Despite ringing endorsements from Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey, Chicago’s first round elimination last Friday in the 2016 Olympics candidacy was a devastating defeat — not just for the city, but for America too.

To add insult to injury, Chicago came in last place! Instead of a mass countrywide celebration, thousands celebrated on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. 

Oh well, Chicago, now it’s their mess to deal with, not ours.

I’m sure many upperclassmen have enjoyed the thrill of throwing a party. But as is often the case, people show up who aren’t your friends.

Soon the good time turns into you making sure everyone is having a good time and no one peed in your apple juice. Your party now ha

s no end in sight.

The enjoyment of your own party is quickly replaced with worries, frustration and exhaustion. Strangers outnumber friends, an

d no one will listen when you want people to leave.

The liberty of having a peaceful sanctuary is lost in a bevy of kegs and kids without fake IDs. At this point you realize one thing: It’s so much more fun to go to parties than to host a party.

For those of you missing the analogy, let me tie the two points together.

Th

e Olympics would be like a party that lasts for a month.

Our country would constantly have been under the microscope of international media outlets and Chicago’s reputation would be based on the success or failure of the Games. There would be crowds everywhere and when everyone decided to leave, the city would be a mess.

While it would be fun to have the Olympics in the U.S., it would be frustrating for residents of the Midwest.

Seven years from now, a large amount of Marquette students will work in Chicago or have family ties in there.

The Olympics would have meant hundreds of thousands of people from around the world settling in for a few months to watch and work.

The flood of people would have turned rush hour into rush hours.

Bars that already have lines out the door would be down the street. When people actually got into the bar, Europeans would put us silly Americans to shame drinking us under the table.

Wrigley Field’s bathroom amenities will no longer have to be labeled to prevent anyone from bathing in the famous troughs that pose as toilets.

We don’t have to worry about tourists addressing the Sears Tower by its actual name and teenage hooligans changing the North Avenue Beach sign to a Nude Avenue Beach sign.

Even Wisconsin would have been harshly affected. Gov. Jim Doyle had announced Wisconsin would host the cycling portion of the games, a nightmare for any driver with road rage.

Sure, some of these things would be cool, but we can all agree the Games would take a toll on our lives.

Since Mayor Richard Daley’s riveting PowerPoint presentation failed to persuade anyone in Copenhagen, we get to be on the opposite end and be the partygoer.

We can go to Brazil and impose our wacky American customs on them. We get to spell “futbol,” “f-o-o-t-b-a-l-l.”

Chicagoans driving to work in the morning won’t have to worry about people driving on the wrong side of the road and people in Wisconsin won’t have to worry about bicyclists wearing spandex that would make a normal man’s voice rise an octave.

The 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro gives us the option of joining the tourism frenzy or watching from the comfort of our own homes. We can now be the ones to talk about how much better the Olympics would have been in our country.

So good luck Rio de Janeiro and have fun cleaning up. Americans tend to get a little messy.