Arrivederci Olympics

We're not sure whether or not this a good thing, but San Francisco just pulled itself out of Olympic consideration. For which you can thank John York and his pulling the plug on Candlestick II: Football Bugaloo. According to Scott Givens, managing director of the 2016 SF Olympic committee, they were sitting down at dinner with the USOC when word came down that York was moving the 49ers to Santa Clara and there went that dinner. We sure hope the USOC picked up the bill. Givens went on to say that it wasn't necessarily what the announcement was but more like the surprise and suddenness of the announcement and that it made us look flaky. Who us? The 49ers said they told the USOC not to base their bid on what happens to the 'Stick but, oh well.

The twist here is that one of the reasons for the Olympic bid was so Gavin could piggy-back a new football stadium onto the bid. Money would come from the USOC to help build Candlestick up to turn it into an Olympic-style stadium (good idea too-- we couldn't wait to see the Olympic torch blown out and knocked over by a huge gust of wind while being broadcast all over the world). Gavin was also hoping that the idea of hosting the Olympics in 2016 would make everyone more amenable to supporting a new stadium.

As we've said earlier, we weren't really psyched on the Olympics but losing them in this manner is a bit of a pisser because it makes us look bad. And because the guy who pulled the plug on it was some lame-ass cheapskate idiot of an owner who lives in Youngstown and not, well, us. Besides, we were looking forward to the fun of watching this Olympic bid be debated.