players calls Chicago home. You could make the argument that Chicago loves sports — and a variety of them — more than any other city in the country.

But never in Chicago’s history did the city have the chance to host a sporting event of the scale of the Olympics. It was time for the third-largest city in the country to get its due on the national stage. Just think about all the city has to offer.

Lake Michigan. The Willis (formerly the Sears) Tower. Michigan Avenue. Wrigley Field. Soldier Field. The Art Institute. Navy Pier. Millennium Park. Hyde Park. Grant Park. The L. The skyscrapers. The skyline. The architecture. The view …

Do I really need to keep going?

Considering Champaign-Urbana is a figurative stone’s throw from Chicago, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Uni student who hasn’t made the trip north. We may even take the city for granted because of that.

We may see it less as the teenage utopia portrayed in "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off" and take more of a cynical view. We think about shady backroom dealings and Rod Blagojevich slushy gray winters and hot muggy summers, traffic, congestion and claustrophobia. Compared to the other three candidates, Chicago had the least support from its citizens.

You could make the argument that the games would have been bad for Chicago’s economy, given disasters such as the 1976 Montreal Olympics. But although the games have wreaked havoc on host cities in the past, Atlanta — the last U.S. city to host the summer games — turned a $10 million profit. The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles turned a $200 million profit.

And Chicago already had much of its infrastructure in place. The United Center — which holds over 20,000 people — has hosted the Democratic National Convention and six NBA Finals. Soldier Field — home of the Bears at a capacity of 61,500 — was renovated earlier this decade and would have hosted events. The Olympic Village and Stadium would have required construction, but many other existing venues in the Chicagoland area could have been put to use.

In the end, Chicago’s bid was not about the city’s monetary profit or loss. This bid was for all of us. It was for the rest of the country. It was for the rest of the world. The world’s best athletes would all have been gathered just 140 miles up I-57. It would have been more than an all-star game. It would have been an all-star game convention.

It would have been.

Of course, there’s no guarantee any of us will be anywhere near Illinois in 2016. But in the college offseason, many of us will return home. If you care about sports, this could have been your chance to make a pilgrimage to its Mecca.

I have nothing against Rio de Janeiro, or Tokyo or Madrid for that matter. To be honest, my best reasons for wanting the Olympics were selfish. I wanted the games in Chicago because I know Chicago so well. But the bid really made sense. It wasn't far-fetched. It was a possibility. It could have been great for the fans, for the city, and for our pride in being a part of something bigger.

The Games of the XXXI Olympiad could have been in Chicago.

They could have.