OK, who invited Sheryl Crow and Dave Matthews? Who gave ringside seats to the Foo Fighters and Brooks & Dunn? Who told Creed they could drive their bus into the heart of downtown?
Is it too late to ask them to come in March instead?
What were we thinking?
Wasn't the Biggest Sporting Event in the World enough?
We'll be the city where the Olympics came, and we turned it into a rock ? and occasionally country ? concert.
I am referring to the nightly concerts scheduled at the Medals Plaza in downtown Salt Lake during the course of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. Many of the biggest acts in music will be performing at the end of each Olympic day, immediately following the awarding of medals to that day's winners. Not only does this have the very real potential of reducing the medals ceremony to a kind of glorified warm-up act ? imagine how fast the bronze, silver and gold medalists from curling will fade from the spotlight with the words, "And now ladies and gentlemen, "*NSYNC!" ? but worse, it suggests the Olympics can't stand on its own.
Isn't this like having Hat Night during the World Series?
We're not progressing, we're regressing. We're going back to the St. Louis Games of 1904, the first held in America, when organizers feared the Olympics couldn't make it alone so they coupled the Games with the World's Fair and included carnival sideshow-type events, including something called Anthropology Days, where peoples of "uncivilized tribes," such as Pygmies from Africa, competed against one another.
Anything to draw a crowd.
Aren't crowds what we don't want? SLOC is so afraid of crowds it's stopped selling Park City-area Olympic tickets to people in Salt Lake. It's so spooked it's telling people to plan on 4 1/4 hours to travel the 35 miles by car from Salt Lake to Park City, which is roughly the same time as if you hopped out and walked.
The idea of a huge Medals Plaza was to create a place where people could experience the Games without having to buy anything. A free venue along the order of Sydney's popular Live Sites, where sports fans congregated to casually rub shoulders while watching the Olympics on big screens. But add the Dave Matthews Band to the program and there goes casual, and even if it has no face value the ticket is no longer free. Dave Matthews tickets are going for plenty right now on eBay.
What's more, once the major musical acts were announced, the clientele for Medals Plaza tickets went from sports fan to music fan. English translation: there are going to be a whole lot of people packed in the Medals Plaza stands wondering when those guys in parkas are going to get off the stage so the concert can start.
But the biggest indignity is turning the Olympics from a sporting event to the State Fair; from an athletic competition to the Beatles at Shea Stadium.
When athletes make their way from the luge track or the downhill course or the hockey rink to receive their medals, they should be the featured attraction, not the equivalent of an up-and-coming rock band that practices in the lead singer's garage, dude. At the Olympics, when they play the national anthem that's supposed to be the climax, not a signal for the guy in the sound truck to pump up the bass.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.