My father, an All-American football player in college and a professional coach later, could never totally commit to the Olympics after they went professional. (You don’t think they’re professional? You thought you were watching Kobe Bryant on another channel?)

My dad looked on sports as training fields for living rather than grand slams for sponsor endorsements. (Nor did he think the players should be the sole pride of cities after they become high-paid gladiators. But we’ll get to that later.)

I really don’t know what he would have thought of the tiny, grim-faced girls hurtling themselves into knots this week in China. (We’re now discovering that they’re what? Ten years old?). I think he might have suggested – as I do – that there is a kind of child abuse involved here.

My father would have remembered names like Jesse Owens and Jim Thorpe and the real pride of watching amateurs reaching for that once (usually) in a life-time gold.

I don’t know what he would have thought of Michael Phelps. Although my father won letters at both Rutgers and West Point in swimming , as well as in track and baseball and football, it was the team sports he loved. Something about the way men (and yes, women) melded together to win, sometimes sacrificing for the good of the team. (Hey, a little family pride here. When he and his then Rutgers football team-mate Paul Robeson – yes, the singer Paul Robeson –were instructed by their coach to break the nose of the opposing line guard, they refused and were banished from the team.
This was before faceguards, guys, sort of the way English rugby is played now, and noses could be easily and too-often broken. My dad’s was, 16 times. The only time I saw him with his nose the way he was born with it was at the funeral home when they straightened it. I had them put it back the way I knew him. )
It was inevitable, I suppose, that my father would take that particular attitude to the three wars he fought in. As commander of athletics for the United States Air Force he was never that impressed with single stars, although he gave them appropriate plaudits. It was the team leaders he promoted.

My father is gone now, but I wish he and I could discuss these Olympics. He, as I am, would be astonished by the very SHAPE of Michael Phelps, never mind the speed. The length of that boy’s arms, and how he uses his legs in something called the “dolphin flip”! Anyone who sees that (as much as squinting through splashing water on a non-digital TV set will let you see it) can have no doubt that man evolved from water. Some men did anyway.
And, yes, the tall. African speed runners are wonderful to watch. Although I was particularly entranced with the Afghan woman sprinter who insisted on running wearing her Hajab head scarf as a nod to her faith.

It is the aftermath and pervasive beat of sports mania – along with the “professional” tilt of current olympics – that bothers me. Does it really matter.. life, or death, now, come on and confess .. whether the Cubs or the Sox win each year? Sure, it’s nice to go out to the ballpark on a sunny day and see professional, and mostly imported, but very well-paid athletes perform. And cheering is fun if they do their jobs well.
But is Michael Jordan (say) really a “hero” because he leaps well and puts a ball in a basket? He’s good at what he does. Gets a lot of money for it. Is that heroism?
The day I noticed that the local newspaper put Michael Jordan all over the front page, the same day things had really gone badly for us in Iraq, was the day that I knew that newspaper wasn’t really much of a newspaper anymore.

I don’t know if this attitude is more female than male. I haven’t done surveys. Personally, it saves me time watching local TV broadcasts in that fully one third of the “news” has to do (currently) with how some guy swings a stick at a ball.

My father, the athlete, soldier, businessman, teacher, died some years ago on an August day much like this one. There are questions – like these – that I wished I had asked, and discussions, much like these, that I yearn to have.

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Dorothy Storck is a regular columnist for the Chicago Daily Observer