Why can't professionals go to the Olympics? Making money of their sport is how they are able to do it. Or maybe we should only allow people with trust funds to compete.

Just look at what happened to our basketball team... now we've got a bunch of whiny NBA bums playing for us who couldn't care less about the Olympics.

While the inclusion of professional athletes in the Olympics may be an unfortunate and somewhat sad commentary on the state of athletic competition, this in no way rises to appalling. For the U.S., this change simply recognizes that the international competition has always been de facto professional anyway. Moreover, for most Olympic events (ed track), the amateurs were already professionals for the most part. Nevertheless, we (or at least I) have much less attachment to the professional basketball and hockey teams now that the college players are gone.

Get over it. The myth of amateur athletes, at least in the big sports has been a joke for years.

. . . aren't all the athletes "professional"? I'd say so!