Originally Posted by
carleton
Well, using that idea of only letting the best athletes contest the Games:
- The Olympic baseball tournament will be comprised only of several Cuban, US, S. Korean, and Japanese teams (multiple teams each country)
- The Olympic basketball tournaments will be only multiple US teams.
- Gymnastics would only be US and RUS athletes.
- Table Tennis tournament would only be several Chinese athletes.
Could argue that this would make for better, more entertaining competition. Is Olympic basketball fun to watch?
And even so, while I get the importance of maintaining the competition of national teams format at the Olympic games, I don't see any reason why outside events should have to conform to the same format. These changes seem to turn the World Cup into a mini-Olympics, making them in many ways less interesting/exciting, and in a sport that already sees a dearth of good events to watch, I only see this making that problem worse.