With Dallas (North Texas) hosting the Super Bowl, the Final Four, the NBA All-Star Game, College Football’s National Championship, is there any possibility that we will host the Olympics? CF
Yes there is, but only if the people of Dallas get behind the idea. See Dallas’s people are our best assets. You know the Final Four agreed to come to Dallas before AT&T Stadium was even built. We couldn’t take them on a tour of the stadium and show them all the bells and whistles, we had to sell them on the idea of the stadium and what a Final Four in North Texas would be. It’s only one of many examples (more have been provided my popular request here) of why and how the people of this great community have turned a simple stretch of prairie into the home of 7 million people. That’s more than the metro areas of Athens, Berlin, Johannesburg, Barcelona, Munich, and Rome. So if we want the Olympics, we just need to muster our collective to landing them.
There’s a certain drive in the people of Dallas, a certain civic boosterism that has us to where we are today. Columnist A.C. Green once wrote that Dallas has been “led since birth by a citizenry that believed a golden destiny was assigned the place where they lived, taking its ambitions seriously whether anyone else did or not.” That belief as lead us to build airports the size of Long Island, the largest Fine Arts district in the world, to develop and perfect our own cuisine (Tex-Mex) and even make scientific breakthroughs (integrated circuit). We, as a town and a region, succeed where others fail because we don’t rely on scenic beauty, natural resources or strategic location for our success. We rely on ourselves. When it comes to the Olympics, it’s just a matter of deciding to pursue them. Of deciding to marshal the best assets of this city for the purposes of hosting the greatest spectacle of all of sports.
Openning Ceremony directed by Wes Anderson, starring the Wilson brothers and featuring Willie Nelson
Should we want Olympics? Why the hell not? Anyone who was out and about in North Texas for the Final Four could feel something special in the air. A certain energy that only happens when some of the best athletes in the country live out their hopes and dreams in front of 100,000 of the most dedicated and enthusiastic fans. Now take that energy, bottle it up for 4 years, and then multiply it 50 fold. The Final Four is the pinnacle of one sport for one country that occurs once a year. The Olympics are the pinnacle of several dozen sports for several hundred countries that happens only once every four years. If you thought the fun./Springsteen show was amazing (and many did) the Olympics would replicate three different shows of the same quality each night for two straight weeks. All of us should want to host the Olympics. We should want to witness the pageantry of the games, the grace of the athletics, and the spectacle of the ceremonies. We have civic mottos telling us to “Think Big,” and aspirations to be a world class city. Well, there is no bigger event than the Olympics, no bigger world class stage. We should want to host the Olympics, simply put, because they are the Olympics.
Be proud.
Now I know some of you may be jumping up and down or breezing through everything above in search of an economic viability argument for hosting the games. Fine go here for a thousand words on the topic. But those who don’t have the time, here’s the back of the envelope math.
It’s not this complicated
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Dallas will end up spending less on venues than other cities. We can leverage some of the costs for ancillary (but important) regional goals, and ultimately benefit from a huge amount of increase spending from tourists that will help offset the operational costs of the Olympics. In practical examples, we’ve already built AT&T stadium, the Olympics Village can help revitalize South Dallas, and the lack of tourists in Dallas over the period when the Olympics happen means a large influx of spending that can help to pay drivers, ushers, or cops that we pay to help run the Olympics (many of whom would be local).
Plenty of these signs during the Olympics
The answer to whether there is a possibility that Dallas could host the Olympics is that Dallas and North Texas has the potential to host the Olympics. Once we realize that potential then the possibility of the Olympics turns into a reality.
Closing Ceremonies by Robert Rodriguez
The Dallas Whisperer 