If you hate international competition, you're an idiot.

2006 is a great year for international competition in sports. The Olympics reminded people what winter sports look like, the World Baseball Classic just wrapped up, and the soccer World Cup is coming in the summer. There are a lot of critics of international competitions, mainly because of the participants and when they take place. Well these critics are all idiots, and if you agree with them, you're one too. Here are some of the ridiculous arguments that people use.

Professionals shouldn't play

I'll concede that pro athletes were granted participation into the Olympics and other World Cup events to generate interest and revenue, and that it was a novelty at first. But now that it's a regularity, you can not switch back to amateur athletes. No one would have watched minor league or college athletes in the Olympics or WBC. People want to see the best in the world at their respective sports. If you're going to have the best speed skaters, biathletes, and skiiers in the world, why should you half-ass the hockey events? Or baseball and basketball in the Olympics, too. It just doesn't make sense, and this brings up the next argument.

These events just mess up our pro leagues

Transitioning from the first argument, you can't send minor league or college kids to go play for two weeks in the Olympics. What about their seasons? Scheduling between the pro leagues and the events is essential, because the team owners and the players can both afford to take the break from getting paid to compete for national pride.

The NHL season took a two week hiatus to accomodate the Olympics, and as a result I watched about half of all the hockey games. I've watched about 6 NHL games this year, by contrast. Stopping the NHL season for the Olympics is essential, and everyone should realize this. Hockey fans don't mind the stoppage, because the international ice rink dimensions allow for more pure, fluid hockey. Basically they get a break from the new tinkered-with NHL for better hockey, which just happens to include only the best players on earth. There's no negative in that. The NHL, coming off of a completely canceled year, would be stupid if they didn't stop the season because it's free publicity! They get to ride the coattails of the Olympic hockey into more publicity for their league. Every time an announcer said a name of a player, it was most always followed by "of the (NHL team here)."

As for the WBC, people complained that it interfered with spring training. Please... spring training is a joke. If you want to see your favorite player leave a game in the 2nd inning with a tight hamstring, by all means go to a spring training game. If you want to see quality baseball, you should have watched the WBC, and you probably didn't. The pitch count regulations and the "All-Star team" assembly of the favored teams allowed the players to gradually accustom themselves to the game. They actually got more action against better competition by competing in the WBC, and only Luis Ayala of Mexico/Washington Nationals got seriously injured. March is clearly the best time for the WBC, and anyone who wants it at the end of the season is too optimistic. After a long season, there won't be many stars sticking around to play in the competitions. Think USA Basketball on this. Interrupting the MLB season is a possibility, but you would also interrupt all the seasons of every other country. I'm pretty sure the only country that was during the middle of its season was Cuba... maybe Austrailia and South Africa too, but I don't know if they even have seasons.

These things aren't worth watching

You might not like the sports, like hockey or soccer, but you can watch to see how your country is doing. Using those two as an example, odds are if you aren't a hockey or soccer fan, you won't be watching the NHL or MLS, or maybe not even the much better European soccer leagues. If you watch the World Cup or the Olympics, you're guaranteed the absolute best players playing at the highest level. Why not watch a little bit of it? When you have an entire country monitoring your performance in the international realm, you're going to play your ass off every time, unless you're USA Basketball, and I'll get into that another time.

So I suppose you're thinking that I'm saying you should watch because they're glorified All-Star games. Well, they aren't All-Star games, they're better than that. They're what those All-Star games should be. No horrible unselfishness, ridiculous passes, atrocious alley-oops, or Randy Johnson throwing at peoples' heads for fun. If you watched the WBC, particularly a game with the US, it was actually kind of weird to see an All-Star lineup actually trying to win a game. No substutions to get everyone in (although like I said the players were eased in), no compromising the competition because of the lack of talent. You don't have the Royals and Devil Rays lone All-Star delegates diminishing the talent level (and I suppose the Pirates too...).

Basically, if you still don't get why a league would stop it season to showcase the greatest athletes of their respective sports playing together while trying to actually win instead of entertain people, you probably will never be convinced. You probably criticized the US for lackluster performances that you didn't watch, and thought it wasn't worth your time, or the pro athletes' time, either.