Olympians As Texans: An Exercise In Silliness

There's an interesting phenomenon that occurs every other year. Granted, the magnitude of the phenomenon and the level of interesting may be entirely limited to my own household, but it's rather extraordinary nonetheless.

I've mentioned many times that my wife hates football. This pretty much applies to any sport. Heck, I couldn't get her to come out and watch my soccer games.

Yet every other year, she becomes completely enthralled by the Olympics -- both summer and winter. I don't fight it, because it means that sports are pretty much on TV all day long, but I also don't understand it. I mean, this morning, I found her watching the women's marathon for crying out loud. Yesterday, she was watching race-walking (which admittedly, I find kind of fascinating).

I've asked her why she loves the Olympics, while frowning on sports the rest of the year, and even she doesn't know why.

I started to wonder if she would like football if it were played in the Olympics (I think the U.S. would do pretty well). This in turn got me thinking about which Olympic athletes would make good football players.

And, yes, I fully realize and acknowledge that there is no practical value in such an exercise.

Then again, there's little practical value in BRB as a whole, so I guess I'm on par.

For this discussion, I'm going to try and avoid the obvious like "LeBron James would be a good tight end" or "Giovanni Dos Santos would be a good kicker". Instead I'm going to focus on the sports that really only get their time in the limelight during the Olympics.

I'm also going to stick with these Summer Olympics right now, if only because I'm too lazy to research two different Olympics.

Michael Phelps: I don't know a whole lot about swimming, but I'm guessing that some of the traits that Phelps possesses is good endurance, and good all-around strength. I'd question how fast he is on land and I would definitely be concerned about his change of direction ability. At 6'3" and 194 lbs., the easy answer here is to put him at WR and work him in the red zone, but you don't come to BRB for the easy answer. So I'm putting Phelps in at strong safety, betting that he's got the athleticism to be able to handle the position, even if I'm a little worried about his size and tackling ability.

Danell Leyva: Leyva won the bronze medal in the all around men's gymnastics. I admittedly didn't watch it, but being a Cuban from Miami, I had to include him. As a gymnast, Leyva has excellent body control and balance. At 5'7" and with excellent strength, I'm putting Leyva at RB. He may have to put on a bit of weight to handle the punishment and I don't know if he has breakaway speed, but I'm betting he's shifty enough to overcome some of that. I'm also picking him over the gold and silver medalist because I don't think Japan or Germany understand football well enough, and I think having a Miami guy would make Andre Johnson happy.

Usain Bolt: Ok... I'm taking a cheapie here by putting him at WR. At 6'5", 205lbs, he's got the size for it. He might need to bulk up a bit, but not too much -- you don't want to affect his speed. Besides, his lightning bolt touchdown celebration would be awesome. Imagine putting him across from Andre in the spread.

Andrija Prlainovic: Prlainovic is the leading goal scorer in men's water polo from Serbia, and he's leading by a lot. He's scored 16 goals, which is 5 more than second place. He's not a volume scorer either, as he's done this on 24 shots for a 66.7% efficiency, which is also more than any of the top goal scorers. If he can do this while treading water and having other dudes try to drown him, I'm guessing he could do it on dry land too. So, I'm putting him at quarterback. At 6'7", 238 lbs., he's got the size to play the position, and if you've watched any water polo, you know all those guys are badasses.

Ashton Eaton: Eaton is the American favorite in the decathlon. The decathlon tests a wide variety of athletic skills, so I want to put him in a position to take advantage of that athleticism. Ideally, I'd put him at middle linebacker, but at only 181 lbs., he just doesn't have the size. I do think, though, that at 6'1", he'd be great playing on the outside as a cornerback. Besides, I figure you have to have a pretty significant amount of mental fortitude to compete in the decathlon, so he's probably got the mindset to play the position, so I'm sticking him across from Johnathan Joseph and betting that he can outperform Kareem Jackson off the bat.